How to Dehydrate Honey and Make Honey Powder

Is there anything more versatile than honey? It adds a unique sweetness, is one of the best natural sweeteners,and it stores forever. It has precious calories. It even has an interesting selection of micronutrients (pantothenic acid, manganese, potassium, and many more).

In my humble opinion, honey is the ultimate food for self-reliant folks…

dehydrated honey
This is what my dehydrated honey looks like…

Everyone with a passing interest in personal health or responsibility owes it to themselves to learn and practice the use of honey. Whether it is cooking with it or healing with it, using honey is a valuable skill.

While honey in its native state has a virtually unlimited shelf life as a natural sweetener, it is not without challenges. Eventually, a seal will fail, and it will turn to stone. The difficulty associated with getting the honey out of the jar leads most of us to just toss it.

Variety continues to be the spice of life, and dehydrating may be just the spice that is needed for the life of honey.

Why Dehydrate Honey?

OK, it lasts forever. Why dehydrate it?…

First, it only lasts in its liquid form when well-sealed. Left to its own devices and exposed to the elements it’ll crystallize. While that’s what we will be looking for in a little bit, it’s not what we want in a container.

Crystallized honey in a glass or plastic jar is infuriating… You have to reheat it to get it out. Plastic bottles never seem to withstand the process. Warped and bulged they never sit in the cupboard the right way again. Once it has been re-liquified, it just seems to solidify again.

Dried honey crystals have an extensive shelf life as long as you keep it in a dark and dry place. Seal them up or add a food-grade desiccant packet, and you are good to go. Properly stored they stay the consistency of sugar and don’t solidify.

Finally, dried honey is versatile. The honey powder mixes better than sugar, and even dissolves easier than liquid honey. In powder form, you can sprinkle it through baked goods easier with dry ingredients.

Dehydrated honey products are great for hiking as they are lightweight and can provide the necessary energy in survival situations.

You can use your honey to add sweetness to baked goods without the additional liquid. This is especially useful with most pastries where the ratio of dry goods to liquid is a fine balance.

Sourcing Your Honey

Honey is honey is honey. Right? Nope. First and foremost there is store-bought and locally sourced. You roll the dice with store-bought.

Honey in the bear-shaped plastic container (it’s ok I have some in my cupboard too) can be pasteurized or can be only “partly” honey. Additives like corn syrup can affect your final product. Stick with local!

Honey straight from the hive can even vary widely in taste and texture. The flowers foraged by the bees can impact the honey as can the season.

Some flowers such as heather and palm are said to contribute to thicker honey. Traditionally, the flower-rich spring makes for thinner honey while the cold of autumn makes for thicker honey.

Keep this in mind as you want both the best quality honey and honey that fit your needs when making dehydrated honey.

Steps to Dehydrating Honey with a Dehydrator

Dehydrating honey is easy and done with minimal equipment and a little time. Left to its own devices it will crystallize on its own, but we want to seep that up a little bit.

If not done properly, there is also a chance of yeast growing on the honey, almost fermenting it.

Ingredients

  • Raw honey
  • Parchment paper or silicone fruit puree sheet (a silicon sheet is highly recommended)

Tools

  • Dehydrator
  • Cookie sheet or dehydrator tray
  • Spatula

Process

1) Place the parchment silicone sheet on the cookie sheet or dehydrator tray:

honey on silicone sheet
The silicone sheet I used.

2) Pour the honey on the sheets. It might become a sticky mess so be sure to have a cup of warm water and soap to help with any small spills.

3) Spread the honey into a thin layer with a thickness of no more than 1/8th inch with the spatula.

4) Set your oven or food dehydrator to 120 degrees Fahrenheit / 48 Celsius.

5) Dehydrate your layer of honey until it has a crisp texture. This may take over 24 hours or 48 based on humidity. Don’t be afraid to let it go in the dehydrator, just keep an eye on it for burning.

6) Once crisp, cool to room temperature and keep your honey dry. At this stage, the dry honey will readily absorb additional moisture from the air even as little as 30 minutes will cause the honey to begin to stick together. Using a small dehumidifier can help mitigate the effects of any stickiness.

