I’ve seen several Pinterest posts about the ‘hack’ of making dulce de leche from a can of condensed milk. I always kind of chuckle to myself, because my family has been doing that for generations! I have vivid memories of my mom boiling cans of condensed milk either in the pressure cooker, or just a regular pot on the stove top. Over the years, canned dulce de leche became more readily available & we haven’t had to boil leche condensada in a while.

Until this week.

I made a dulce de leche Pumpkin Pie (along with dulce de leche whipped cream) for Thanksgiving, so naturally I needed some dulce de leche! I was kind of shocked that it was $3.50/can at my local grocery store. I needed 2 cans – $7! I mean, it’s not gonna break the bank, but since I no longer bring in the income I used to, I see it my job to save money where I can. And I noticed that condensed milk was only $1.29/can.  So for less than the cost of ONE can of dulce de leche, I could make 2.

I called my mom for guidance & she told me to Google it. Seriously, Mami?!? She did eventually give me some instructions, but she encouraged me to look it up anyway in case there was a better way. So I did, & saw this post for doing it in the crockpot.

I’ve written before about how I’ve really come to love my crockpot. I’m constantly impressed at just how versatile it is. The impression I had of slow cookers growing up was that it was a gringo thing that made mushy food. But here I was making dulce de leche!

A lot of the non-crockpot recipes to make dulce de leche involve keeping a close eye on your cans so that the water level stays high enough to cover them. With crockpot, that’s way less of an issue. I checked on mine every couple hours & it was almost unchanged the whole time. After 8 hours, I turned off the crockpot & opened the lid to let it cool a bit before taking the cans out of the water. I then waited until the next morning to open the cans – partially to make sure they were cool, but mostly because I wasn’t going to make the pie until then.

The dulce de leche was beautiful!

This method of making it is perfect for me. I didn’t have to watch a boiling pot on my stove for hours while also wrangling a baby! If I see dulce de leche in stores for a good price, will I buy it? Probably. But when I have some time to spare & some condensed milk, I will turn to my trusty crockpot!

Pie recipe, whipped cream recipe, turkey assembly instructions

Crockpot Dulce De Leche

Makes 2 cans

• 2 cans sweetened condensed milk
• crockpot
• water

1. Peel the labels off of the cans of sweetened condensed milk. Place the cans on their side inside the crockpot.
2. Fill the crockpot with water, covering the cans by about an inch. Periodically check to make sure there is always water completely covering the cans. Add more if necessary.
3. Cook the cans in the crockpot for 8 hours on the low setting. Once done, let the cans cool completely before opening. ***There is risk of explosion if you open a hot can!