Three Simple Ways to Transform Your Labor Day Meal with Honey

Labor Day arrives at that beautiful crossroads between summer and fall. The garden is still giving, fresh sweet corn is at its best, grills are fired up, and we're gathering around the table for one more long summer weekend.

It also brings us right into National Honey Month, so what better time to explore just how versatile honey can be in the kitchen?

This Labor Day, we're doing something especially fun at Three Bees. We're sampling several honeys with very different flavor profiles and using them to create three simple recipes for your holiday table. Let's make it healthier with honey!

Fresh-Picked Honey Butter Skillet Corn

Featuring Rosemary Blossom Honey from Spain

Fresh-picked sweet corn doesn't need much help to be delicious.

For this recipe, we briefly blanch fresh ears of corn, cut the kernels right from the cob, and finish them in a skillet with butter, cream cheese, sea salt, pepper, and Rosemary Blossom Honey from Spain.

Rosemary Blossom Honey has delicate floral and herbal notes that make it a beautiful partner for savory foods. Rather than making the corn simply taste "sweet," it adds another layer of flavor while allowing that just-picked corn to remain the star.

Come taste the Rosemary Blossom Honey in the shop before you take a jar home and make the recipe.

Homemade Honey Barbecue Sauce

Featuring Tulip Poplar + Buckwheat Honey

Here's where things get especially interesting.

For our homemade barbecue sauce, we're bringing together Tulip Poplar Honey and Buckwheat Honey.

These aren't shy honeys.

Their darker, deeper flavor profiles stand up beautifully to the tomato, vinegar, spices, and smoky flavors we expect from a great barbecue sauce.

Tulip Poplar brings depth and richness, while Buckwheat Honey contributes its distinctive dark, robust character. Together they create a barbecue sauce with layers of flavor and just the right amount of honey sweetness.

Brush it over grilled chicken, pork or ribs, use it on burgers, or serve it as a dipping sauce alongside your Labor Day favorites.

Want to know what Tulip Poplar and Buckwheat Honey actually taste like before cooking with them? Stop in and sample them at our honey tasting bar.

It's one of the best ways to begin understanding just how dramatically honey can change depending on where the bees have been foraging.

Fresh Raspberry Honey Vinaigrette

Featuring Raspberry Blossom Honey

To balance all those rich, smoky flavors from the grill, we're adding something fresh to the table.

Our Raspberry Honey Vinaigrette combines fresh raspberries with Raspberry Blossom Honey, Craft Honey Vinegar, Spartan Gourmet Olive Oil, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper.

It's bright, fruity, slightly tart, and comes together in just minutes.

Try it over mixed greens with fresh berries, goat cheese, toasted walnuts or pecans, red onion, and grilled chicken.

Raspberry Blossom Honey is especially fun in this recipe because we're not simply adding honey for sweetness. We're choosing a honey whose floral source complements the other ingredients and helps us build the flavor of the finished dish.

And yes, you can sample this honey in the store too!

One Ingredient. So Many Possibilities. 🍯

This is exactly why we love teaching people about varietal honey.

Honey isn't just "honey."

Just as grapes, coffee, olive oil, and other agricultural foods reflect where and how they're grown, honey can tell the story of the flowers and landscape where the bees gathered nectar.

For our Labor Day table, we're exploring:

Rosemary Blossom Honey from Spain → fresh-picked skillet cornTulip Poplar + Buckwheat Honey → homemade barbecue sauceRaspberry Blossom Honey → fresh raspberry vinaigrette

Three recipes. Four honeys. Completely different flavors.

Come Taste With Us 🐝

Not sure which honey you would choose?

Here's the best part: you can sample the honeys in our stores before you purchase them.

Taste them side by side, notice the differences, find your favorite, and then take it home and cook with it.

Stop into either Three Bees location and sample these honeys for yourself.

Compare the light and aromatic Rosemary Blossom to the darker intensity of Buckwheat. Discover Tulip Poplar. Taste Raspberry Blossom and imagine what you could create with it at home.

Then choose a jar, grab the recipes, and bring a little bit of the hive to your Labor Day table.

September is National Honey Month, and we're celebrating all month long with opportunities to taste, learn, cook, experiment, and discover just how extraordinary honey can be; Because once you start tasting honey by varietal, a jar of honey becomes a whole lot more interesting.