Heaven

If heaven had a taste, I believe it would be dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is an incredibly good caramel sauce that is popular in South America. To sound smarter than I am, I googled dulce de leche so I could blog interesting tidbits about it. The first five websites all had different terms of what dulce de leche meant in English (it's Spanish). So I gave up on that idea.

The websites basically said that dulce de leche meant candy or caramel made from milk. I guess it doesn't really matter what it means, it sounds better in Spanish anyway. Who would want "candy from milk" over dulce de leche? (dull-chay de lesh-ay).

Making dulce de leche is simple. It takes 30 seconds to prepare, but 2 hours to cook, plus cooling time, and the biggest catch is it requires checking on (you can't just set it and forget it).

You start by taking one (or more) cans of sweetened condensed milk. (Please make sure you didn't grab evaporated milk, I did this the first time and believe me, dulce de leche is not the end result).

Place the can, with the label removed, in a large pot of water and fill it with water until it's FULLY SUBMERGED.

Now you might be wondering why I didn't take the time to clear away the red pot before taking the first picture. Or why I made FULLY SUBMERGED all caps. This is very very important. The top of the can must always be covered with water. If the top becomes exposed you run the risk of the can exploding. Which at the very best would leave you with a big mess to clean up, at the very worst exploding tin could seriously hurt someone. What does this have to do with the red pot? When making the dulce de leche, the water in the can pot will evaporate, leaving the potential for the can to explode. Keep a separate pot of water simmering the entire time so that you can replenish the water in the pot holding the can.

Bring the water in the can pot to a boil, and then turn the heat down to a simmer. I have made this a few times now and I noticed when it was at an actual simmer the milk didn't caramelize enough. Keep it at a low boil. My definition of a low boil is that water still bubbles to the top, but there's no rolling boil. I kept the stove at medium.

Keep it at this low boil for two hours. Making sure to replenish the water (and then replenish the replenishing water as needed).

After two hours, remove the pot from the heat and let it cool slowly. Why? By immediately taking it out of the water you could shock the can and cause it to explode.

I can almost hear someone saying "Rebekah, with all this possible exploding going on, is dulce de leche really worth it?" I am replying with "Did you not hear me call this heaven??" I do not toss the word heaven around, as a description of food, lightly. I apply it to things like creme brulee, exceptionally good quality ice cream, mushrooms browned in butter, bacon, or a medium rare teriyaki sirloin from the Keg. Please people, give me some credit.

Once the the dulce de leche has cooled sufficiently, open the can and you will have:

You can use dulce de leche on many things. It can be spread on toast, or muffins. Pour it on top of angel food cake. Eat it out of the can with a spoon...not that I have done this...

I use it for an ice cream topper.