Rich and silky salted caramel sauce made even better by the addition of nutty browned butter! This simple recipe requires only 4 simple ingredients, and is perfect drizzled all over your favorite desserts, or eaten by the spoonful.
This is one of my Pantry/Kitchen Basics recipes I know you’ll want to keep on hand! These recipes are great homemade alternatives to store-bought items.
I always thought I wasn’t a huge caramel fan, but as it turns out, I’m just not a fan of the sauce you can buy in the store.
Once I started making caramel sauce at home, I was hooked. I mean, eating it off a spoon type of hooked!
If you’ve never made caramel at home before, I promise, it’s not incredibly difficult… it just takes some patience and faith. And of course, like all skills, you may need to practice a bit before you’re a pro!
There are two main methods for making a homemade caramel sauce; the dry method, and the wet method.
While this recipe has been on the website since 2016, it also happens to be a version of a “dry” method.
There are pros and cons to both methods, and a lot of it comes down to personal preference. I’ll be sharing a “wet” caramel sauce in a couple of days, so you’ll have to give them both a try and see which you like best!
How to make salted caramel sauce?
This is just an overview; the full ingredients and directions are in the recipe card toward the bottom of this post.
- Brown the butter. This is a great kitchen skill to have; just make sure you don’t walk away while it’s cooking. Butter solids can go from beautifully golden to burnt pretty quickly.
- Melt the sugar. Since this is a dry caramel method, there’s no liquid added to the pan; just sugar. Stir often until all the clumps of sugar are melted and it’s a rich golden/amber color.
- Stir in butter. This is best done slowly, whisking as you pour.
- Stir in heavy cream. This is the part where things get really exciting. The mixture will foam up like crazy, but just keep whisking and it’ll settle into a glossy sauce.
- Stir in salt. I like to use sea salt for this.
Helpful Tip!
When making caramel sauce, and browning butter, I highly recommend using a heavy bottomed stainless steel saucepan. The lighter color allows you to be able to see the color of the butter solids and sugar, and the heavy bottom distributes the heat evenly, so you don’t have hot spots and burn the butter or sugar.
Variations of this recipe
- Unsalted – while I love salted caramel, I know not everyone does… so feel free to leave out the salt if you’d like.
- Liquor – try adding a couple of tablespoons of your favorite liquor (bourbon, whiskey, rum, and apple brandy are my favorites!).
- Spices – adding a cinnamon stick or two to the sugar as it melts will add a nice little kick of flavor.
- Chocolate – once the caramel is made, try stirring some chopped chocolate into the sauce!
- Citrus – if you want something a little different, try adding some orange zest to the caramel (at the end)… it adds a subtle, yet yummy flavor.
FAQ’s
You can, but I believe that would technically be more of a butterscotch sauce. Equally delicious, but with a little bit of a different flavor.
There are two main ways we prevent seizing in this recipe. Heating the cream up a bit (so it’s not cold at all), and adding the cream slowly while whisking the entire time it’s added. You also want to make sure you have the pan off the heat when you add the cream.
Making caramel sauce ahead of time
The good news is, homemade caramel sauce has long shelf life!
Feel free to make this caramel completely ahead of time, then cool and refrigerate it in an airtight container.
Freezing
This sauce can also be frozen! Just transferred to cooled caramel to a freezer-safe container and freeze for up to 3-6 months.
Thaw in the refrigerator, warm it back up, and use as desired!
Storage
Caramel sauce should be refrigerated in an airtight container and enjoyed within 2-4 weeks.
Since it’s cold, you may want to microwave it a bit to loosen up the sauce.
Tips for a perfect browned butter caramel sauce!
Making caramel from scratch can be intimidating, but I promise, you can do this. Let’s break it down:
- The pan – I highly recommend using a stainless steel or lighter colored pan for the butter and the caramel. Those processes rely on visual cues, aka the color, and it can be difficult to see that in a darker pan. You also want a saucepan with high sides to prevent bubbling over.
- The butter – 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.
- The sugar – at first it will look like nothing is happening when the sugar is cooking. You may start to question whether you’re doing it right (you are), but then you’ll start to see small wet clumps that gradually become wetter and wetter.
- The heat – it takes a bit of time for the sugar to be completely melted and liquid, so don’t be afraid to adjust the heat on your burner as needed. If you notice it getting super dark before things are mostly dissolved, turn the heat down and pull the pan off the heat for a minute, then add it back to the low heat.
