Whatever You Do, Don't Leave The Stove When Making Caramel. Here's Why

On its face, making caramel is pretty simple: you're boiling sugar. Once you're actually making your own caramel, whether it's for caramel apples, frosting, a sauce, or your own homemade Werther's Originals, you'll naturally find that it's more complicated than that. You have to be cautious about when you stir and when you don't, and you have to watch its color closely if you want to get your caramel just right. Otherwise it's going to end up burnt, or overly goopy and separated. Your goal is for caramel to be creamy and consistently melted before you drizzle it over anything. 

This means that you really shouldn't leave the caramel alone while it's cooking, because there's a specific window where the caramel in your pot is going to change from finished to burnt up. In fact, from the moment your caramel becomes perfectly cooked, you might only have seconds before you lose it and it becomes overcooked. Multitasking is an important part of kitchen prep and you're likely not making the caramel all by itself, but for those crucial ten to fifteen minutes where you're boiling the caramel, you need to stay focused.

While you're cooking, what should you be watching for? The secret lies in the caramel's color. From the moment you start boiling the sugar, its color will begin to change. This is called the Maillard reaction, the chemical reaction in food which turns it from brown to golden and bringing out more complicated flavors in the process. When making caramel, sugar transforms from clear to yellow to orange to amber. If it's colored a deep red, it's burnt.

If you absolutely have to attend to other things while the caramel's over a flame, you should finish those before the caramel turns a light yellow. From that point on, the cooking process moves quickly and the color will darken before you know it. When the caramel turns light yellow, you can begin gently stirring, which is all the more reason to linger over the caramel. "A watched pot never boils," as the old saying goes. You're making caramel, so keep your nose at the stove.