It's caramel engineering.

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Though we have caramel sauce at Big Sky year-round, this is the time of year when it becomes the most popular. Our caramel sauce recipe is a simple one with only four ingredients and four steps, and since we make it often, you would think it is breeze for us! But like many things in the kitchen, you can go from a long period of waiting for the right moment to a very short period of just right that can be immediately followed by an evident and demoralizing “missed it!”. Most of the people I’ve worked with in a kitchen over the years have had at least one caramel incident. I know that I have found myself with a pot of black molten sugar more than once!

Here are some tips for the perfect caramel sauce:

• Mix the water with the sugar before you put it on the stove. Dry pockets under the surface in the bottom of the pot can melt and burn some of the sugar before the rest.
• You need a hot burner. A lack of heat can allow the top of the sugar mixture to become too cool and crystalize before caramelizing and you will find yourself straining the sauce.
• Best results are made with a whisk, and only use it when it’s time to add the cream.
• Have your cream at the ready because that sweet spot of when to add it doesn’t last long. Add when the sugar is a deep amber color with just a whiff of sugar (think of creme brûlée).
• Be careful of the steam and bubbling! Add the cream at a moderate pace while continually whisking. Too fast and you get a candy ball that is tough to whisk out, too slow and the steam will overtake your whisk hand with a chance of boiling over (that’s a mess, trust me).
• If you choose a plastic container to finish your caramel sauce in, make sure it is heat resistant. Just sayin’...

​It is not my intention to make something simple appear over complicated and I definitely don’t want to deter anyone from making this recipe, it really is easy to do right. Just passing on some of the mistakes that I’ve learned not to make over time, -rest assured there’ll be more.