Browning sugars with heat until they break down into hundreds of new compounds — bitter, nutty and complex where they started merely sweet.
Technique at a glance
A compact visual model of the lesson. Use the full mechanism and success criteria below when you practice.
Concept
Browning sugars with heat until they break down into hundreds of new compounds — bitter, nutty and complex where they started merely sweet.
What changes
Caramelisation is sugar decomposing under heat, and unlike the Maillard reaction it needs no protein at all.
What good looks like
Colour is the primary control, and it moves fast at the end — pale straw, then amber, then copper, then dark, in shortening intervals.
Practice counts when you cook
Reading this brief does not change your School state. Finish a real practice dish in Cook mode and log the cook; that cook is the evidence that advances the skill.
What to focus on
Mechanism
Caramelisation is sugar decomposing under heat, and unlike the Maillard reaction it needs no protein at all. Different sugars start at different points: fructose from about 110°C, sucrose from around 160°C, so honey and fruit brown long before table sugar does. As it proceeds, sweetness actually falls while bitterness and aroma rise, which is why a dark caramel tastes less sweet than a pale one. This is also where the phrase 'caramelised onions' is doing two jobs — real caramelisation of the onion's own sugars, and Maillard browning between those sugars and its amino acids. Both are happening, both take time, and neither is achievable in the ten minutes most recipes claim: properly caramelised onions take closer to forty-five, and every shortcut trades depth for speed.
Success criteria
Colour is the primary control, and it moves fast at the end — pale straw, then amber, then copper, then dark, in shortening intervals.
The smell turns from sweet to nutty and then to faintly burnt, which is the warning that arrives before the colour does.
Onions go translucent, then gold, then genuinely brown and jammy, reducing to a fraction of their volume.
Dry caramel is done by sight alone; the pan should come off slightly before the target because it keeps darkening.
Failure guards
The caramel is bitter and acrid.
Taken too far. Past dark amber the useful compounds give way to carbonised ones, and it happens in seconds.
The sugar crystallised into a gritty mass.
A stray crystal or a stirred pan seeded crystallisation. Do not stir a dry caramel; swirl the pan, and brush the sides down with water.
Onions are soft and golden but taste thin.
Not finished. Fifteen minutes gives softened onions; the deep, jammy result takes three times that.