I Tried Making Vegan Honey From Corn Cobs

Today I tried making vegan honey from food scraps! Who knew you could put your corn cobs to good use? I went down a little bit of wormhole of seeing other ways one can use corn cobs, if you're interested see here:

Ethics Of Eating Honey:

Smaller, local bee farmers likely have more ethical practices than large-scale facilities - similarly to other animal products. Try to buy locally when possible and talk to the beekeepers yourself, or even visit their farm!

[anabelbrito]

I highly recommend making DANDELION HONEY! It's definitely more time consuming and uses up way more sugar, but the taste and texture is surprisingly close to real honey. It's very syrupy and not at all jiggly as the one from the video seems to be. I personally like to add a lemon and/or orange peel and the tinniest bit of vanilla. That said, loved the recipe! Very accessible and a great way to use food scraps.

[InLiquidColor]

If I may, I'd love to offer another perspective on honey production and bee conservation. I worked as a conservation educator for many years. At one location, I met the most passionate, wonderful apiarist who *loves* his bees. He's passionate about providing proper care, helping to move swarms safely in the community so the bees aren't harmed, and educating on so many aspects that surround this topic, like how important it is to buy organic almonds/almond milk (because the pesticides used on almond orchards are poisoning bees in massive numbers) and teaching others how to properly keep bees in order to keep this species that is quickly and dangerously plummeting. And he's absolutely not alone, as I know there are many others out there like him.

One thing that is so difficult for me in terms of black-and-white veganism is that supporting people like conservation-driven beekeepers, you're literally supporting conservation efforts to SAVE species. Yes, you have to find the right people, but I can't understand why vegans could possibly be against that.

This is not directed at Merle specifically, as I did see the statement in the description box about smaller keepers and I know how much you advocate for imperfect veganism, I just hope that more people become aware of how conservation efforts work and how by adamantly boycotting certain products you're doing less to help the planet than you can by supporting the ones doing good <3

[akumatsumi]

As a beekeeper, I'd like to mention that while those sources might fit into some large-scale beekeeping, most hobby beekeepers do not treat their bees in that way. They are appreciated and treated with care and respect. They are allowed to naturally reproduce (swarms) and not just put down unless they carry a very veeeery dangerous sickness that would otherwise infect other bees and kill entire hives/families/communities.

[Leftistattheparty]

The articles that you have linked don't provide actually good sources for their reasonings. One of them cited "Natural News" which is a notorious disinformation website.

[anufoalan]

it’s corn syrup, literally a food product that comes under higher scrutiny than honey?

Also I would like to point out from perspective of someone who’s had to do a lot of research that the articles provided are not scholarly peer reviewed sources and as such the information provided by both of these “sources” has a high chance of either being false or completely made up, neither is a creditable source either. Also the first article is basically just a reprint of the Guardian article, which is 5 years old and that’s pushing what is considered “current data”. (5 years is considered the general max, but 7 years is kinda the max, at least in terms of the data I’m used to, which is nursing)

I would encourage talking to local apiaries, and looking for actual scholarly articles before looking at either of these articles as fact.

[PaulLoh]

I love how experimental you are. You're all like, "I'm going to make vegan lasagna out of orange peels, nori, and tahini. And see if Aria can tell the difference." Then he makes a bunch of funny faces and says, "It tastes exactly like lasagna. Wait a minute, is that eggplant? No wait, truffle?" Then he lifts you off the ground and shouts, "This is my world!" My other favorite vegan cook is Sauce Stache. He's an outright MacGuyver in the kitchen. I swear, he could make steak tartar out of methylcellulose, mushroom powder, and rice paper. Then he'll bring it about an inch away from the camera, making it all blurry, and say, "I mean look at this! It's so-ho-ho meaty! Just look at it!" I particularly love it when you both do the same recipe, like Gordon Ramsay's steak. Your different takes on it and reactions are priceless! Keep up the good work.

[agustinafaiella]

oh, this is awesome! I've been recently trying to reduce my food waste as well and executed it today too! I used the peels from my zucchini and carrots to make veggie chips since the oven was already on! Plus, I used the peels from my onion and garlic and used them for a veggie stock! Sustainable and satisfying!

[CristalXia]

Just to add that you can buy glucose syrup that is honey flavoured (it's vegan because it's artificial flavour) if you have a middle east food aisle in your supermarket ! I included it in my pastries and my omni family couldn't taste the difference !!

[landshark]

I feel like you could just make any kind of (edible) flower water, add enough sugar to make a syrup and then color it with the turmeric. Good honey has a lot of the taste of the flowers it comes from anyway and then you could mix and match different flower waters to make your perfect flavor profile.

[robloreto]

Adding apples(or apple cores) with the cobs, could up the honey-ness...

When my pup (Athena) becomes tired I call her a, "sleepy peepee" in a baby voice of course...

[jaredphillips]

Corn honey? Is it not just corn sryup?

[pablotaco]

3:36 NOT ONLY DO WE GET CHER IMPRESSIONS, NOW WE GET POKÉMON!? What a queen 👸

[ahmedalmahdi]

Would’ve replaced the turmeric with some saffron powder. The saffron flavor will be more suitable for the honey than turmeric. But overall looks interesting and worthy of a shot :)

[RDLPSTQ]

Omg yes I literally was hoping somebody would try and make this after watching Going Zero Waste’s video. So happy to see you make this and actually liked it! Going to give it a try soon 🥰

[Sarahliz_s]

Are you really an animal owner if you don’t sing them songs about themselves? 🤣 - my cats have like 10 different names also 🙈

[pablotaco]

Ahhhh!! I've been waiting since the livestream! 🥰 thank you Merle!! You seriously make the best content. This is a gift!!

[nightshaderach]

Just a mostly ill-informed vegetarian here, but I am on the page of as long as you locally source your honey it’s okay.
Local honey and bee keepers cannot mistreat their bees and continue to make honey.. that’s how I think about it. I also know my honey supplier and he does a great job with his bees care

[handlecannotbeblank]

So happy you made this recipe me and Natalie shared on the server 😄

[violentlettuce]

i'm not sure if i commented this before, but merle you have no idea how much i (and i'm pretty sure a lot of others) appreciate you including the clips of washing your hands after holding your cat- it's just- thank you 🥺❤

just in case: i don't have ocd or something, at least i don't think so, i was never diagnosed, but this is just so vitally satisfying to see/know so that my brains doesn't go CAT HANDS CAT HANDS for the rest of the video lmao

[JubeiKibagamiFez]

I feel like this is the old way of making corn syrup.... Nevermind. Corn starch negates syrup.
This might be more honey like if we do more cobs and water and add a digestive enzyme to the syrup.