Give Grilled Peaches A Spicy Kick With This One Simple Step

Peaches are among the top foodstuffs that not everyone knows go great on the grill. From a practical standpoint, they're just large enough to cut in half and arrange on the grates without worrying about the fruit falling through. The resulting char marks also make a lovely aesthetic impact on your picnic table. Most importantly, grilling amplifies the botanical's natural sugars to create a sweeter, caramelized finish, which can make even lackluster peaches taste better. A drizzle of hot honey can underscore your grilled peaches' confectionery territory with just enough fiery bite to balance it all out.

Sweet and heat mingle well thanks to their dynamic contrast. Except at extreme ends of either spectrum, they can even mellow each other out, with sugary notes taking the edge off your average chile and said pepper's capsaicin stopping any sweetness short of turning sickly. Since neither peaches nor your typical hot honey exist on those extremes, this match creates crowd-pleasing magic.

Unless it's explicitly labeled as five alarm, the everyday store-bought hot honey is calibrated for broad, mild-to-medium appeal. Even the top couple of picks from our ranking of the best hot honey brands clocked in as mild-to-medium. That makes them, and a lot of the others on the market, terrific for this little peach enhancement.

Once you halve your peaches and remove their pits, a few minutes on each side on a medium-hot grill gets them wonderfully soft. Once they're removed to a plate, lightly drizzle (you and your guests can always add more later) with the hot honey. Do so before grilling, and you just end up with sticky grates.

Hot honey peaches are an obvious choice for dessert, but they also pair well with savory mains, such as barbecue chicken and pulled pork, or light sides, such as buttered cornbread. Should you prefer to use them exclusively as sweet treats, they're great alone or with a scoop of ice cream atop each side's hollow center.

You can also cube and skewer the peaches before grilling, drizzle like normal after, and use as a garnish for virtually anything you're serving, including cocktails. Prepared on a stick, you can even join the peach squares with other fruits, such as unpitted cherries or pineapple wedges, for even more variety.