How to Make Browning Sauce

Browning is brown sugar cooked until it is almost black, then let down with boiling water into a dark, bitter syrup. It is a Caribbean staple, Jamaican, Trinidadian and West Indian generally, used to colour and deepen stews, curries, gravies and cakes. **This page had no recipe card in the source.** The ingredients and method below are reconstructed from its article, and that is flagged. The point of it is that it is not sweet. Sugar taken far past caramel, to the point where it looks burnt, has lost most of its sweetness and gained a deep bitterness, and that bitterness is what gives Caribbean brown stew chicken and oxtail their characteristic colour and savoury depth. Stopping at golden caramel gives you something quite different and considerably less useful. Two safety points that the article does not stress enough. Sugar at this stage is well above the boiling point of water and will cause serious burns on contact. And adding water to it causes violent spattering, so the pan should come off the heat, the water should be boiling rather than cold, and it should go in slowly and at arm's length. A teaspoon or two per dish is the right dose. It is concentrated, and too much makes food taste burnt.