- The patience – I know it’s hard to wait, because you want to move ahead and have a great caramel sauce, but don’t skip waiting for the sugar to completely melt though… you want the sauce to be nice and smooth, not grainy.
- The bubbling – when you add the heavy cream, the caramel will foam and bubble up like some crazy science experiment gone horribly wrong… but don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that! That’s why you need a saucepan with high sides – you don’t want that caramel sauce bubbling over on your stovetop.
- The clump/seize – if you happen to have some clumps of hard caramel, don’t panic. Most of the time, that can be fixed by whisking steadily over a low heat, and it’ll melt away into a rich sauce.
- The lumps – occasionally, especially if you’re new to making caramel, there can be some small, hard lumps of sugar that just won’t melt. You can pour the caramel sauce through a strainer or mesh sieve to remove those, or if they don’t bother you, leave them in.
- The persistence – making homemade caramel sauce can take some time to perfect, even for professional pastry chefs, so don’t worry if it isn’t perfect the very first time you try. Practice makes perfect, and it means you get to have even more caramel sauce 😉
Recipes to Serve with Salted Caramel Sauce:
My Favorite Stainless Saucepan!
I know this is an expensive brand, but I wanted to be honest with you about the pan I use to make caramel, and this All-Clad pan is it. You can certainly use any brand of saucepan you’d like, just make sure it has a heavy bottom (look for reviews mentioning even heat distribution) and high sides.
Did you make this? Be sure to leave a review below and tag me @the_chunky_chef on Facebook and Instagram!
Ingredients
- 6 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup heavy cream + 2-3 Tbsp warmed up, or at the very least, room temperature
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
Instructions
Prepare
- 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.
Brown the butter
- Add butter to saucepan and heat on MED-LOW.
- The butter will melt, foam up, then the foam will start to go away. Whisk or swirl the pan frequently as it cooks.
- 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, immediately remove pan from the heat.
- Pour butter into small bowl and set aside to cool.
- Wash out and dry the saucepan.
Melt the sugar
- Add sugar to the saucepan and heat over MED-LOW heat, and stir often with a rubber spatula.
- After several minutes, the sugar will start to melt into a whiteish, then light brown liquid and will look clumpy. More and more clumps will appear, then they will start to melt into a brown liquid. Remember, stir often, breaking up clumps if needed.
- Make sure all the clumps of sugar have melted before moving on to the next step.
Make the caramel sauce
- Pour the browned butter in slowly, whisking as you pour.
- 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 little bit, stir in the salt.
Serve
- Use right away or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2-4 weeks.
Want to save this recipe for later? Click the heart in the bottom right corner to save to your own recipe box!
Chef Tips
- Recipe makes approximately 1.5 cups, which I’ve estimated should serve around 12 (with the serving size being about 2 Tbsp). Of course, you can portion it into as many servings as you’d like.
- 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.
- If you notice the sugar starting to burn and get very dark while the sugar is still starting to melt, pull the pan off the heat for a minute while stirring. Turn down the heat and continue.
- 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.
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.
Jody says
I made this twice. Both times when I added the cream, it globbed into a big clump that I couldn’t get creamy. What did I do wrong?
The Chunky Chef says
I’ve never had that problem before… my advice would be to try a few things and see if they help. Instead of adding the cream when the burner is on low, take it off the heat completely. Try using room temperature cream, and adding it very slowly as you whisk constantly.
Sarah Wyman says
Do I keep whisking the entire time or stop between steps 6 and 7. It wasn’t quite clear to me. Can’t wait to try it!!!
The Chunky Chef says
Not necessarily continuously, but often 🙂
Oriane says
Hi ! Thank you for this amazing recipe! I was making an invisible apple cake (buzzfeedJapan recipe which i highly recommend) and they had a microwaved caramel sauce which i didn’t trust. I found yours instead and nailed it for my evening dinner with friends i hadn’t seen in a long time…
I am very glad it was no fail, so thank you for writing this recipe.
I did make a mix of normal salt and kosher salt to add to the caramel and it was perfect! And it did take almost one whole hour to get it all cooked as you were describing it…But no regrets people loved it !
Have a good day !
