February's Tag Game ~ La Miel ~ Honey Community Forums - p1

Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:10 pm

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Honey Facts

~ Honey has been used as a food source for at least 10,000 years, as evidenced by cave paintings in Valencia, Spain, which depict two females collecting honey and honeycombs from a wild bee nest. Honey has also held significant religious importance throughout centuries for many faiths including Hinduism, Jewish, Hebrew, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
Honey is a naturally sweet food that is made by bees

through a process of extracting nectar from flowers. The most common variety of honey is produced by common honey bees, and it’s that type of honey that most beekeepers collect for human consumption. (There are other types of honey produced by other kinds of bees, but they have distinctly different properties.)

~ Bees produce honey by collecting nectar from flowers and then, through a regurgitation process, store the nectar in wax honeycombs inside the beehive. Beekeepers then will collect the honey by using smoke from a bee smoker to pacify the bees, which makes them far less aggressive during the collection process. The beekeeper then removes the honeycomb from the hive and collects the honey using a honey extractor. The honey is then filtered, processed and packaged.
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Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharide fructose and glucose, and has approximately the same sweetness as granulated sugar. Flavors of honey vary based on the nectar source, and various types and grades of honey are available. By studying the pollen in a sample of honey, it is possible to identify the geographical location and type of plants from which the honey bees collected the nectar.

~ Honey sold commercially is classified by its floral source, packaging and processing used, and graded on its color and optical density, according to USDA standards using the Pfund scale that grades honey from 0 for “water white” honey to more than 114 for “dark amber” honey . There are also regional honeys that are similarly graded for their qualities.

The physical properties of honey vary, depending on water content, temperature, the type of flower used to produce the honey, and the proportion of the specific sugars it contains. The melting point of crystallized honey is between 40 and 50 °C (104 and 122 °F), depending on its composition. The rate of crystallization is affected by the ratio of the main sugars, fructose to glucose, as well as the dextrin content. Temperature also affects the rate of crystallization, which is fastest between 13 and 17 °C (55 and 63 °F). Below 5°C, the honey does not crystallize and its natural texture and flavor can be retained indefinitely. The viscosity of honey is affected greatly by both temperature and water content. Like most viscous liquids, honey will become thick and sluggish as temperatures decrease.

China, Argentina, Turkey and the U.S. continue to be the top producers of natural honey. In addition, Mexico is an important honey producer as well, providing about 10% of the world’s honey supply, with about 1/3 coming from the Yucatan Peninsula.

Honey is one of the gourmet products of the French island of Corsica, which French classifies honey origin just as it does French wines (like Champagne).

Cooking With Honey

~ Honey has many useful purposes including daily cooking and baking, and even for homemade beauty products. With its natural sweetness, honey is a great choice for adding a touch of sweetness to desserts and sweet dishes. It’s a primary ingredient in the popular Greek dish Baklava. Honey is often used to sweeten beverages as well, especially tea. It’s also a popular choice for sweetening some sauces, such as barbecue sauces and the ever-popular honey mustard sauce that’s used in a variety of chicken and pork dishes. Honey is also a wonderful choice to top piping hot pancakes, biscuits, toast and other breads.

Honey is also a primary component in mead, a honey wine, or often referred to as honey beer, which consists of honey, water and yeast for fermentation.

Health and Nutrition

~ As with all sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and contains only trace amounts of vitamins and minerals. The specific composition of any batch of honey depends on the flowers available to the bees that produced the honey. But typically, common household honey primarily consists of about 38% fructose and 31% glucose, with its remaining carbohydrates consisting of various amounts of maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates.

Historically, honey has been used by humans to treat a variety of ailments, from burns to sore throats to serving as an antioxidant that keeps skin looking young and protecting it from damage from UV rays. It has been used throughout history as an astringent and antiseptic, though more recently honey has become important in research of its antibacterial properties. Researchers are discovering that honey, with its natural anti-microbial properties, may be effective in killing drug-resistant biofilms in chronic rhinosinusitis. In addition, one New Zealand researcher even discovered that one certain strain of honey (Manuka honey, made from bees in Australia and New Zealand) may be useful in treating some MRSA infections.

~ Because of the natural presence of botulinum endospores, honey is not suitable for children under one year of age, because their immune system is too underdeveloped to destroy the spores that are naturally present in raw honey.

What will it be……Baklava? Lemon Tea with Honey?

…………………………February Tag Game ~ Honey

We have selected an array of Spanish (and Mediterranean) recipes that include honey as an ingredient. You are free to tag one of the recipes we found, or you can pick any other recipe in the database that includes honey as an ingredient. And there is no limit; you can tag as many recipes as you can make before the end of the month.

Featured Recipes

~ Basic Spanish Flan #231653 by Sharon123
What Spanish meal would be complete without Flan? This creamy, caramel 5-Star dessert sweetened with honey will be the perfect topper any meal.

~ Green Gazpacho (Posted for Zwt II) #169342 by twissis
A Spanish classic, Gazpacho is a chilled soup flavored with fresh vegetables, herbs and spices and just a touch of sweet honey.

~ Aubergines Espanol #416857 by Brian Holley
A wonderful Tapas dish that can also be served as a main dish. It’s from the Andalucian region in southern Spain and features fresh aubergine (eggplant) and, of course, honey.

Tapas (Appetizers and Snacks)