Honey Butter Is the Light We Need in a Dark World

Butter, in all its forms, is glorious. Go to an especially bread-focused restaurant these days, and you’ll likely receive a generous chunk of butter sprinkled with flaky sea salt to spread on the accompanying bread. As much as I love this fatty, salty combination, though, in my mind, it’s still second-rate to the fatty, sweet combination that’s always been a staple at my breakfast table: honey butter.

It’s is as simple a spread as you can imagine. The recipe is literally in the name. It’s simply honey (preferably fresh) and butter (preferably salted). Mix together equal parts of each, blending and blending until it reaches a smooth, uniform texture. If you use good honey, the butter will take on a gold color and creamy consistency that’s far thinner than normal butter but that doesn’t drip quite like honey. Once you’re done mixing up your honey butter, you can spread on toast or bagels or any other type of carb that takes well to sugar.

These days, I’m seeing the ingredient popping up more and more in fried chicken-based dishes. Classic chicken and waffles—inarguably one of the most delicious dishes of all time—displays how perfectly fried chicken can be paired with sweet, syrupy sauces for a salty sweet combination that just works. But honey butter offers an added layer of complexity that you’ll never get with separated maple syrup and a pat of butter alone. The mixing of the ingredients and that interesting textural element makes it a superior sugar delivery system for fried chicken.

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Of course, this spread doesn’t have to be served with chicken. This combination of fat, salt and sugar works well for a variety of uses. For example, honey butter can make a delicious marinade for roasted vegetables like carrots and Brussels sprouts. It can elevate your boring bowl of morning oats into a deeply satisfying breakfast. And at its simplest, it can adorn a piece of bread or pastry for a sweet and salty touch of flavor.

When I was a kid, my dad would make honey butter on weekend mornings, stirring the honey and butter together with a butter knife directly on his plate before scooping the mixture onto his toast. Despite all the different, varied uses for honey butter, this remains my favorite, both due to a sense of nostalgia but also because it really allows the spread to shine, for the simple but deeply pleasurable spread to take center stage.

As the world becomes more and more complicated (and groceries get more and more expensive), simple pleasures, like honey butter, should be all the more celebrated. It’s a reminder that sometimes, making an extra effort (like making your own spread instead of just using honey and butter separately) is worth it. Yes, the world may be a dark place at times. But honey butter, like a random moment of bliss on a long walk, a lick from a friendly dog, a moment of laughter between old friends, can sometimes be the light we need.

Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.