Sea Salt Caramels – A super simple recipe to make salted caramels at home.

French cuisine has to be my favorite cuisine of them all, not just because it tastes great (which it so does) but because of how classic it is. Don’t you just feel more sophisticated when you’re eating a soufflé or a croissant or coq au vin or brie or buerre blanc? Well no one just eats buerre blanc, but you know what I mean. So many classic techniques come from French cooking. So I absolutely adore it.

Which brings me to today’s recipe…fleur del sel caramels! Fleur de sel is a French salt that is hand-harvested from the sea (thanks, Wikipedia). It has a relatively milder salt-flavor than your typical table salt so it doesn’t over-power the taste buds as one would imagine. I’d seen it used many times on the Food Network and was always intrigued by the use of it in sweet dishes. When I found a simple recipe from Ina Garten, I thought, why not? Ina makes it look so simple! I can do this.

I’ve been wanting to make these for the looooooongest time. So when I found out my friend at work loves butterscotch I thought…(1) I can make fleur de sel caramels for her! and (2) caramels are like butterscotch, right? Close enough.

Surprisingly, these weren’t that difficult or time consuming to make. However, you do have to watch the caramel the entire time as it cooks because it can go from good to burnt in a matter of seconds. Seconds, people! This is no joke.

As for the flavor, it’s on point! The salt added the perfect balance so these were not overly sweet. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m more a chocolate fan, mostly because of its rich flavor. So I’m not into really, really sweet things (i.e. icing, Skittles, maple syrup, etc). Usually this includes caramels but these were too amazing to resist. And just the right amount to sweetness. They look like they’d be chewy and sticky, but they’re not at all! They melt in your mouth as soon as they hit your tongue so they don’t even have a second of hang-time on your teeth before they head down to your stomach (too graphic? at least you get the picture).

Hope you like them!

Recipe (courtesy of Ina Garten on the Food Network):

This is the corn syrup and sugar mixture before it gets that caramel color we’re looking for.

This is the caramel when it’s done!

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