Simple, sweet, and a great old-fashioned remedy for soothing a sore throat or cough! This homemade honey onion syrup needs just 2 ingredients and 36 hours to come together. From there, it’s a potent, effective remedy for mild coughs or sore throats.
Soothe a sore throat and relieve a scratchy cough with this homemade honey cough syrup! A cool thing happens when you soak chopped onions into raw honey: it liquifies the honey and makes for the easiest cough syrup!
Now, as a Certified Nutrition Coach, I’ve been making some form of homemade cough remedy for ages, everything from homemade cough drops, elderberry cough drops, and even a honey garlic elixir.
Raw honey is gold for soothing a sore throat and the antibacterial properties of onion make this syrup extremely effective.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Easy to make: With just 2 ingredients you literally can’t go wrong whipping it up. The hardest part is waiting.
Effective: These ingredients have been used for generations and generations to relieve scratchy throats.
Versatile: This cough syrup can easily be varied for different flavors.
Tastes great: With honey as the base, even kids don’t mind taking a spoonful of this cough syrup.
Ingredients You Need
Pretty straightforward with only 2 ingredients so you should have everything you need!
Honey: Just any store-bought honey won’t do the trick here. You need to use raw, unpasteurized honey to maximize its effectiveness. And if you notice in the pictures, the honey is brown. This is because after chatting to a beekeeper last year I learned that buckwheat honey is the most effective honey at relieving cough and sore throat symptoms due to its potency.
Any onions will work for the cough syrup but the type of onion you choose will change the flavor a bit. Red onions will be spicier and sweet onions obviously sweeter. If you’re specifically making it with kids in mind, use a sweet onion so that the flavor masks a bit.
Important Tips
Make sure that the onions are completely covered with honey or it won’t break down. Know that kids under one shouldn't have honey.
As the homemade cough remedy sits, the honey will lose its thickness. This is what you want!
Know that you can’t mess this recipe up. The amounts don’t matter it’s just what you have on hand. So long as the honey coats over the onions, you’re good.
I would refrain from adding lemon juice to the mixture. Though lemon juice (and lemon zest) is amazing for coughs, adding a liquid to the honey could make it spoil earlier. if you want to mix in lemon juice, make it into the old-fashioned cough syrup recipe at the bottom of the post.
This cough syrup does have a faint onion taste, if you like a really really sweet profile, use more honey.
Fun hack: Use the leftover honey onion syrup in a stir-fry dinner or chopped salad so that there’s no waste! Whisk it with a bit of apple cider vinegar to make an easy salad dressing.
How To Store It
Once it's done sitting, store the honey onion syrup in a sealed jar in the fridge. Here, it will stay fresh for up to three weeks.
The other option would be to strain the onions out and then freeze the cough syrup in mini silicone molds. When you have a cough, pop out one of the molds and suck on the honey.
How To Make Homemade Honey Onion Syrup
Step 1: Chop the onion and put it into the bottom of a wide-mouth jar.
Step 2: Pour the honey over top and make sure it coats the onion.
Step 3: Put a lid on it and let it sit for 24-36 hours, you’ll notice it starts to get more liquidy.
Step 4: Pour the mixture through a fine mesh sieve to strain out the onions. Keep the liquid honey and use it as needed.
Hack: if you’re short on time and don’t want to wait for the onions to break down the honey, place the jar in a small pot of water over low heat. Let it sit for an hour or so stirring frequently until the onions break down. Don't heat it up too much though or you'll destroy the antibacterial properties of the honey.
How To Use It
You can use this honey onion syrup a few different ways:
With coughs: Take a spoonful a few times a day if you feel a scratchy throat starting.
Frozen: Freeze the honey cough syrup in small silicone molds so that it’s cold if you have a really bad sore throat. This is what I do with my homemade cough drops.
As a dressing: I whisk this honey syrup in with my Fire Cider and drizzle it on salads for lunch. It’s the BIGGEST antibacterial, immune-boosting, gut-loving punch. Nice flavor too.
A quick reminder that babies under one shouldn’t be given honey. Use this for yourself and older kiddos.
Variations
You can adjust this 2 ingredient cough syrup as needed with a few of the swaps below.
Garlic: Add 1 tablespoon of chopped garlic to the mix and strain out like you do the onions. Know that the flavor of the syrup won’t be as sweet but it will have more anti-bacterial benefits.
Ginger: Another great ingredient for the immune system, add 1 tablespoon of grated or sliced ginger in with the onions.
Herbs and spices: You can easily spice up the cough honey with different herbs or edible weeds to give it unique benefits and tastes.
Cinnamon: Either infuse a cinnamon stick into the honey with the onions or add ground cinnamon to the honey mixture before your store it in the fridge.
Frequently Asked Questions
Honey, warm liquids, ginger, lemon, and garlic are all great ingredients to help relieve light coughs and scratchy throats. You can use them by making them into a homemade cough syrup recipe or by steeping them into a tea.
Honey is naturally soothing for sore throats and if you purchase unpasteurized, raw honey it can have it’s own antibacterial properties. Onion is known for its antiviral properties and has even been said to help clear mucous. The combination of onion and honey is a potent and effective one.
The darker the honey the better it is for a cough or sore throat. This is why buckwheat honey is the best choice for homemade cough syrup. Make sure to use raw, unpasteurized honey to reap the benefits though.
Other Cold & Flu Remedies I Use
If you want to do everything in your power to survive cold and flu season, here are some staples you need!
- Gut-Boosting Homemade Gummy Bears
- Fire cider tonic (my full fire cider recipe)
- Homemade elderberry cough syrup
- Honey lemon cough drops
- good old-fashioned, super healthy eating
- Homemade honey and garlic elixir for coughs and colds
- this magic honey garlic elixir to help kick a cold fast!
- Gut healing smoothie
If you want to keep your immune system high year-round, bone broth should be in your diet.
I also use a lot of bone broth to both fight colds and prevent them! It's actually one of my most recommended foods for toddlers because it's so healing.
However, making homemade broth takes TIME (a lot of it!) which I'm slightly limited on. This is why bone broth powder, it's so awesome for busy moms.
Honey and Onion Syrup For Coughs
Video
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¼ cup Onion peeled and chopped
- ⅓ cup Honey raw and unpasteurized
Instructions
- Peel the onion and chop it into small chunks. Put it into the bottom of a wide-mouth jar.
- Pour the honey over top and make sure it coats the onion.
- Put a lid on it and let it sit for 24-36 hours, you’ll notice it starts to get more liquidy.
- Pour the mixture through a fine mesh sieve to strain out the onions. Keep the liquid honey and use it as needed.
Notes
Disclaimer:
Nutrition values are estimates only, using online calculators. Please verify using your own data"
How To Make It Into An Old Fashioned Cough Syrup Recipe
Once you have the honey onion syrup you can easily make it into an old-fashioned recipe. There are two ways:
Lemon and honey: Mix the honey syrup in with some freshly squeezed lemon juice for more antibacterial properties. You can take a spoonful like this or whisk it all into some warm water to sip on.
Whiskey-based: The other option is mixing the honey onion syrup with some lemon juice, water, and whiskey. Basically you want to heat the mixture together in a small pot on the stove until hot and combined. This soothing mixture makes an old fashioned cough syrup recipe that all grandmas used to make.
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