Food Porn: Can Cooking, Caramelizing, and Caramel Be Related?

So Katy made some cup cakes today, with a package of cake mix. She was making the frosting, and I couldn't help but interfere. She let me shave some chocolate on top with a peeler, and reserved the right to veto some caramel sauce that I made.

You have probably heard the term "caramelize" before. It refers to the process of browning that occurs when cooking nearly anything, usually in a pan. What is literally happening is that the natural sugars present in almost all foods is turning to caramel.

Get this book, it explains how and why using the right sized pan for the size of the food you are cooking is so important. What's a Cook to Do?: An Illustrated Guide to 484 Essential Tips, Techniques, and Tricks And the reason is caramelizing.  A pan too small will hold too much water and you will get no caramel.  A pan too big will burn the sugars.

Letting these sugars brown by cooking off the water in them, then adding water back to them through deglazing, then browning the sugars again (and repeating this process multiple times) will lead to the creation of a very savory sauce using nothing but the food you are already cooking.  Strain the liquid, and serve on top of the dish.  This is usually done with meats.  Also, when the sugars are browned and stuck to the pan, pour off the fat in the pan before deglazing.

So making caramel is a simpler version of this process.

1:  Take sugar, apply high heat in a pan and dial it back to medium high once melting begins.

2:  Stir until melted.

3:  Add heavy cream to create a sauce instead of a hard candy.  Add butter to create butterscotch.

This is super easy and very impressive for someone who never saw the process before.

This video overcomplicates the matter, but also gives you some more ideas as to what you can make with the stuff: