Hot Honey

The Cultural Story

Hot honey is exactly what it sounds like — honey infused with chile peppers — and the simplicity is what makes it so brilliant. The American South has always understood that sweetness and heat belong together: pepper jelly on cream cheese crackers, hot pepper sauce on biscuits, jalapeño cornbread slicked with butter. But the modern hot honey movement has a specific and traceable origin story: Mike Kurtz, a beekeeper's son who moved to Brooklyn and started putting homemade hot honey on his pizza at his local spot, Paulie Gee's. In 2010, he launched Mike's Hot Honey and created an entire product category out of a Southern flavor instinct. The cultural roots go far deeper than Brooklyn pizza. In the American South, using heat to offset sweetness is baked into the culinary tradition at every level. Georgia has been producing world-class varietal honey since the 1800s — tupelo honey from the swamps of the Apalachicola River, sourwood honey from the Appalachian mountains, wildflower honey from the Georgia Piedmont. Louisiana has been fermenting hot sauces since the 1860s, with Tabasco dating to 1869 from Avery Island. The idea of combining them was not Kurtz's invention. It was the crystallization of a regional flavor philosophy that already existed in Southern kitchens, in Southern barbecue, in the sweet-heat tradition of the South's most beloved foods. By 2024, hot honey was omnipresent: on fried chicken sandwiches at every fast casual chain, on charcuterie boards at every dinner party, drizzled over pizza at Michelin-starred restaurants, stirred into cocktails at craft bars. It hit a cultural nerve because it solves a real culinary problem — most food is either sweet or spicy, and hot honey is both simultaneously. The artisanal beekeeping community benefits directly from the trend; small-batch producers in Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas have real national markets for the first time. Sometimes the simplest recipe carries the most interesting story.