Written by Lee Tran Lam for Gourmet Traveller
SUGARBAG HONEY
Aboriginal communities have hunted sugarbag honey from wild nests for millennia. “Native honey is an incredibly rare and important native
food that has been eaten and used medicinally
by First Nations people since time immemorial,” says Mickey Kovari from Native Foodways, an Indigenous social enterprise. Top restaurants
like Melbourne’s Attica have plated this prized ingredient with finger lime, wattleseed blinis or emu egg sabayon, while Native Foodways sells it
at its Sydney bakery, markets and online stores. Unlike the syrupy flat note of supermarket versions, this sugarbag honey ripples with harmonies and tastes like caramelised apricot. While currently sourced from Gubi Gubi and Yuggera Country, Native Foodways’ co-founder Carla McGrath has begun overseeing native beehives on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island). “Inside are all these gorgeous little brown bubbles of full sugarbag honey. We use the spiked comb tool or a knife to burst the bubbles and get the honey out,” says the Kubin woman. “The biggest challenge at the moment is sourcing bees.”
