Salted Caramel Sauce (Foolproof Recipe)

4.84 from 6 votes

Rich and silky salted caramel sauce made easily on your stovetop!

Prep Time5

Cook Time20

Total Time25

Course: Basics, Dessert, Sauce

Cuisine: American

Keyword: homemade caramel

Servings: servings

Calories: 2618kcal

You'll need a high-sided heavy bottomed saucepan for this recipe. Preferably one that is stainless or light in color, so you can use visual cues (the color) to determine doneness of the butter and caramel.

Add sugar to saucepan, then pour in the water, and gently stir to combine, making sure not to get sugar on the sides of the pot. If sugar does get on the sides of the pot, dip a paper towel in water and wash off the sugar.
Pour in the corn syrup, then heat the pot over MED HIGH heat. This is important - do not stir the sugar mixture. Let it come to a boil, and as it boils, it will start to change color, from clear, to the color of apple juice, to lightly golden, to amber, and deeper amber. You can gently swirl the pot if necessary, but don’t stir. Stirring the mixture can cause sugar to cook on the sides of the pot and this will make your caramel sauce grainy.
Once the sugar mixture is a deep amber color, turn off the burner, remove the pot from the heat and move to a different (cold) burner.

Slowly and carefully pour the heavy cream into the sugar mixture, whisking quickly as you pour. The caramel will bubble vigorously once the cream hits the sugar mixture, so make sure you're whisking constantly, as this will tame the bubbling down.
Stir in the butter, a cube at a time, then stir in vanilla and salt.

Let the sauce cool a bit and either serve immediately, or cool completely to room temperature and store for up to 2-4 weeks in the refrigerator.

Recipe makes approximately 2.5 - 3 cups, which you can portion into as many servings as you’d like.
The small amount of corn syrup is added to help prevent crystallization (which can lead to a grainy sauce), but you can omit it if you'd like. I would add some extra water to replace it.
As always, all stove burners will heat differently, and all pans will distribute heat differently. Please use your best judgement and visual cues to decide what's best.
Warming up the cream is essential to making sure the caramel sauce doesn't clump into a huge lump on the end of your whisk.
To further prevent crystallization, you can use a wet pastry brush to wash down the sides if you see any crystals forming (just be careful of any bristles falling off into the caramel).