A Year-Round Guide to Franklin and Nantahala

Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of six Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their

Rosemary and Goat Cheese Strata

Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of six Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their

Liquid Sunshine

Jars of North Carolina honey

Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of six Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column aloud, allowing each distinct voice to shine. Click below to listen to Sheri read her column aloud. 


The Sunday dinner table in my grandmother’s kitchen included an array of jars that held all manner of sweet condiments: homemade preserves, sorghum, and local honey. We’d open the jars, gather the last of the rolls and biscuits, and linger at the table while sweetness and conversation flowed. On these wintry Watauga County days, a crackling, flickering fire bathed us in a warmth that felt to us like what I imagine the summer sunshine must have felt like to the bees as they buzzed through their honey-making tasks.

Sourwood is my family’s honey of choice, the quintessential Blue Ridge Mountain kind. It tastes of baking spices, caramel, and butter. It’s sweet, of course — certainly not sour, despite its name — but finishes with a signature twang. It ought to taste even sweeter when we consider that a worker bee produces only a twelfth of a teaspoon in her lifetime, barely enough to make a fingertip sticky.

• • •

There are more than 300 types of honey in the world, each with its own flavor, color, and texture — characteristics determined by where the honeybees roam and what they collect while assembling and filling their tessellated honeycomb warehouses. Local honey expresses terroir, that distinctive taste of place, just as we find with fine wine.

Given the toil and trouble it takes to gather sourwood nectar, honeybees must love the taste as much as we do. There aren’t all that many stands of sourwood trees and they don’t grow in groves or large groups. Mother Nature strews them over the mountain landscape like scant handfuls of chicken feed. For a few weeks each summer, sourwood trees sport dramatic, flouncy clusters of white, bell-shaped blossoms that explain why some folks call them Lily of the Valley trees. When breezes pick up, it looks as though the branches are waving lacy hankies at passersby.

Honeybees in a hive

The honeybee, North Carolina’s official state insect, spends its life — about six weeks or so — creating our unofficial state sweetener. photograph by temmuzcan/E+/Getty Images

Their bloom period is brief, even when rainfall and sunlight are optimal, so the bees must hustle to gather enough nectar to transform into liquid gold, their alchemy in action. A robust crop of pure sourwood honey comes along only every few years, esteemed by connoisseurs as some of the finest honey on Earth. Truth be told, a lot of what’s labeled and sold as sourwood honey isn’t pure — it’s a blend of sourwood and other local varietals — but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste heavenly. The Appalachian columnist and conservationist Carson Brewer once wrote, “Most honey is made by bees. But sourwood is made by bees and angels.”

Illustration of sourwood plant

Sourwood illustration by Wendy Hollender

Any tribute to ethereal honey, sourwood or otherwise, must include a celebration of honeybees and their ceaseless work. For starters, bees pollinate nearly a third of the food that we eat. The ways and means of these brilliant creatures are more intricate and sophisticated than we humans can comprehend. They can waggle dance based on the sun’s position. Their orderly, efficient work ethic gives us the word “beeline” to describe the most direct path from one place to another.

These days, I keep a gallery of honey jars and pots in my own kitchen, a nod to the bounty of my grandmother’s Sunday spread. They hold the evidence of my fascination with different honeys, ranging from straw-colored and delicately floral to one so dark and robust it makes my tongue buzz. Sourwood drizzles off the end of my honey dippers in gold and amber rivulets, pooling like a sunbeam. Each time I add honey to a recipe, I am awestruck and humbled that even on my best day in the kitchen, I cannot cook anything as perfectly as bees make honey.


Salted honey chess pie

photograph by Tim Robison

Salted Honey Chess Pie

Chess pie is an essential Southern dessert, a concept as much as a recipe. It originated as a workaday pantry pie that cooks could make from ingredients they had on hand. Chess pie is adaptable: If there was no vinegar for the acid, lemon juice or buttermilk could do the trick. If there were nuts, you could have pecan or black walnut or peanut pie. If there was chocolate, then in it went. I’ve added salt and honey to this one. Chess pie is as chess pie does.

Yield: One 9-inch pie.

Crust:
1 (9-inch) deep-dish pie shell, blind-baked to golden brown and cooled

Filling:
3 large eggs, at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
3 tablespoons fine cornmeal
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup butter
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup sourwood honey, or another flavorful floral variety
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Flaky salt (for sprinkling)

Topping:
1 cup heavy cream, deeply chilled
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅛ teaspoon kosher salt

For the filling: Place a rimmed baking sheet in the oven and preheat to 325°.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs until well-beaten. Whisk in the sugar, cornmeal, and salt.

In small saucepan over medium heat, warm butter, cream, and honey, and stir until the butter melts. Whisking continuously, pour into the egg mixture in a slow, steady stream. Whisk in the vinegar and vanilla. Pour into the pie shell. Place pie in the oven on the hot baking sheet.

Bake until the filling is nearly set, about 45 minutes. Lay foil over the pie if the crust browns too quickly. The center should jiggle a little when the pan is gently shaken. The edges will puff in the oven, but will settle as the pie cools and continues to set. Sprinkle salt over the warm filling.

Cool completely on a wire rack. Cover and refrigerate overnight before serving.

For the topping: Place a large metal or glass bowl in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Pour cream, honey, vanilla, and salt into the chilled bowl. Beat to stiff peaks with a mixer set to high speed.

Serve each piece of pie with a generous dollop of the topping.

print it

This story was published on Jan 15, 2025

Sheri Castle

Sheri Castle hosts the Emmy award-winning show The Key Ingredient and is a Southern Foodways Alliance Keeper of the Flame honoree.