Friday, August 14, 2009

Cooking with Honey

When selling honey I'm faced with two issues that really annoy me. The first is people returning jars. For some reason they bring the empty jar they've paid $5 for back to me, as if I were a trash bin or something, or were actually going to clean it out and sell it again. No no no! The jar costs me like $0.62 each, and I buy them in great big boxes of 230 something or so. I appreciate the thought of trying not to be wasteful but I'll leave to the buyer to reuse the jar.

The other issue that annoys me comes from selling to the same people year after year. Of all my friends and coworkers I find a few don't want to buy again because "Oh I still haven't used the jar I bought last year." To which I reply with a list of a few dozen foods honey goes great on. One such use is actually the focus of today's post.

Few people realize that some BBQ sauces have honey in as the main ingredient. Here is a simple example of how to make one. It's tentatively titled Hobo Blood in case you're wondering, and I highly recommend it for grilling Pork Chops.


The simplest form is to take a 1lb jar of honey and empty about 1/4 to 1/3 of the jar into a bowl. The idea is to cover both sides of the meat so use as much as needed. On top of that mix in the usual spices you would normally use on the meat, such as meat tenderizer, Dash, or other spice. Use roughly the same amount you'd normally put on the meat. Simple. This is ready to use, just mix it all together. The only issue is honey can be hard to spread over the meat.


To make the honey easier to work with my dad usually adds what's probably a table spoon of mustard, and two really good squeezes of ketchup. Personally I think he want over board with the ketchup, so use with caution. One squeeze is probably good enough.


Mix well and you should end up with a nice looking sauce.


After lighting the grill put the meat on and immediately start coating the sauce on. Cook as low a temperature as possible. 450F to 500F is ideal. This will let the sauce be absorbed by the meat as the bad stuff clears our.


You're cooking these as normal so flip as needed. Just remember to coat both sides. The honey should caramelize as it slowly cooks.


In the process of cooking this batch we actually made to much sauce. My dad ended up applying it three times.


The end result made it finger licking good. No additional sauce or ketchup was needed to eat it. Unfortunately though we like our meat well done and I think this took away some from the flavor of the meat. Just doing both sides was plenty.


The end result was some dam tasty pork chops. They were falling off the bone almost and I love the fact we eat these about once a week.

So I hope I've given some of you some good ideas about cooking. Something we tried once was letting the meat bathe for 4 hours in a tray of red wine before hand. That was also tasty but we don't do it enough for me to really recommend it. These are all just simple ways of turning $5 worth of meat into a meal worth $20.