Hot Honey Sauce goes great on almost everything, including chicken & pizza. Just 3 ingredients are all you need for this quick & easy recipe. It lasts a long while and you can tweak it to your preferred spice levels too!

 

Pretty recently, we picked up a bottle of Mike’s Hot Honey- this weird and interesting spicy honey that people are putting on top of… everything, really! When you hear “hot honey,” you might be thinking that this is some weird honey hot sauce blend, but it’s far from that. Basically, they leave peppers inside of honey so that it can infuse some flavor into the honey- kind of like a flavored olive oil.

We thought the Mike’s stuff was pretty good, but felt like we could a little better! So, we grabbed some honey from the pantry, a couple of spices, and whipped up this tasty Hot Honey Sauce.

This Spicy Honey Sauce checks off all the same boxes as the Mike’s Honey but we think ours does it all better than theirs. For starters, we were able to use one of our favorite honeys as a base for the recipe- something you can’t do with Mike’s. On top of that, we added just two other ingredients: cayenne pepper for a nice, consistent heat and red pepper flakes for those little extra bursts of spice!

What you get with all of this is a dead-simple 3 ingredient recipe that makes one of the tastiest sauces you can find. We’ve been throwing this hot honey on fried chicken tenders, and we’ll probably even try some hot honey on pizza next time we order some! Give the recipe a try and we’re sure you’ll be trying this Hot Honey Sauce on everything.

Why you’ll love this easy Hot Honey Sauce recipe

• We can’t stress this enough: this is super easy sweet and spicy sauce recipe that just needs 3 ingredients that you probably already have. What do you get out of it? One of the tastiest toppings and sauces we’ve tried recently!
• You can throw this delicious sauce on just about anything. Chicken tenders? Chicken and waffles? Pizza? It’s the perfect blend of sweet and spicy- you’ll want to try it on everything, even chicken wings!
• Since it’s made with honey and a couple of spice cabinet staples, you can feel safe in knowing your hot honey is good for a while. You don’t even need to refrigerate or freeze it- keep it in the cabinet next to your honey and it’s good to go.

Hot Honey Sauce Ingredients

When you see the words “Hot Honey Sauce Recipe,” you’re probably expecting all sorts of different ingredients. Apple Cider Vinegar, fresh peppers, hot sauces- maybe even some special tools for infusing honey or something. Well don’t worry, we kept this recipe nice and simple and even pared it down to just these three ingredients:

• Honey – Like with any recipe with honey, you want to make sure you’re getting real honey. Double check that ingredients list on the back of the bottle: if it’s 100% pure honey, it should just say honey. Avoid all the honey syrups and products that are just honey mixed with syrup. We used our favorite Midwest raw honey.
• Cayenne Pepper
• Crushed Red Pepper – This is also often sold as red pepper flakes. Just look for these chili flakes of dried peppers in a jar.

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Hot Honey Sauce

Making a homemade Hot Honey recipe is way easier than you probably think! To make this Honey Hot Sauce yourself, here’s all you have to do:

1. Add honey, cayenne pepper, and pepper flakes to a microwave-safe measuring cup or container. Briefly stir to combine.
2. Put in the microwave and cook at 50% power for 2 minutes. Remove from microwave and give another quick stir to ensure everything is mixed together. Try to not cook the honey for too long or at too high a setting. This may ruin the taste and texture of your honey.
3. While the hot honey is still warm and pourable, transfer to a serving container (like a squeeze bottle). Allow to sit for at least 1 hour to cool off, thicken and let pepper flakes infuse into the honey.

Substitutions

With 3 ingredient recipes like this, it’s hard to make or find substitutions considering how important each ingredient is. Still, we managed to find a few, so here’s some you can make in your own Hot Honey Sauce recipes:

• Honey – Obviously, if you sub out honey this isn’t a Spicy Honey recipe or a Hot Honey recipe anymore. Still, there are some really close substitutes you can look at. The main one is probably agave syrup: it tastes a bit more neutral than honey but making a Spicy Agave Sauce might pair a bit better with the red pepper and cayenne!
• Cayenne Powder – Of course, there are other spicy powders you can pick from for this recipe. Chili powder, naturally, is going to be a lot less spicy than cayenne but that might be what you’re looking for. For just a little less heat than cayenne, try some ancho chile pepper powder- you might even like the taste better!
• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes – This is one of the hardest things to find a substitute for. If you’re not a fan of these in your hot honey to begin with, there’s no issue with removing them entirely- maybe add a bit more cayenne or chili powder. In terms of an actual substitute, your best bet is going to be buying some dried chili peppers from the store and crushing them by hand.

Variations

If you stick with the Hot Honey Sauce recipe we’ve outlined here, you’ll get something spicy and tasty- we guarantee that! Once you’re done enjoying our recipe, here’s a couple ideas for variations that you can try next:

• Hot Honey with Hot Sauce – If you want to give it a shot, you can try making our Hot Honey recipe with some hot sauce instead of cayenne. We gave it a shot but personally weren’t big fans of it: the vinegar in the hot sauce we used came through a bit too strong for our tastes. Still, if that’s something your looking for in a Hot Honey, it’s worth a shot.
• Spicy Maple Syrup – Like we said before, it’s impossible to sub out the honey in a recipe like this. Still, an interesting spin you can try is using maple syrup and making a Hot Maple Syrup Sauce instead! Of course, this is going to be a lot more earthy- like maple syrup- but it should still work.

Storage / Freezing

Storage: The best part about our Spicy Hot Honey Sauce is that it’ll keep for a really long time. As long as you’re using a real honey and you didn’t heat it too hot for too long, your honey should have a practically-indefinite shelf life. Just keep it in an airtight resealable container in your pantry or cabinet- though, it might get a little spicier over time.

Freezing: No need to freeze this recipe! While you can freeze honey, there isn’t too much value in it. Like we said before: honey has a really long shelf-life as long as it’s kept in an airtight container between uses.

Best Recipes to Serve with Hot Honey

Looking for recipes to serve with this 3 Ingredient spicy sauce? Try these:

• Long John Silver Chicken Planks
• Chick-Fil-A Chicken Nuggets
• Parmesan Crusted Chicken
• Baked Chicken Breasts

Other Homemade Sauce Recipes

Here are some more of our favorite sauce recipes that we have shared: