Hot Honey Sauce

This Hot Honey Sauce brings sweet heat and flavor to chicken, veggies, pizza, and more! It’s ready in just a few minutes and you can make it as spicy or mild as you like.

Sweet & Spicy Homemade Hot Honey!

The first time I tried hot honey drizzled over a slice of pepperoni pizza, I think time stopped. <— Dramatic, yes. Also true.

I love the combo of sweet and spicy and I really love making my own sauces.

There’s just something about making your own salad dressing (talking about you, blue cheese dressing) or barbecue sauce (hello, Alabama white sauce) or even a homemade marinade (shout to the best steak marinade in existence) that makes you feel like a rockstar.

Like, yes, I prepared this from scratch, don’t you find me magical?

Hot honey sauce is an easy sauce to start with because it’s beyond simple, but it packs in big, bold flavor and it’s easy to customize.

♥ 3 Reasons You’ll Love This Recipe:

Extra Simple: Only five ingredients in one saucepan and it’s ready in 10 minutes!

Sweet & Spicy: The combo of sweet sticky honey and hot tangy tabasco sauce just works!

Versatile: You can serve this sauce on chicken, with veggies, or pretty much however you like! Plus you can make it as spicy or mild as you like.

Ingredients, Swaps, & Tips:

• Heat: Start with 2 tablespoons of Tabasco and feel free to dial it up or down!
• Extra kick: Add red pepper flakes while simmering for more heat. You can leave them in or strain them out if you like.
• Hot sauce swaps: Tabasco brings a sharp heat but you can use your favorite hot sauce (Frank’s!) or even srichacha sauce if you have a preference for flavor or heat.
• Butter: Don’t skip it. The butter rounds out the heat and makes the sauce silky.
• Garlic: We let garlic simmer away with the sauce for a few minutes before discarding the whole cloves. It flavors the sauce without adding any chunks to our smooth sauce.

Step by Step:

Add the butter and garlic to a sauce pan over medium heat and let the butter melt.

Add the honey, tabasco, and a pinch of salt to the butter and stir together. Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the garlic cloves from the sauce.

Cool a bit before using. Store in a mason jar in the fridge for a week or so.

Serving Suggestions:

There’s plenty of ways you can use this hot honey sauce! My current fav is a hot honey chicken sandwich. We use the air fryer to make it simple.

Our favorite is with chicken. Drizzle it over our oven fried chicken chicken tenders or brush it on these air fryer chicken cutlets.

It’s delicious as a wing sauce too!

We love hot sauce with our pizza and this spicy sweet sauce would be perfect for drizzling over some pepperoni or sausage pizza or you could even sweeten up our buffalo chicken pizza.

Don’t forget the veggies either! You can drizzle it over roasted vegetables or toss crispy roasted Brussels sprouts in this sauce to really make your veggies taste good.

Storage:

Fridge: Store tightly covered in a mason jar or similar airtight container for up to 1 week.

Reheat: Microwave briefly (10 to 20 seconds) and stir before serving.

Freeze: Not recommended as the texture will change.

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