What to use instead of raw honey
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Liquid sweetener that also holds moisture in a bake or a drink
Honey is roughly 80 percent sugar and 17 percent water, and the fructose in it attracts water, so anything sweetened with it stays moist for longer and browns sooner.
Maple syrupPlant-based
1:1
Thinner and slightly less sweet per spoon, with maple flavour that shows through anything mild. It browns at much the same rate.
Agave nectarPlant-based
1:1
Neutral and a touch sweeter. A lemonade made with it tastes cleaner and loses the floral edge entirely.
Date syrupPlant-based
1:1
Much darker with a raisin note and a slight bitterness underneath. It turns a golden milk brown.
Granulated sugar plus liquidRan out
1 cup honey = 1 1/4 cups sugar + 1/4 cup water or milk
Bakes drier and paler and stales faster, because you have removed the fructose that was holding water in the crumb.
Brown rice syrupPlant-based
use 1 1/4 times as much
Only about half as sweet and far stickier. Useful in granola bars where you want the glue more than the sweetness.
What doesn't work: Honey poured one for one into a cookie dough written for granulated sugar. You have added water and taken away the sugar crystals that were cutting air into the butter, so the dough spreads flat, browns early and stays cakey rather than crisp.
Sticky glaze that browns on heat (teriyaki, honey walnut shrimp, roast carrots)
Fructose caramelises at a lower temperature than table sugar, so a honey glaze colours and tacks up well before the food underneath would have browned on its own.
Maple syrupPlant-based
1:1
Sets slightly less tacky and burns just as fast. The maple suits pork and salmon and fights with soy less than you would expect.
Brown sugar dissolved in waterPlant-based
3/4 cup brown sugar + 2 tbsp water per 1 cup honey
Molasses depth in place of floral. The glaze sets harder and shatters when it goes cold.
Jaggery or palm sugar, meltedPlant-based
3/4 cup per 1 cup honey
Caramel with a faintly smoky edge, and it lacquers grilled meat thicker than honey does.
Hot honeyRan out
1:1
Same glaze with the heat built in, so pull back on any chilli already in the recipe.
What doesn't work: Golden syrup or corn syrup as the glaze on its own. Both are largely glucose and need much more heat to colour, so the chicken comes out sticky and pale where you wanted it lacquered.
Anything above about 40 C kills the enzymes that make raw honey raw. If the recipe heats it, keep the good jar for the table and cook with the cheap one.