HOT HONEY SHRIMP IS SPICY, SWEET AND SPEEDY
A flavour-packed dinner needing only a few ingredients takes the stress out of weekday cooking
If you love sweetness checked by a little heat, then a jar of honey spiked with chillies is a very good thing. It’s a little like hot pepper jelly, that old staple of cooking in the southern United States, except the honey gives a more floral, caramelised character whereas the jelly is just hot and sweet.
But the overall effect is the same. The chilli keeps the honey from becoming cloying, the honey tones down the brashness of the chilli, and together you get something that’s a lot more complex than the merging of only two ingredients would suggest.
Jars of so-called hot honey (usually honey mixed with cayenne, with a little vinegar for tang) are sometimes available at large supermarkets.
But it’s also incredibly easy to make yourself. Just mix together a good full-flavoured honey with whatever chilli-based product you have on hand (cayenne, ground chilli powder, crushed chilli flakes, dashes of chilli sauce), adding the hot stuff slowly and to taste. And if you overdo it, a little more honey will smooth things out. You’re looking for a balance of zingy and mellow, sweet and fiery.
Then drizzle it wherever its contrasting sensations will make you happy. I love it just as much in peanut butter sandwiches and on top of my yoghurt as I do with my fried chicken. And it’s excellent with seafood, particularly strongly flavoured fish like salmon, swordfish and tuna and succulent pink shrimp.
Of them all, shrimp has the distinct advantage of cooking in five minutes or less, making this one of the fastest, easiest and most flavour-packed dinners you can make on any given weekday.
Or try it in place of shrimp cocktail as an hors d’oeuvre at a party, using mayonnaise or tartare sauce for dunking.
In addition to the hot honey here, I also add lime zest, grated ginger and some garlic to punch things up, with a little butter for creamy richness.
If you’ve planned ahead, you could let the shrimp marinate in the honey mixture for an hour or two in the fridge before cooking. But it’s not at all necessary, so skip it if you’re throwing this together at the last minute.
Then set the table, grab some bread and open the wine while the shrimp roasts. In the five minutes they take to cook, that’s actually all you’ll have time to do. And that’s actually all you’ll really need.