How to Treat Crystallised Honey
I get a steady trickle of hits from people wanting to know what to do with their crystallised honey. They find this post, where I explain why honey crystallises, but I don’t actually say anything about what to do with it if this happens to liquid honey you’ve bought. So, here goes:
Uncrystallised honey
First of all, if you’ve bought something marketed as liquid honey and it crystallised, don’t buy honey of that brand again. If you absolutely have to have liquid honey, make sure it’s labeled as coming from plants such as acacia, the honey of which never crystallises. (Personally I find acacia honey bland and tasteless, but I guess everyone’s different.) Otherwise, just get already crystallised honey. As you will shortly see, it’s not like it’s difficult to liquify it.
Here’s the very simple trick: Heat it.
If you heat honey too much for too long, you will destroy the antiseptic enzymes and hence it won’t be any good against sore throats anymore - but it’ll still taste great. But the glucose crystals will dissolve before the enzymes are rendered dysfunctional. Make sure the temperature gets no higher than around 40 centigrade and you’re fine. Just place the jar/bottle in hot water and the glucose crystals will dissolve.
Eventually, the honey will begin to set again. It’s possible to prevent this (for a time) by heat-shocking the honey, but an easier way to deal with it is to simply allow it to happen. If you stir it regularly, you will break the crystals into small pieces and get a nice, smooth texture instead of big sugary lumps of glucose in a fructose solution. Absolutely perfect texture can be attained if you put the honey in the fridge and whip it twice a day. It will become pale and fairly hard, and it’ll be smoother than silk.
If you have smoothly crystallised honey that you want to use for cooking (such as glazing meat for a bbq or as a replacement for sugar in a spongecake), just put as much as you need in a container and stick it in the microwave a few seconds. Since you’ll be cooking with it you don’t need to worry about it getting too hot.
If you have other questions about honey, honeybees or bee-related products, I’ll be happy to do my best to answer them.