The Boozy Sauce Bobby Flay Swears By For An Indulgent Vanilla Milkshake

If there's one thing milkshakes are good at, it's helping us to ingest rich, sugary ice cream even faster by making it drinkable. That already makes for a pretty indulgent treat, right? Well, Bobby Flay's found an ingenious way to make the experience even more bacchanalian — add a bourbon caramel sauce. But, as Flay acknowledged simply, in a clip posted to Food Network UK's Facebook page, "Listen, either you make a milkshake, or you don't. There's no half stepping it here." And we agree, bourbon is an ideal booze for milkshakes.

To achieve a basic milkshake, all you need to do is blend milk and ice cream in a blender until you reach your desired consistency. Maybe add a squirt of whipped cream and sprinkles on top if you're feeling fancy. But Flay's decadent vanilla shake calls for homemade caramel sauce, which can be tricky to get right. 

To prepare liquid caramel, sugar has to be heated up until it melts, browns, and becomes fragrant. A second too long and it can scorch, leaving you scrubbing a stubborn pot full of blackened sugar in a kitchen that smells like it's burned down. Thankfully, Flay's clever method makes whipping up a fancy caramel sauce from scratch much easier.

When making his bourbon caramel sauce, Bobby Flay starts off by steeping a vanilla bean in some simmering heavy cream. While the cream infuses with the vanilla, the celebrity chef shows off how he makes easygoing caramel. Instead of toasting and melting dry sugar, Flay uses a wet caramel method. A whole host of troubles can be avoided in caramel-making simply by adding water to the sugar. This slows down the caramelization process, making it easier to control and less likely to burn. Because it takes more time, there's less of a risk of you looking away one second only to discover a disaster the second you turn back to your pot. 

Likewise, you can make even easier caramel with just a can of sweetened condensed milk. Once the caramel is light to medium brown and fragrant, add the bourbon and give it a little time to burn off some of the alcoholic harshness and intensify its butterscotch flavor. Then, add the vanilla infused cream and some butter, and let the sauce cool (you don't want caramel lava to melt your milkshake, do you?).

Once it's room temperature with a nice, spreadable consistency, the caramel sauce is mixed directly into the shake; you can drizzle a little extra on the inside of the glass for additional visual appeal. Finally, top the shake with whipped cream and layer on even more sauce to let everyone know just how decadent this drink really is.