Ideas for using honey in cooking

The Museum of Apiculture has been housed in Radovljica Manor for over 60 years. Neighbouring Lesce is home to the Beekeeping Education Centre of Gorenjska, and the famous beekeeper Anton Janša was born not far away. These are just three reasons that we include honey in our range of souvenirs as well as in local culinary experiences and gastronomy.

Before you set about trying dishes that include honey, we definitely recommend a visit to the Museum of Apiculture in Radovljica, where you can not only learn how honey is made, but also what else bees produce in addition to honey. Bees really are extraordinary creatures and the Slovenian nation holds them in particularly high respect.

HONEY IN CUISINE

Radovljica's beekeepers, as well as other locals, don't just think of honey as part of a typical Slovenian breakfast but also like to use it when cooking. We asked Marija Arh Ivanšek, a professor at the Radovljica College of Catering and Tourism, how we can use honey when cooking.

How should we decide which honey to use in cooking?

“Cooking with honey is similar to pairing food and wine – the basic rule could be that lighter shades go with lighter dishes, while darker shades go with heavier, more filling food,” Marija Arh Ivanšek begins by explaining. Until this year, when she finally retired and thus said goodbye to the school and her teaching career, Marija had been teaching students at various honey-based events, as well as others, at the Radovljica Secondary School of Hospitality and Tourism. She also emphasised an important point: “It's definitely a case of trying what goes together, and combining them so that the honey complements the food, or vice versa.”

When talking about some general instructions, acacia honey is the most neutral and is used when, for example, we don't want an excessively distinct honey taste in desserts, but we are just looking for something to add sweetness to the dish. Chestnut honey, which is of a darker shade, can make food taste somewhat bitter, so it should be used sparingly.

Linden honey is the freshest and goes well with fresh dishes, including white meat. Forest honey, meanwhile, is recommended more for spicy dishes and also for red meat. Marija Arh Ivanšek also points out that when using honey in cooking, care must be taken not to overheat this valuable ingredient, but rather, if possible, to include it in the dish after cooking.

Honey can be used in a wide variety of dishes, from desserts to salads; they make an excellent dressing for the latter. It's somewhat easier to begin with sweet dishes. For example, Kaiserschmarrn – shredded sweet pancakes – can be topped with a honey sauce. You can find a tip for how to prepare this dish on the website Špelina shramba. 

Just to add: some diverse recipes for dishes that include honey have been gathered together at the Slovenian Beekeeping Association, where various interesting ideas can be found, including the honey queen's soup, chocolate 'salami' with honey, various pancakes, honey breads, creams, honey potica, and more.

Local beekeepers gave us a tip that you can sweeten your morning coffee with honey instead of sugar and you can order coffee with honey, as well as other drinks that feature honey, at the Karavna Medena Vila, which is located on the upper floor of the Beekeeping Education Centre of Gorenjska (Rožna dolina 50a, Lesce), which is where the traditional, annual Day of Honey in Cuisine event is held.

This guide was created as part of the ‘EKO Tastes of Slovenia’ project, run in cooperation with LAS, which is co-financed with the help of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development: Europe Invests in Rural Areas. The Radovljica Public Institute of Tourism and Culture is responsible for the content. The governing body appointed to implement the Rural Development Programme of the Republic of Slovenia for the period 2014-2020 is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food. Source of funding: European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD).