jar of ginger, garlic, and onion honey syrup on a wooden cutting board

DIY Honey, Ginger, Garlic, & Onion Syrup: A Folk Recipe for Cold Season

October 5, 2026

This is one of the first herbal preparations I ever made, and I'll admit that at the time it sounded a little disgusting. Onion, garlic, and ginger, steeped in honey, on purpose. My palate has come a long way since then, and this syrup is genuinely delicious: sweet, sharp, and warming all the way down.

Here you'll find:

Why Make Your Own Onion Syrup
A Folk Remedy With Deep Roots
Onion Syrup: About the Ingredients
How To Use This DIY Herbal Cough Syrup
How To Make: Ginger, Garlic, & Onion Honey Syrup (Recipe)

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Why Make Your Own Onion Syrup

Years ago I started reading the labels on the syrups lining the drugstore shelf, which is a habit that comes with a nutrition education. Have you ever read one? Artificial flavors, artificial colors, sometimes alcohol, and a list of ingredients most of us couldn't pick out of a lineup.

This syrup is four ingredients you can find in any kitchen, and the flavor comes from the plants and the bees. You can ready every word on the label because you wrote it yourself, in Sharpie, on a piece of tape. A jar of this in the fridge is a simple, delicious thing to have on hand when the weather turns.

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A Folk Remedy With Deep Roots

Nothing about this syrup is new, and I can't take credit for the idea. Onion and honey have been paired against coughs for centuries. Versions turn up in India, Germany, Hungary, and beyond, from onions boiled in wine and honey to sliced onion layered under sugar until the juice runs.

One well-loved modern version comes from herbalist Rosemary Gladstar. In Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide, she shares "A Simple Honey-Onion Syrup for Colds": thinly sliced onions barely covered in honey, warmed over very low heat until the onions are soft and the honey tastes strongly of onion. She notes you can add chopped garlic for a stronger syrup.

This version here skips the heat, steeps it raw, and brings ginger into the jar, but the lineage is plain to see. Consider this recipe one more stop along a very long line of herbal kitchens.

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Honey, Ginger, Garlic, & Onion Syrup:
About The Ingredients

There are only four ingredients in this herbal honey syrup:

Ginger
Onion
Garlic
Honey

That's it. Everyone of them has a long history in kitchens and herb cabinets, and each still earns its spot today.

Ginger is one of the most versatile roots in your pantry. It's warming, stimulating, earthy, and spicy, with a bright sweetness underneath. It brings a great deal of flavor for a small amount of root. In herbalism, ginger is considered to be:

Antioxidant
Expectorant
Carminative
Antimicrobial
Anti-inflammatory
Circulatory stimulant
Anti-nausea

Onions and garlic show up in nearly every cuisine for good reason. They carry some vitamin C and vitamin B6, but the sulfur compounds are the real stars.

Those organic sulfur compounds are strongly anti-inflammatory, they are the subject of a great deal of current research (including cancer research), and they have a long history in folk use. To herbalists, garlic and onions are also:

Antioxidant
Antimicrobial
Immune supportive
Anti-inflammatory

Honey is the carrier, the preservative, and the reason you'll actually want to enjoy this onion syrup by the spoonful. Its high concentration of beneficial phytochemicals and antioxidants earns it superfood status, and as a general rule, the darker the honey, the more of those plant compounds it holds.

If you can, find a local beekeeper who doesn't heat-process their honey. Most grocery store honey is heat treated, which diminishes much of what makes honey worth eating in the first place. Raw, local honey is always the best choice for a syrup like this.

→ TRY THIS
Want a sweet spoonful on the days between batches of this onion syrup? Our Elder Sage Herbal Honey pairs raw Appalachian honey, elderflower, sage, and reishi mushroom. Stir it into hot water or tea, or eat it straight off the spoon.

diced ginger, garlic, and onion layered with raw honey in a glass jar

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How To Use This Onion Syrup

This syrup is a pantry workhorse. It's sweet, sharp, and a little fiery, which makes it useful well beyond the spoon.

By the spoonful. Straight from the jar, with a few of the honeyed solids alongside.
Stirred into hot water or tea. Ginger, garlic, and onion in a mug sounds odd until you try it. Add a squeeze of lemon.
Drizzled over food. Try it on roasted carrots, sweet potatoes, or Brussels sprouts, spooned over warm toast with sharp cheese, or stirred into plain yogurt. It's delicious over rice and stir-fried veggies.
Whisked into dressings and marinades. It stands in for honey and a little minced aromatics in one move. Blend the strained solids right in.
Stirred into broth or soup at the end of cooking, for a sweet-savory lift.

It keeps well in the fridge, so it's a good habit to start a jar at the beginning of the fall and make a fresh one when it runs low.

Customize To Your Own Taste

This syrup is so adaptable that writing out a recipe for it feels a little silly. For simplicity's sake, the recipe below uses equal parts onion, garlic, and ginger. Use more ginger and less onion and garlic if you'd like a gentler syrup, or leave an ingredient out entirely. A reader once stirred in a little cayenne and raved about the result, so there's plenty of room to play. Lemon zest, black pepper, and a cinnamon stick are all good additions too.

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How to Make:
Ginger, Garlic, & Onion Honey Syrup

This syrup scales up or down to suit your household. The size of your jar determines the quantities, and the amounts below are for a pint-sized jar.

Makes 1 pint-sized jar.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup onion, any variety, peeled & diced
1/2 cup garlic, peeled and diced
1/2 cup ginger, diced (peeling optional)
~ 1 cup raw honey

Directions:

Add the diced onion, garlic, and ginger to a 16 ounce glass jar and pack it down lightly. You should have about 1 inch of space left at the top. Add or remove a little as needed.
Pour the honey into the jar a little at a time. It can take a minute for the honey to find its way to the bottom, and a wooden chopstick helps by nudging it down and releasing air bubbles. Stop when the honey is about 1/2 inch from the top, then seal with a tight-fitting lid. Use a piece of tape to label and date your syrup.
Allow to sit at room temperature for a day, giving the jar a few turns upside down throughout the day to maximize the infusion.
Then, store your syrup in the refrigerator for up to 2 months. No need to strain out the solids. You can nibble on these when you take your spoonful of syrup. However, if you choose to strain, the onions, ginger, and garlic don't have to go to waste. Blend them into homemade dressings or marinades.

A few helpful tips: Take it with food. Raw onions and garlic on an empty stomach can be rough. You may not notice a thing, but some people get mild (and very temporary) stomach upset or nausea, and neither is pleasant even when short-lived. Instead of taking this first thing in the morning after fasting all night, try it after breakfast and with meals and snacks through the day. Everybody is different. And a cautionary note on raw honey: skip this syrup for children under one year old due to the risk of botulism.

→ TRY THIS

Not up for all that chopping? Our Hibiscus Orange Fire Cider has the same garlic and onion backbone, with turmeric and a bright citrus and hibiscus finish. Take it by the spoon, whisk it into a vinaigrette, or stir it into a bloody mary.

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