Salted Caramel Sauce
Caramel heaven this recipe is! If you like the taste of perfectly caramelized sugar with a touch of salt, this recipe is for you! And if you have never tried salted caramel before, it is the time to do so!
The recipe for this salted caramel sauce is quite simple. What I find most difficult, especially if you are a beginner, is working with hot sugar. So here are a few things to consider before making this recipe:
- Safety first, always! Wear clothes that cover you arms and legs and wear an apron as well if you have one.
- Don’t let the kids run through the kitchen while making this.
- Do not use pans that have removable handles that can come loose!
- Always have on hand a first aid kit!
- Don’t caramelize sugar if you are not feeling well and cannot commit to it 100%. Keep in mind that we are working with temperatures that can reach as high as 190C!
The method I used for the making of this sauce is called dry caramel which means simply placing the sugar in a hot pan to melt it and caramelize it. The other method possible would be wet caramel which means adding water over the sugar, boiling it until the water evaporates and then caramelizing the leftover liquid sugar to your desired color. Both methods can be used in this recipe, but since it is not a large quantity of sugar, I find dry caramel quicker to put into practice. But on larger quantities of sugar, I do prefer the wet method even though it takes longer – it just produces better results in terms of color and flavor since you can control the temperature better.
Key points in this recipe:
- the color of the caramel – I find it better to let my caramel become a tad darker than needed simply because I will add a large quantity of cream and butter to it and it will dillute the taste quite a lot. But be careful as the line between perfectly caramelized and burnt is really thin and it may take just a few seconds to get an unusable batch of caramel.
- heating up the cream – the reason we are keeping the cream hot is to stop it from going through a temperature shock once it comes in contact with the extremely hot sugar. The shock may split the cream and make the sauce unusable. So always keep the cream as hot as possible, but not boiling!
- blending in the butter – this sauce is basically and emulsion of fat and water with a delicious caramel taste so blending in the butter is crucial to the final silky texture! I prefer to use a hand blender, more specifically my Bamix, because I find it to yield the best results!
- adding the salt – this step is not optional I would say! Without salt, the caramel would be so sweet that you couldn’t eat it. The addition of salt balances the sweetness so well! You can use regular salt instead of fleur de sel, but also other types of salt like smoked salt which would yield a smoky, sweet and salty caramel sauce.
Salted Caramel Sauce
Ingredients
- 180 g white granulated sugar
- 30 g liquid glucose syrup
- 300 g heavy cream
- 70 g butter
- 2 g fleur de sel or sea-salt
Instructions
- Place the heavy cream in a pot and bring it to the boiling pot. Keep aside (hot).
- Combine the sugar and glucose in another pot and place on medium heat.
- Heat the sugar up until it has a dark golden, amber color. You may need to mix in it with a heatproof spatula to ensure even caramelization. I find medium heat to work best, but it depends on your cooking machine – you may have to juggle between low and medium or high heat.
- Once the sugar has the color you want, take is aside and slowly pour in the hot cream, mixing as you pour. Watch out for those hot steams as they can burn as well!
- Place the pot back on medium heat and cook the sauce until it reaches 110C.
- Take aside and transfer in a jug. Add the butter and fleur de sel and blend 1-2 minutes with a hand blender to ensure proper emulsification.
- Transfer in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
- Refrigerate for 8 hours.
Equipment
- Hand blender (Bamix)
- Cooking stove
- Cooking pots
- Silicone spatula
- Kitchen scale
- Bowls
- Cooking thermometer
