The original. Brown-butter, sea-salt finish.

Caramel.

Brown-butter caramel I cook in a copper pot until the kitchen smells the way it did when I was twelve. Sea-salt finish, no vanilla perfume, no corn-syrup aftertaste. The original — and still the bag I eat when nobody is watching.

Caramel was the first kettle worth keeping. I start with a brown-butter reduction — butter I cook the milk solids out of, slowly, until it goes amber — and pull it the second the sugar tilts. Then a quiet salting, a hand-toss in a copper bowl, and a taste test before any bag leaves the kitchen. It is the one I would pick if I had to pick one.