7) Crush (mortar and pestle) or grind (food processor or blender):

pieces of dehydrated honey in grinder
pieces of dehydrated honey in grinder

8) Transfer the dehydrated honey to a jar

9) Add a descant pouch and seal the jar

Notes

  • If using an oven, monitor the temperature over the drying time. Temperatures much above 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48 Celsius) will cause the honey to burn and impart odd tastes.
  • Try to stay away from using a metal baking sheet as air doesn’t circulate through them.

Variations

After you have gotten the process down, experiment with different kinds of honey and different additives. Ground cinnamon is a favorite, and combines nicely with honey! Try other “warm” spices like ginger and cloves!

Steps to Dehydrating Honey without a Dehydrator

Don’t have a dehydrator? Don’t fret, there is another way. While not actually dehydrating honey, you can go the candy route. Since honey is mostly sugar, you can use a candy-making technique to speed things up.

In this method, we are taking the honey to the “hard crack” stage. Heating the honey to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (148 Celsius) will alter the chemistry just enough that it will be hard when it cools. From this we just grind, and we are good to go.

Ingredients

  • Raw honey
  • Silicone sheet (parchment won’t cut it for this method)

Tools

  • Pot large enough to allow the honey to quadruple in size
  • Candy thermometer
  • Cookie sheet
  • Silicone spatula

Process

1) Heat the honey in a pot, stir continuously to make sure to keep the bottom from burning:

boiling honey
boiling honey

2) Heat the honey to 300 degrees F / 148 C. Once it reaches that temperature, you can go ahead and remove it from the stovetop.

3) Pour the heated honey onto the silicone sheets. Be sure to pour it quickly after being removed from the stovetop, before it starts to harden.

softball honey
softball honey

4) Allow the honey to cool.

5) Crush (mortar and pestle) or grind (food processor):

6) Transfer the dehydrated honey to a jar.

7) Add a descant pouch and seal the jar.

Note

Honey burns easily! Keep an eye on it. Have your sheets ready before you start heating the honey. Once it starts heating up, everything goes quickly.

How to Store It

I prefer to add a little caution to most of my food preservation. I treat dehydrated honey in the same manner as all my dehydrated goods – with dry canning. After I clean the food storage jar, I pop it in the oven at the lowest setting for 10-20 minutes along with the rings and lids.

I transfer the honey into the jar, and let it sit still at the lowest temp for 10-15 minutes. I then pop in a desiccant pouch and seal up the jar. I turn the oven off and leave the door closed until cool.

Keep in mind desiccants only protect against residual moisture; they don’t remove any oxygen. You don’t want to use oxygen absorbers, though, as it could cause your honey to clump. A desiccant pack should suffice.

The initial time dries out the jar. The next stage drives out any residual moisture. The desiccant pouch ensures that even with a seal failure, the honey stays dry.

The final slow cooldown ensures a quality seal forms. This keeps the contents fresh for an extended stay in the pantry.

When you open a jar to use it, make sure to close it up as soon as possible. You’ve worked hard to powder your honey; don’t let a little moisture turn it into a solid block.

If you happen to encounter a seized block of honey power, don’t fret, you have a few options. First, you can take the chunk to a mortar and pestle. Gently break it up and back into a fine powder.

The second option is to leave it and use a microplane rasp. Take the chunk to the rasp and rasp off as much as you need to sprinkle in your current recipe.

Keep in mind that, although honey doesn’t spoil, time does affect it. Diastase, an enzyme found in this substance will decrease with time, and HMF (Hydroxymethylfurfural), an organic compound will do the same.

Uses of Dehydrated Honey

Ok, so now you have a nice pile of this wonderful golden powder. What to do?

Well, for one, honey adds a great sweetness to bananas…

Use dried honey as a replacement for sugar on your cereals to add some essential vitamins and minerals to your diet.

Next, experiment with it as a sweetener. Add a spoonful to drink coffee, tea, spiced tea (I love Chai Tea), or smoothies.

Unlike liquid honey, your dehydrated honey will dissolve quickly in any cold drink. Start with a small amount and ramp up until you have the perfect honey accent.

dehydrated honey next to pot-of vanilla chai
Some of my dehydrated honey next to a pot of vanilla chai.

