Once you try homemade salted caramel sauce, you won’t ever want store bought again! Â 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. Â This is one sauce you’ll be putting on absolutely EVERYTHING!
I have a little secret you guys. Â Some of you may gasp a little, (okay maybe not, but play along)… but I don’t really like caramel. Â ** awkward pause ** …I know right?! Â Well at least I THOUGHT I didn’t like caramel. Â It turns out, I just didn’t like the colored corn syrup sold in jars labeled “caramel sauce” from the grocery store. Â I made some homemade salted caramel sauce and was BLOWN away. Â I mean, I think it’s true love you guys.
I literally couldn’t stop eating it. Â 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. Â Basically the food was irrelevant, it was just a caramel delivery device lol. Â 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). Â 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. Â 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 fear not!
- 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. Â 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
- 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.
- Lower heat to LOW and add the cream, while whisking continuously.
- Mixture may foam and bubble up like crazy, but keep whisking (take the pan up off the heat if you need to).
- The bubbling will go down and become a glossy sauce.
- Simmer for 1-3 minutes on MED-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.
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Chef Tips
Porcelana says
I’m sure it’s delicious but I didn’t have enough patience to make it correctly thus a failure. I thought I would but old habits are hard to break!
Jennifer Wiebe says
So easy and so delicious.
Wanda Hawkins says
Question is it required to use non salted butter.
The Chunky Chef says
No, you can use salted, you’ll just want to be careful how much salt you add at the end 🙂
Sherrie says
I can’t wait to make this homemade Carmel sauce! If it turns out as well as I think it will, I’m gifting small jars of it for the holidays.
Makismom says
So, I’m a disaster at cooking and need to follow instructions to the tiniest detail…. Your recipe lists sea salt as an ingredient, but never tells me what to do with it! Presumably it gets sprinkled on the top, once it’s in the jar, per the photo?
The Chunky Chef says
You add it in step 15 🙂
Sarah says
This is the first time I’ve made caramel that didn’t come out grainy! This is SO GOOD and I’m so thankful for your tips because I wanted to give up at least three times. haha. I substituted half n half because that’s what I had and am still very pleased with the result. Can’t wait to put this in my coffee tomorrow!
Gabriele says
First try at the recipe and it turned out perfect! Thanks! My question ( as I am relatively new to trying new things and NOT a chef! …) can this recipe be used to make hard candies somehow? Or because of the butter, it would stay in fluid form?
The Chunky Chef says
So happy you enjoyed the recipe! However, I’ve only tested this recipe as written. So without testing and retesting it myself, I can’t say for certain if they would work as hard candies, or what would need to be altered to make it work.
Snowflake23 says
How do you keep it from hardening so I can actually use it?
Amanda says
Hardening in the refrigerator after you’ve stored it?
Kara says
Can recipe be doubled? Tripled even?
Kara says
Can recipe be doubled or tripled?
Amanda says
Sure thing 🙂 Just make sure you double or triple all the ingredients.
Kara says
Great! Thank you.
Tessa says
Amazingly delicious! Have thought about making a big batch of it to give away as Christmas gifts. The family loves it – goes great with apple crisp, or dipping apples, etc. Very easy to make.
Susan says
Can this be canned for gifts. Either water bath or pressure cooker. Would love to try for me gift basket but I need a shelf life. Have you tried?
Amanda says
Hi Susan 🙂 I’m not exactly sure if this recipe could be canned, as I’m not super familiar with the canning process and would hate to give you the wrong advice.
Briana says
So delicious! I made exactly what you wrote. I’ll never go back! Ha
Sarah says
Really good! I’ve made traditional caramel before and it wasn’t my favorite but the brown butter is a great addition! The caramel is darker then I prefer though, so next time I’m going to try and put a few drops of water in it to get it to melt a bit faster so that it hopefully doesn’t get as dark. Or maybe try melting it on a lower heat.. not sure but I will experiment with it!
Also made your Apple crisp tonight, going to try it tomorrow! Smells delicious though, its gonna be hard not to sample it!
Sarah says
I tried one more time, this time I pulled the butter off before it made solid chunks, just brown silt at the bottom and whisked it constantly.
I cooked the caramel the same way, but this time lowered the heat to med low. I also combined the milk in the butter and added a bit if vanilla
Came out perfect this time, just needed a little trial and error!
Wendy says
I wonder if your tweak here might help me. After I added the butter, I stepped away to grab the cream and when I added the cream, the sugar and butter had formed a big clump and stuck to the whisk. I had to turn the heat way up to dissolve the clump.