Dulce de leche, for those unfamiliar with it, is a sort of caramel made from milk, and popular in South America. It goes well with absolutely any sort of dessert-like food imaginable. And as I was just reminded by the fact that I made some today, it’s the simplest recipe ever.
Ingredients: Some cans of sweetened condensed milk
Directions: Boil a big pot of water. Put the cans in (the whole unopened cans). Boil for a few hours, topping off every so often so it doesn’t boil dry. Take a can out and open it: It’s now full of delicious dulce de leche.
I read about it and tried it when my daughter had to make an authentic Mexican food for school. Works perfectly. When the teacher found out he said she cheated (the traditional way is very time consuming). I also remember that she made a lot more than was required so she fed it to the primary schoolers on the bus on the way home. Parents were not pleased. She was unrepentant.
Good for her.
Making a time consuming recipe with 60 ingredients does not make one a great cook.
Cooking simple ingredients properly and that taste good are all that’s needed.
I learned the can method from an Argentinian classmate. My Colombian classmate used a different method, but his used a microwave, which must be even less traditional. I’ve sort of wondered, sometimes, what the actual traditional method is: It probably involves a double boiler and a lot of patience.
NotherYinzer, impure water (e.g., milk) has a higher boiling point than pure water, so as long as the cans stay immersed in the water bath, they’ll never get hot enough to boil inside. And there’s only a very small air space in the sealed can, so very little expansion from that heating up, not enough to break open the cans.
I learned this method first in 1996, when I was working at a restaurant in Scotland. They didn’t call it dulce de leche, though. It was just caramelized milk or something like that. We would use it to fill tiny little pie shells (like about a quarter in diameter) for a sweet to go along with tea. I, too, was a little weirded out by boiling an item in its can, but then I realized that the water doesn’t get higher than 100C, and the boiling point of a highly sweetened milk product is going to be a few degrees higher than that, so no problem.
For kids, I think you might want to leave out that special preservative. You know–Bacardi.
That was my first thought when I read the thread title: that somebody tried the alcoholic drink recipe from Guys and Dolls. It sounds easy enough, the way Brando described it.
How long? I’ve just popped a can into a pot of water!
Have only just discovered condensed milk since a recent trip to Vietnam…so we came home with VN coffee, little filters and needed the sweetened cans to make ca phe sua.
Alas, we’re going to run out of coffee before our next trip in May. And I refuse to pay Aussie prices for something that is so damned cheap in VN.
Me too! This is crazy time. I just posted in the thread game about a song from ‘Guys and Dolls’…we think alike Spoons. I am convinced it’s psychic, of course I am full of crazy ideas and woo. It could be just a common coincidence. Nah, I am going with the woo.
The key part of the OP is topping off the water. Forget or take a nap, and it’s supposed to be an explosion risk. You can poke holes in the top and then scrape it off as necessary but that wastes a lot.
I’ve done it. Pretty interesting. Maybe I should again.
