I’ve made dulce de leche once using fresh milk and sugar cooked on the stovetop and had lack-luster results in the form of a gritty texture. Wanting to conquer dulce de leche I decided to research some recipes and test various methods head to head.
My options:
Boil in the can method: Sweetened condensed milk cooked right in the can. This method comes with the warning that it’s possible for the can to explode, followed by, “ but it’s never happened to me.”
Bake in the can method: Same concept as boil in the can, but the explosion danger is contained to the oven.
Bake in the oven not in the can method: The convenience of the cook in the can method without the risk of an explosion. This sounds worthy of testing.
Cook fresh milk and sugar on the stovetop method: Having had lousy results with this one, I was eager to try it again armed with better instructions.
I followed David Lebovits’ instructions for baking sweetened condensed milk in a shallow pan in a water bath at 425 degrees F for an hour to an hour and a half. Simple. (Not wanting to crank up the oven just to bake a little pan of milk I baked a batch of muffins at the same time!) After an hour the milk had a nice caramel color, but wasn’t deeply golden, so I let it go for another 30 minutes. That would be a little too long. The center is clearly burned, but the edges were nicely salvageable and resulted in a lovely dulce de leche with a nice thick texture. Next time I won’t cook it as long, and I’ll place a silicone pot holder in the water bath to add some insulation to the center of the pan.
Simultaneously I had a pan of milk and sugar simmering on the stove following Pim’s instructions. I made half of her recipe and decided to spice it up by adding a cinnamon stick, 8 allspice berries, and a 3” long dried New Mexico chile with the seeds removed. My first experiment with making dulce de leche suggested stirring occasionally; Pim mentions nothing about stirring once it’s set on a very low heat to cook. It seemed like keeping the milk moving would be a good thing, and I had the perfect underutilized tool for the job.
I bought a StirChef years ago thinking it would be handy to have a pot sitr itself while I went about other tasks in the kitchen. It would be, but this little guy stirs so slowly that I have yet to find a good application for it. Dulce de leche could be it. The milk doesn’t put up much resistance and the slow pace is fine. After about 3 hours it quit. Likely the batteries died, so I just pulled it out and let the milk sit over the lowest heat of my burner. After 3 ½ hours the milk had taken on a bit of color and reduced by about a third, but was still quite thin. The flavor with the spices was fantastic. While it was still so thin, I strained out the spices and returned it to the heat bumped up just a touch to try and move things along; it was getting late. Next thing I know it’s boiling and looking very curdled. A blast with the stick blender smoothed it out and I returned it to the very lowest heat. After cooking for 4 hours bedtime was approaching, so my only hope is that it would thicken once chilled.
After an overnight chill, it’s delicious but runny. I have bread ready to bake and decide to take advantage of the hot oven and bake this dulche de leche to see if it will thicken. Using the silicone potholder trick, I manage not to burn it and it does thicken somewhat, but not enough to be filling for cookies, though rather perfect for drizzling over ice cream.
Dulce del leche before and after baking.
I haven’t yet conquered dulce de leche, but I am a little further along on the learning curve. I was surprised that the sweetened condensed milk version had a stronger milk flavor and was less sweet than the batch made from fresh milk. The spices I added to the fresh milk version could account for this. It could be that the constant stirring prevented my stovetop batch from thickening the way Pim’s did, so the next time I have a spare quart of milk and six hours I’ll give this another try without stirring. Now, what to do with all this tasty dulce de leche…
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Wow, you’ve really gone all out to test making dulce de leche!
I’d make it today if I had the time, but I’m going to have to get a jar from the store for the cookies.
I have never heard of a StirChef before! Hilarious, and I’m glad you found a use for it. I’d suggest adding a pinch of baking soda to your next batch. It helps it to brown. I make it in the slow cooker, using a blend of goat and cow milk. It takes about 8-10 hours on high, uncovered, and I stir it whenever I remember. You have to watch it closely at the end, or it can curdle. That said, I cheated this week and used store-bought dulce de leche!
What an awesome post! I have never made my own dulce de leche which I am truly happy with! Your post is definitely a post I will refer back to when I try again!
You really should try the boil in a can method. My family is from Argentina and if we don’t buy DdL from the store imported from Argentina we boil the crap out of those cans and the results are (almost) as good. I’ve also never had them explode on me.