Easy Stir-Fried Caramel Color
This is an easy method for making caramel color. For more advanced techniques and more advanced uses of caramel color, please study the stir-frying method for caramel color.
Ingredients and Tools
- Sugar (choose one):
- Rock sugar: the caramel color produced is the most vivid and glossy red; must be stir-fried with water and oil; without water it melts very slowly
- Granulated sugar: must be stir-fried with water and oil; without water it melts very slowly
- Soft white sugar: can be made without water
- During the caramel color process, the heat must not be too high!!! If the induction cooker temperature is not enough, you’ll miss the timing; too much heat makes it bitter, not enough makes it sweet
Measurements
- Oil: 100ml
- Boiling water: 500ml
- Sugar (rock sugar as the example here)
Steps
- Turn on the heat and pour 100ml boiling water into the pot
- Then pour 100ml oil into the pot; the shorter the interval from step 1 the better. At this point high or medium-high heat is fine; if you’re in a hurry, use high heat
- Add rock sugar (if the rock sugar is overly clumped, you can crush it in advance to reduce clumping as much as possible)
- Adjust the heat to medium
- Start stirring
- Keep stirring, keep stirring, keep stirring; when it turns brown, switch to low heat
- It will become thinner, turn a black tea color, then turn a sauce-red color and form small bubbles; get ready to perform operation 1 or operation 2 below
- The small bubbles will gradually disappear, then big bubbles will appear; when the big bubbles appear, the caramel color is done
- You need to quickly proceed to the next step at this time (no matter which operation, prepare in advance and move fast! Otherwise the heat will be too high and the caramel color will turn bitter). Choose based on the dish style and personal taste
- Operation 1: add 400ml boiling water to cool it down
- Operation 2: add scallion, ginger, garlic, Sichuan pepper, and other seasonings to stir-fry