Once you try homemade salted caramel sauce, you won’t ever want store bought again! The browned butter gives this sauce an amazingly deep flavor!
Smooth, dreamy, homemade salted caramel sauce is flecked with bits of browned butter for an incredibly deep and nutty flavor. This is one sauce you’ll be putting on absolutely EVERYTHING!
I have a little secret you guys. Some of you may gasp a little, (okay maybe not, but play along)… but I don’t really like caramel. ** awkward pause ** …I know right?! Well at least I THOUGHT I didn’t like caramel. It turns out, I just didn’t like the colored corn syrup sold in jars labeled “caramel sauce” from the grocery store. I made some homemade salted caramel sauce and was BLOWN away. I mean, I think it’s true love you guys.
I literally couldn’t stop eating it. It started off all innocently with a little taste off the spoon, then quickly spiraled into a mad search through the house for things I could put this caramel sauce on. Basically the food was irrelevant, it was just a caramel delivery device lol. I’ve eaten SO many apples (honeycrisp are my favorite), dipped in this sauce… all under the guise of feeling good about myself for eating more fruit (nevermind that it’s coated in a mixture of butter, cream and sugar). Isn’t it funny how our minds work?
If you’ve heard that making homemade salted caramel sauce is complex or difficult, don’t worry… it just takes a little bit of patience and faith, but certainly isn’t hard or too time consuming at all!
Patience and faith my friends… and here’s why.
PATIENCE:
- Browning butter can be a little bit of a longer process, and you can’t really walk away and let it do it’s thing… it needs some babysitting. If you’ve never browned butter before this is a great tutorial.
- When starting the caramel process, you have to cook down sugar in a pan (with no liquid), which is a whole lot of “omg nothing is happening… maybe I’m doing it wrong… how can it take this long to melt sugar?!” to, “oh wait, there it goes”
- Once the sugar starts to melt, it looks like clumps of slightly wet sand, then gradually becomes wetter and wetter, but it does take a while before allllll the sugar clumps are completely dissolved.
- Don’t skip the waiting for them to dissolve though… you want the sauce to be nice and smooth, not grainy.
FAITH:
- Once you add the cream, the sauce will foam and bubble up like some horrible science experiment gone horribly wrong… but don’t worry!
- Just keep whisking, and take the pan off the heat for a minute if you need to.
- Even if the caramel clumps up on the whisk a bit, just keep whisking (said in my best Dory voice), and it’ll melt off.
- Before long, you’ll have a smooth, rich, glossy sauce.
There are several ways to make caramel sauce, but this is my favorite way. If you prefer a different way, just incorporate the browned butter into your recipe… trust me, you won’t regret it!
My favorites to drizzle with this salted caramel sauce (or dip in it):
This sauce would also be a fantastic gift to give away during the holidays!
Enjoy!
Did you make this? Be sure to leave a review below and tag me @the_chunky_chef on Facebook and Instagram!
Ingredients
- 6 Tbsp butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup heavy cream + 2-3 Tbsp at room temperature or warmed
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
Instructions
- Add butter to small sauce pan and heat on MED-LOW.
- Butter will melt, then foam up, then the foam will start to go away. Whisk or swirl the pan frequently.
- Brown flecks (the butter solids) will start to form at the bottom. Once they’re golden brown (not dark brown or black), and the butter smells nutty, remove pan from the heat.
- Pour butter into small bowl and set aside to cool.
- Wash pan, then add in sugar.
- Heat over MED heat, and stir often with a rubber spatula.
- After several minutes, the sugar will start to melt into brown liquid and will look clumpy. More and more clumps will appear, then they will start to melt into the brown liquid.
- Make sure all the clumps of sugar have dissolved into the liquid before moving on to the next step.
- Whisk in cooled browned butter.
- Turn off the burner and remove pan from heat. Add the cream slowly, while whisking continuously.
- It will foam and bubble up like crazy, but keep whisking and it will settle down.
- The bubbling will go down and become a glossy sauce.
- Turn the burner back on to simmer for 1-3 minutes on LOW heat, whisking often.
- Sauce will thicken as it cools, so if it looks thin, just give it time to cool some.
- Once it cools for a bit, stir in the salt.
- Use right away or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a week or so.
Want to save this recipe for later? Click the heart in the bottom right corner to save to your own recipe box!
Chef Tips
- Sauce can be frozen for several months, but make sure to use a NON glass container (since sauce can expand while freezing and break the glass).
- Some readers have had trouble with the caramel seizing up on them, so I’ve very slightly altered the recipe based on the feedback. In case you preferred it the other way, the only thing I changed was to take the pan OFF the heat before adding the cream, and to make sure the cream is room temperature. So for the old way, keep the pan on LOW when adding the cream, and I hadn’t specified a temp for the cream.
Nutrition Disclaimer
The Chunky Chef is not a dietician or nutritionist, and any nutritional information shared is an estimate. If calorie count and other nutritional values are important to you, we recommend running the ingredients through whichever online nutritional calculator you prefer. Calories can vary quite a bit depending on which brands were used.
Angel says
Outstanding! I’ve never made caramel before, and everyone went CRAZY for this! The apple crisp with the caramel and a scoop of vanilla ice cream is now my family’s absolute favorite!
Tammy says
This is absolutely delicious! I made it to drizzle over your apple crisp recipe the first time. My family loved it and ask me to make it all the time now. What I learned was to be patient and take your time stirring the sauce. The first time it was slightly grainy, so now I stir until I am sure it is absolutely smooth, (taste test for texture) and it is perfect. Thank you so much for this yummy recipe!
Christine says
When I added the cream, the butter and sugar solidified into a hard clump. What happened?
The Chunky Chef says
Oh no 🙁 My first thought is that maybe the heat was still up too high, did you lower it all the way down to low? You also have to continuously whisk as you’re adding the cream, otherwise it can clump up on you. I’m testing an easier method for making caramel sauce, so stay tuned!
Andi says
It also stuck with me keeping a close eye- do not fret keep mixing it will smooth out and be perfect! Great recipe! I used whole milk because I didn’t have cream it’s delicious!!
Margaret Satchwell says
Hi there. I live in Nicaragua and we do not have heavy cream here. It’s lighter than light and you can rarely make it whip well. Any other ideas for the cream bit. Would it work with skinny cream. Or maybe mascarpone which we do have here as an import from USA ? Help please. Love salted caramel sauce and would love to
Make some. Help please
The Chunky Chef says
Hello! Hmm, I’m not familiar with the types of creams you might have in Nicaragua, so I can’t speak with any certainty, but I found this article that talks about different types of cream. I’m guessing your skinny cream is probably similar to light or single cream, in which case I think that would work 🙂 https://whatscookingamerica.net/sauces_condiments/creamdefinitions.htm
Mari Rose says
Everyone in my household loved it, topped with the caramel sauce! Delizioso! Thank you for sharing the recipes.
Jon W Urwiler says
I put this sauce over ice cream and your Apple crisp receipe.
Outstanding ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Noni says
Delish!!!!