Immediate Gratification: Caramel
risk and reward...
It’s a Saturday pastry class, running from 9am-5pm. Towards the end of the day Chef Chad showed me a trick. I learned lots of tricks from him. He said it was advanced, risky, and I was all in. I like to feel special after all. Dry caramel is a fast lane to caramel and ego satisfaction.
Yes, a wet caramel, or caramel made with a mix of water and sugar, is safer in some ways. As long as you know not to stir, use impeccably clean tools, and not to allow crystals to start to form at the boiling edge, success is likely. This kind of caramel is slower, and feels more controlled. Its also required for some candy making. Dry caramel is reserved for when hard caramel is the only destination.
It’s very immediate gratification and to me it feels easier. There is more risk in me walking away from a pot than if I am forced to stand over it. But with that speed, there is no recovery from a wrong call.
I love it.
Both caramels get you to the exact same place, deeply complex flavored, mahogany colored sugar, with no water content. In a dry caramel the sugar is going directly from its crystal shape to melted, and then almost immediately after, to caramel, without water as intermediary. It’s fast. Our job is to guide it along and nurture it in the beginning.
The biggest risk is that the caramel gets too dark, right in the beginning. If those first additions of sugar burn, then that burnt flavor will travel through all the caramel. Better to just start over.
Years later, when I started to teach at ICE, Chef Chad was teaching in the room across from me. I wondered if he would even remember me. So many students in so many classes. With an eye of recognition, he tipped his toque and said “Hi Chef”, and a need I didn’t know I had was suddenly met.
Click here for instructions on how to do it…
What are your burning baking questions?
