Easy Fermented Garlic Honey

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Fermented garlic in honey is probably one of the easiest fermented foods you can make. Naturally occurring wild yeasts and bacteria come together and start the process without adding anything else. This recipe only contains 2 ingredients: Fresh garlic cloves, and raw honey. I use it in my Easy One Pan Spicy Pork and Eggplant Noodles recipe.

If you haven’t tried this yet you will wish you knew about it sooner. If you’re new to fermentation, or looking for the benefits but not too keen on the usual sour vegetables, this one is for you. It is a sweet treat, unlike most other ferments. It also will keep for just about eternity and it gets better with age, but trust me, you will eat it all before you have to worry about that.

Why Ferment Garlic in Honey?

Fermented honey garlic is delicious and perfect for cold and flu season. This is a way to preserve garlic, mellow out the flavor, and make kitchen life more convenient. Instead of peeling garlic every time you cook, the cloves will be there ready and waiting for you to pluck them out of their little sea of sweetness. Oppositely, the honey will have a hint of garlic flavor. This process makes it runnier than its normal consistency and easier to work with. Lastly, it’s very little work with a lot of rewards.

How to Eat it

I’ll get into the benefits in a second, but the best part is eating it. Think of any sweet and savory dish imaginable. I’ve used this for Asian stir fry, chicken wing glaze, honey BBQ sauce, honey mustard salmon, honey glazed ham, honey carrots, etc. I use it to sweeten up salad dressings, pickle brine, and cole slaw. I have drizzled it on a hunk of cheese and eaten that for lunch. You get the picture.

Use this fermented honey and garlic in my Perfect Sweet and Savory Pickle Brine or my Lime Pickled Onions for Tacos. Pull out the garlic cloves and use them for just about anything you would use garlic. Fermenting garlic in honey just mellows it out and softens the flavor.

Benefits of Fermented Garlic Honey

Individually both raw garlic and raw honey have tons of health benefits.

Garlic – Nature’s antibiotic… fights all sorts of infections. It’s anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic, improves blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. Garlic contains antioxidants that can prevent future dementia. It can help with detoxifying heavy metals.

Honey – shares most of the same benefits listed for garlic, but also can help with digestion and reflux. Local honey in particular will help with pollen allergies. Honey is also awesome for soothing a sore throat.

You can read more about using honey medicinally in this Herbal Honey Cold and Cough Syrup Recipe.

If one thing is clear, they are both just really good for your body and make the perfect team. Tasting great is a bonus.

How to Ferment Garlic in Honey

Now for the rocket science. You are basically just going to peel a bunch of garlic cloves, lightly smash them, and cover them in raw honey. Use a squeaky clean jar, and keep your jar out of direct sunlight. Leave a couple of inches of head space in the jar.

Every day you will need to “burp” the lid to let off the gas that builds up during the fermentation process. Roll your jar around to recoat all the garlic cloves.

That’s it. Do this for a few weeks, or a month, and it’s done. Well, I shouldn’t say done, it can keep going for months. Always keep it at room temp and use it as needed. I have read it will keep for a year or even longer but mine doesn’t last that long. I’m pretty sure raw honey on its own will keep indefinitely.

Tips

Just remember to keep your jar away from sunlight, at room temp. The counter is fine if it’s not in direct sun.

Your jar probably won’t really explode but mine almost always overflows a little bit the first few days, so keep your jar on a plate for easier cleanup. Head space helps but you still might spring a leak.

If you’re a visual person, I have a quick and easy-to-follow tutorial on Instagram here.

Optional Supplies

If you don’t like the idea of a possible sticky mess on your counter, or don’t want to worry about burping jars, you can use lids and jars made specially for fermentation.

Sometimes I use airlocks, sometimes I don’t. They have their advantages, one being avoiding a mess. The other being less work for you. There is no need to burp your jars if you have airlocks or fermentation lids. There are several different types to choose from.

These waterless airlocks would probably work best for fermented honey and garlic because you still have to turn over the jar once every other day.

I use water airlocks for stuff like hard cider, and some fermented veggies.

If you have any questions or anything you’d like to add, leave a comment below.