Baking is an interesting use of honey powder. It adds sweetness, but unlike brown sugar, it won’t add tenderness or chewiness to baked goods. A quick internet search yielded recipes for biscuits, cookies, and cakes.

Switching to savory, the biggest advantage of dehydration is that it creates an instant glaze. Sprinkled on roasted or barbecued chicken or pork as innovative dry rubs, it’s a great option. There is nothing like a hint of sweetness before the savory hits.

Coarsely ground or shattered into larger splinters, unleash your inner food stylist and dress up a cookie or cupcake. Add it to your ice cream and yogurt for a burst of sweetness.

Check out a few honey powder recipes here.

Reconstituting Dehydrated Honey

Let’s bring the world of dehydrated honey full circle. One last use is to make it viscous again.

Use about 4 parts of dehydrated honey to 1 part of cold water. Mix the two slowly and then apply gentle heat. Do not boil, just warm until all the honey sugar dissolves. It will thicken as it cools.

The reconstituted honey can then be used as honey in the normal fashion in all your favorite recipes.

Storage

Honey stores for a long time… A really, really long time. Traces of honey were found in pots in Tbilisi, Georgia (not that Georgia, the one west of Turkey) dated at 5,000 years old. While it was only trace evidence it was on jars that appeared designed for the task.

Fast-forwarding a few thousand years. The most famous Egyptian discovery, King Tut’s tomb, even had edible honeycombs within its crypt.

Honey has two factors working in its favor. First, low moisture. Deny microbes oxygen or water and they don’t live long.

The sugars in honey are hydrophilic and pull moisture out of the environment, whether it be a wound or an open container. The water binds with the sugars slowing the growth of pathogens.

Second, honey is acidic. Bacteria and viruses prefer to grow in a neutral environment, so the acidic nature aids in keeping microbe growth to a minimum.

Sealed up and away from sources of moisture, honey has an unlimited shelf life. Buy all you can. Keep it out of the light and in cool temperatures and check it periodically for intact seals.

As long as the seal is good the honey is good. If you happen to come across a jar with a failed lid, open it up and have a mug of tea!

If a jar starts to show signs of crystallizing it’s a good time to crack it open and dehydrate it.

Problems and Solutions When Dehydrating

Failure to Dehydrate

The first batch I spread on a dehydrator tray refused to crystalize. The recipes I researched recommended 12-24 hours of dry time. After a week, the dehydrator was still running.

I had two issues. First, I spread the honey too thick. The outside sealed up and became a barrier to evaporation. I took half the honey and spread it on a new frame. Within a few hours, I finally had crisp and brittle honey.

The second issue was that I was using store-bought “honey”. A quick look at the ingredients showed a few additives. After switching to local raw honey I had much better luck.

Seasonality of Honey

The next batch had me encountering fresh spring, honey. Out of the jar, it was almost runny. It wasn’t nearly as thick as the honey I purchased over the winter. In general, spring honey is made from an abundance of nectar.

The result is a more fluid product with a slightly lower sugar content. Fall honey tends to be thicker, in part due to the scarcity of nectar. The fall honey dehydrated much quicker.

Burnt Honey

After the delays in the dehydration method, I tried the candy-making approach. With yet another pint of honey in hand, I went to the stove.

As with most things in my life, I got distracted. I took the honey to 310 degrees F instead of 300 F (154 C instead of 149 C). The result was not pleasant. Burnt sugar is not tasty. Burnt honey is worse.

Keep an eye on the thermometer. Don’t rush it, and pull it on time.

dehydrating honey Pinterest image

4 thoughts on “How to Dehydrate Honey and Make Honey Powder”

  1. I once had a quart jar of crystallized honey given to me. I wasn’t sure just how to use it, but later on I found out that it was a lot easier to use in its crystallized form than the in liquid form. Easy to just scoop a spoonful, and no mess!

  2. As a seasoned bee keeper I need to say that crystallization due to a seal fail is an absolute falsehood. Crystallization has absolutely nothing to do with how you store your honey. It is a proponent of the ratio of glucose sugars to fructose sugars. The higher the fructose concentration to glucose concentration means that the honey will crystallize faster.

    A leaking seal will allow MOISTURE into the container which can cause it to ferment and make a gross dirty form of mead…

    Good tip, but your information is not accurate.

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