Bobby Flay’s Salted Caramel Sauce Recipe (2024)

I make this sauce all the time. Three modifications: one I don't generally use butter, as it tends to push the flavor more toward butterscotch. Two: I generally simmer a sliced vanilla pod in the cream. It gives the sauce much more depth of flavor (you can also whisk in a bit of bourbon vanilla extract toward the end if you're in a hurry). Three: I generally use fine-grain sea salt, as kosher salt melts slowly and makes it hard to gauge how salty the eventual sauce will be. Cheers!

How long will this keep in the refrigerator?

I hate sounding like an idiot, but it comes naturally. Shouldn't Water be listed as an ingredient?

I tried it two ways. First time, I followed the recipe exactly. It came out great. Second time, I tried a slightly quicker version. I warmed the cream, butter, and salt together, and then whisked this mixture into the caramel all at once while simmering (rather than whisking in the butter and then the salt later, off heat). Second time came out just as great as the first. Take your choice -- delicious either way.

What a poorly written recipe. The sugar will never get to amber, caramel stage at medium heat in 10-12 minutes. If you are a beginner in the world of caramel, you'll wonder what's wrong, why is it not turning amber? Once sugar dissolves, turn temp HIGH and monitor until it's around 350. The wole process take another 5-10 minutes! THEN stir in the cream. It'll bubble like crazy, but be cool. Stir and stir, then take off heat and add butter and salt.

Would you please tell us how long it can be stored in the fridge? Is it OK to make it ahead and reheat it when needed?

Salted butter has a lot of water in it. Flat cookies? Use unsalted butter. You can control the salt.

No one provided an answer as to how long this would keep in the refrigerator. A similar recipe provides that it keeps up to three days unrefrigerated and up to three months refrigerated. I can't imagine this would be different.

The recipe calls for too little cream. Better ratio is one cup heavy cream for every cup of granulated sugar.

Honestly, I always use regular salted butter and have never had a problem with over-salting a recipe. Some salt generally intensifies flavors, and the amount in salted butter is unlikely to be excessive, in most cases.

Mine turned hard as soon as it hit the ice cream. Almost impossible to chew. I'm thinking "medium high" heat should be more medium than high?

This looks like something I could make and put in jars for presents, much like jelly. What would happy if I preserved jars of caramel sauce the same way, i.e. put it in sterile jars and heat-processed it? (Actually, I don't heat-process my jelly, I just turn the sterile jars with hot jelly over for a few minutes so that the entire jar is in contact with boiling jelly. I never get mold.) Would the caramel suffer from the heating process? Hmmm, maybe I will have to experiment.

I LOVE CARAMEL! I have been making this for years. It goes good on anything, and keeps well refrigerated.

If you mean hot water bath canning, I would not recommend it. There is no acid in the sauce and it contains dairy, so that method would not be sufficient for preserving the sauce. If I was going to give some as gifts, I would keep the jars of sauce refrigerated and tell the recipients to do the same. Lucky them!

So ridiculously good it was hard to save for dessert. I added a few more tablespoons of butter and more salt. Note: while the sugar is boiling it looks as if it's going to become candy but once you put the creme in it all starts to make sense. Be careful when you add the creme. I turned off the flame at the end, then back on, because it was all hot enough to cook without.

Instructions were clear and easy to follow, but my caramel turned into a gritty sludge once cooled. I intended to use it as a dip for sliced apples into, but that was impossible. Flavor was good, so I don't know where I went wrong, if I did go wrong (judging by notes, a lot of people had this issue). In any case, this is not a sauce, it is more like a sticky jam. I need to try other recipes.

Worked prerfectly! Great recipe. I added double the butter to make it a little more like caramel sauce.

With apple season in full swing, I wanted some caramel sauce to dip apple slices into. I’ve made a lot of recipes but never homemade caramel, and this one looked pretty easy. And it was easy. But wow, did it brown quickly at the end! So mine looks more like chocolate sauce but it tastes great. I’ll pull it off the heat a little faster next time.

I wanted a sundae at midnight & didn’t have the time to make as directed. Doing this for 1 I made abt a 3rd of the recipe, used cold water, cold cream, and only heated the sugar & water for abt 5 mins. I kinda wanted chocolate caramel so I thru in some extra dark chocolate chips. This is delicious. I’m sure the texture would be different if I followed the recipe exactly, but, you really can’t go wrong here!

easy, but not great. a bit grainy for me

I prepared the caramel sauce today, as it is in the recipe. I used salted butter and added the butter to the caramel off-heat. The sauce is fantastic! By the way, it can keep for 2 weeks in the fridge. When reheating, you can add a little cream of milk, if too thick.

It’s a nice caramel sauce, but doesn’t really work as a topping for ice cream. As “pumpkin“ noted, it turns brittle as soon as it hits the frozen stuff. Might still be good on cake or fruit or something else… But I need a different recipe for an ice cream topping.

Wow. Really, really easy. I doubled the recipe and it came out perfectly. I was surprised how much darker the caramel got AFTER I added the heavy cream. But while it's dark it wasn't at all burnt. Bobby Flay says warm the cream in a saucepan, and I actually heated it in a double boiler. Took it off when it steamed...so maybe that was why the caramel kept darkening. But it's really good and rich. I eyeballed all the amounts and brushed down the sides of the saucepan

I agree that this will NOT get to a deep amber color and be successful - my first try was deep color and burned the sugar and the warm cream. Second attempt just went to golden drown in color and worked well.

I cooked a version that added Vanilla, but at what step in the process is added? I want the alcohol to evaporate but not lose the flavor.

Hear! Hear! Sharon - I used to quirk a whaaaa? brow watching GBBS contestants measuring ingredients. Now I’m irritated when weights are not provided. As for this recipe - super easy and consistent - thanks, Bobby and Sam!

Delicious! I wish all NYT recipes used both weight and measures. In this case Bobbly Flay should also have included temperature. I used 200g sugar and cooked to 300F. Please consider adding weights of ingredients for accuracy. Once a cook switches to weights, they never want to go back.

Use 2 liter sauce pan (middle sized) and turn to medium heat for 10-11 minutes, makes a nice color

Love reading the notes people write! Something that no one addressed is what type of pan or pot works best? One person said she used a stainless steel frying pan, and another person mentioned the difference between the heating capacity of the burners on a gas stove. But, I know that my enameled cast iron pots and pans take longer to heat up and retain heat longer than stainless steel and aluminum. Knowing what type of pan/pot used, heat source, and burner size will also be helpful in determining

The second I see even part of the sugar mixture turn brown-ish, I get the cream ready to pour because I know I only have seconds until it reaches 350 degrees (burnt). This is a fast process. Some recipes call for adding the butter first, but I trust the NY Times.