Bourbon Caramel Sauce Recipe Recipe - Rachel Cooks® (2024)

FAQs

Why do you put butter in caramel sauce? ›

Delicate sauces such as melted chocolate, hollandaise, and homemade caramel shouldn't be exposed to direct heat, so they need to be made in a double boiler that is designed to slowly and carefully heat what's inside.

How to Fix a Seized Caramel Sauce. Crystallized caramel sauce can usually be rescued! Just melt the chunks of hardened caramel back into the sauce over a very low heat, then strain with a fine mesh strainer before using.

To make Dark Caramel Sauce repeat the entire process, removing your sugar from the heat when its a richer amber color. If your dark caramel sauce is too bitter, simply add more cream and taste.

Yes, you can make a caramel sauce without butter, but you have to add either water or... something else. If you use water, you'll get a pure caramel syrup that looks like honey.

If you have added too much butter to your caramel sauce, you may find that it is too oily or it might even begin to separate. To fix this, add 1 tablespoon of either water or milk and stir while cooking over medium heat. Adding 1-2 Tbsp of a simple cornstarch slurry may fix the problem, as well.

To thicken a caramel sauce, use one tablespoon of cornstarch or tapioca starch (sometimes known as tapioca flour) and one tablespoon of water per cup of caramel. Then simmer the caramel, stirring it constantly with a wooden spoon until it becomes thick.

Overheating the mixture

Follow the recipe carefully, and never melt your caramel on your stove's highest setting—it will cause the caramel to scorch and taste burnt. Once it gets a burnt or bitter flavor, it can't be saved.

The water evaporates, leaving sugar crystals behind. If even one sugar crystal falls back into the pan of cooking caramel, it starts a chain reaction of sugar crystals and the entire pan will harden. The result? Gross, grainy caramel that is unusable in most recipes.

This can happen if sugar crystals form on the sides of the saucepan or if the sugar syrup is mixed too much while cooking. Adjust the Heat: If the caramel cooked at a high heat, causing it to crystallize or burn, lower the heat for future batches.

Why does my caramel sauce taste bitter? ›

The liquefied sugar is then cooked, without stirring, until it darkens in color, taking on additional flavor notes the longer it remains on the heat. You want to hit the sweet spot here: If the caramel is too light, it won't have much flavor, but if it gets too dark, it will taste burnt and bitter.

Add more sugar to the sauce.

Most caramel sauces are made by caramelizing sugar and adding milk and a little salt. If you increase the amount of sugar in the recipe you'll end up with a thicker caramel. Try increasing the sugar by about 1/3.

Once the sugar is melted, the liquid will turn a golden color. However, to caramelize it, you want that shade to darken, so you need to keep it on the heat for around another six to eight minutes. Be aware that if you've used brown sugar, the liquid will darken faster than if you've used white sugar.

The main ingredient in caramel is sugar. However, depending on the recipe you use, you may have to incorporate butter, heavy cream, water, or corn syrup as additional ingredients. High-quality, real caramel is always made with three basic ingredients and those are sugar, heavy cream, and butter.

The addition of butter really rounds out the flavor of the sauce and helps to temper the acidity. It also gives the sauce a nice sheen, which is a fun bonus.

Because there is so much fat in the sauce, you don't need to cook the onions to rid them of acidic bite. Butter also acts as an emulsifier giving you a thick, velvety sauce without adding texture that is associated with olive oil.

Butter's magic arises from its uniqueness, not only in its history and renowned flavor but in its composition. Butter contains a relatively large amount of water, and it's the water that gives butter its unfatlike properties, such as being able to bring a sauce together and frothing up when heated in a saute pan.