Homemade Salted Caramel Sauce
This delicious Homemade Salted Caramel recipe uses only 4 ingredients, most of which you may already have at home! This caramel sauce is absolutely outstanding and tastes good on almost anything, like ice cream, apple pie bars, a spoon (you get the idea).
All you need is a little patience and a touch of finesse and you’ve got yourself the perfect sweet and salty sauce!
Why we love this Homemade Salted Caramel
Unlike store-bought caramel sauce, this one isn’t cloyingly sweet. Plus, it doesn’t have any hard-to-pronounce ingredients in it. It’s simple and made from things you likely already have in your pantry and fridge.
This caramel sauce is layered with flavor, super rich, creamy, and totally balanced. The sweet and salty flavors complement each other beautifully.
Ingredients
To make this homemade salted caramel, you only need 4 simple ingredients:
- Granulated sugar – the flavor of this sauce comes from the caramelization of regular granulated sugar. It creates a super rich and deep flavor.
- Butter – use your favorite butter here, whether that’s salted, unsalted, European, or not. Just be sure it’s room temperature. Cold butter will cause the caramel sauce to seize and separate more easily. If you do use unsalted butter, you may want to add a touch more salt to the caramel at the end to make sure it has a slightly salted flavor. Otherwise, it’s just caramel sauce, not salted caramel sauce!
- Heavy cream – one of our biggest tips for making this homemade salted caramel sauce is to use warm cream. This will help it mix in more smoothly with the caramelized sugar. Using cold cream will cause the sauce to split and it’ll be harder to bring it together in the end.
- Salt – we use fine sea salt in this recipe. If you’d rather use larger flaky salt like Maldon, you can use a little more of that in volume.
How to make this Homemade Caramel Sauce
While the ingredients are simple, there are two very important things to keep in mind when making homemade caramel:
- You must be patient at first. The sugar takes a little while to melt, and during that time, you should do your best to leave it mostly alone.
- You have to use room temperature butter and warm cream. If you just pulled them out of the refrigerator right before adding them to the caramelized sugar, the sugar will seize up and you’ll have a hard time getting it to come together in a smooth, homogenous sauce. It’s possible to fix it (just keep stirring and alternating between taking the pot off the heat and putting it back on while stirring), but it’ll take some extra elbow grease and time.
To make the caramel, first heat the sugar in a heavy bottomed saucepan set over medium-low heat. When it starts to melt around the edges, use a silicone spatula to pull it away from the edges of the pot and toward the center. Move the sugar carefully around so that more of it can come into contact with the heat from the pot and melt.
While it melts, it’ll start to caramelize. Once it’s fully melted and amber in color, whisk in the room temperature butter. If the caramel separates at this time, take the pot off the heat and keep whisking the caramel until it comes back together, then return it to the heat.
Slowly pour in the warm cream and whisk it into the caramel. Bring the caramel to a low boil for a minute or two, then turn off the heat and add the salt.
The homemade caramel sauce will be thin while it is hot, but it will thicken up as it cools. Store it in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. To make it pourable again after it has chilled, heat it in the microwave for about 30 to 45 seconds, stirring halfway through.
Homemade Salted Caramel
Ingredients
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 6 tbsp butter, room temperature and cut into pieces
- ½ cup heavy cream, warmed
- ½ tsp sea salt
Instructions
- Heat the sugar in a pot set over medium low heat.
- When it starts to melt around the edges, use a spatula to pull it away from the sides of the pot and toward the center.
- Once fully melted and amber in color, whisk in the butter. If the caramel separates, take it off the heat and keep whisking until it comes back together, then return it to low heat.
- Slowly pour in the cream and whisk. Bring to a low boil, then turn off the heat, and add salt. Store in the fridge until ready to eat (serve warmed up).