Michael says
This stuff was amazing. Just a couple notes
1. I made a double batch and put the caramel in a mason jar and its lasted almost over month in my refrigerator. Even reheating several times in the microwave. My guess is that the sugar content is too high to allow bacterial growth, kinda like honey. But with the cream in it, i would still leave in the fridge.
2. When melting the sugar, i always add just a couple drops (just drops) of water to the sugar. It seems to help it melt faster.
Rachel says
This recipe looks genius level amazingly YUM. Do you think this would be thick enough to sandwich between cookies?
The Chunky Chef says
It’s our absolute favorite caramel of all time! I don’t think it would be thick enough for that… but I’ve made these whoopie pies with the browned butter maple frosting and drizzled some of this caramel over the frosting before topping with the other cookie, and it’s heaven!
Rachel says
I can’t believe you just said whoopie pie because that is EXACTLY what I wanted to use this on. That is absolutely perfect. Thank you!!!
Bird says
I love all things brown butter! I make caramel like this, but never thought to brown the butter! Doh! 🙂 Going to have to try this! Thank you!
Marcia says
Can you can it for gifts?
The Chunky Chef says
I haven’t tested it, but I don’t see why not 🙂
Shirley says
To give as gifts it can’t always be refrigerated all the time. Will that be ok? It’s out of this word!
Lisa says
Wow .. just wow !! I made this with your apple crisp and it was pure heaven . Thank you so much for sharing. You should do a Tik Tok video with this recipe 😊
Jill Shindelman says
The ingredient list for this recipe includes heavy cream, but nowhere in the procedure does it say when to add the cream to the rest of the mixture.
The Chunky Chef says
Step 10 says when to add the cream…
Paula Rudser-Stolba says
OMG this was fabulous! My first time making homemade Carmel and I nailed it. The directions were very descriptive and encouraging. Thank you, I told my husband I am going to have to keep making this and always have a jar of it in hand.
Ann Miya says
I made this recipe and it’s delicious! Thank you! Can you tell me I can freeze the leftover sauce?
The Chunky Chef says
Hi Ann 🙂 I’m so glad you loved it!! Just pour the cooled leftover sauce into a non-glass container and freeze for up to 3 months. To defrost, refrigerate overnight, then warm gently before using.
Richard says
Looks yummy. I’m Diabetic, will this recipe work with Splenda?
The Chunky Chef says
Hi Richard 🙂 I’ve never made this with anything other than the ingredients listed, so I really can’t say for sure. I’m not sure if Splenda will caramelize the way sugar does… but if you try it, I’d love to know how it turns out!
Yar | OfRecipes says
I love making my own homemade salted caramel sauce! Never thought of browning the butter before, though!
Natasha says
This looks soo delicious, Amanda! There’s nothing quite like that buttery homemade caramel scent and taste 🙂
The Chunky Chef says
Thanks so much Natasha!! 🙂
eat good 4 life says
Literally liquid gold. I would eat the entire jar all by myself!
The Chunky Chef says
Thanks Miryam!! Ohhh I’ve pretty much eaten an entire jar myself before… it’s soooo easy to do 🙂
Joanie @ ZagLeft says
Homemade caramel sauce is just the best! I’ve never tried it with browned butter, I’ll bet it’s heavenly!
The Chunky Chef says
Thanks Joanie!! I’m already on my third batch… it’s so addictive!
Renee - Kudos Kitchen says
I would drizzle your browned butter salted caramel sauce straight into my mouth! There, I said it 😉
Dee says
I’m not a huge fan of caramel, but salted caramel is a whole ‘nother story — yum!
The Chunky Chef says
Ohhhh yes, whoever decided to add salt to caramel is my hero 🙂
Krista says
I can think of so many ways to use this!
The Chunky Chef says
It’s such a great sauce for just about every kind of dessert or fruit 🙂
Laura at I Heart Naptime says
yes! store bought “caramel” is just icky. homemade is the only way to go.
i have not tried your technique before with the brown butter, cannot wait to try this! will be do delicious with apples!
The Chunky Chef says
Thanks so much Laura!! 🙂
Kacey @ The Cookie Writer says
WHAT?! I cannot believe you thought you did not like caramel sauce, lol. I always joke that I am made of caramel sauce because I love butter, sugar, and cream! I love the idea of a brown butter sauce! This is totally happening!
The Chunky Chef says
I know right?? I’m so weird lol 🙂 I hope you love it!!