Cross Canada Cooks: Alberta

Talk about Alberta's liquid gold and people will assume you're talking about oil. But if they spent some time strolling through farmer's markets or eating at the growing number of small, local restaurants around Alberta, they'd see that the conversation could just as easily be about honey.

While beekeepers spent 2010 mystified by the collapse of colonies around the world, Alberta's bees were busy producing 28 million pounds of honey, valued at about $47 million – almost 40 per cent of Canada's honey market. What makes Alberta's honey so special is what's missing from the nectar: water. A dry climate and native Prairie vegetation make for a thicker, richer honey that has a very mild flavour – and makes a great addition to recipes.

Ron Miksha's family has been in the honey business for 70 years. To him, honey is special because it is a truly natural product. Miksha's Summit Gardens Honey Farm outside of Calgary is the largest comb honey producer in the country. Summit Gardens leads this niche market with only 400 bee colonies – a fraction of the 13,000 maintained by some large commercial producers. Comb honey, unlike the clear, liquid variety, is unprocessed and virtually untouched by humans. The bees make the honeycomb right in the container in which it is sold. "We just put a lid and a label on it and it's ready to go," says Miksha.

Natural may be king, but Chinook Honey Company proves that sometimes a little processing can make a product like honey even more appealing. In Okotoks, Alta., the honey harvest is put to good use at Chinook Arch Meadery, where owners Cherie and Art Andrews ferment honey into eight varieties of mead, including Buckaroo Buckwheat and Ginger Snapped – which provide the perfect buzz for those summer cocktails.

– Melanie Stuparyk


Page 2 of 9 – Find out what the best Albertan beers are on page 3 and be sure to try them out when you visit.