The Very Best Method For Making A Classic Grilled Cheese Sandwich
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While it may be one of the first meals that most of us ever attempt to cook, there is a science to the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. Toast the bread on both sides, to add buttery flavor and promote even melting cook the sandwich low and slow, for an even, deep brown crust use plenty of American cheese and don’t forget to salt. The result is the crunchy, buttery, melty sandwich of your childhood dreams.
- 2 tablespoons butter, cut into 3 even pieces
- 2 slices hearty white bread, such as Pepperidge Farm or Arnold
- 2 slices American, cheddar, or Jack cheese
- Kosher salt
Bacon Jam And Ricotta Grilled Cheese
There’s nothing quite like bacon jam. Let’s be realthis is the edible form of crack. It’s sweet and salty goodness comes from slowly rendering bacon and then cooking it down with brown sugar, caramelized onions, and red wine vinegar until a thick and chunky jam develops. Add some fresh ricotta, nutty parmesan, and crispy Brussels sprouts and you’ve got one serious bacon jam and ricotta sandwich on your hands.
Amazing Air Fryer Grilled Cheese
One of the best grilled cheese sandwiches that I have ever had was in Boston. They used gouda cheese and told us the secret was using a mixture of mayonnaise and butter on the outside of the grilled cheese. Since then I have always made my grilled cheese using mayonnaise and I can promise you that it will change your grilled cheese sandwiches.
Now, Air Fryer Grilled Cheese? This grilled cheese is the absolute best grilled cheese that I have ever had. It cooks it perfectly crisp and melts the cheese just right.
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And The Best Cheese For Grilled Cheese Is
Were partial to regular old cheddar cheesesharp or medium, depending on your preference but a great grilled cheese sandwich can be made out of lots of different cheeses, and our grilled cheese recipe will work with almost any cheese you favor. Here are a few great melters to try:
- Monterey Jack. This mild, creamy white cheese is an even better melter than cheddar, and is extra lovely mixed with a little sharp cheddar.
- Gruyère. Nutty and delightfully salty, Gruyère is an Alpine-style cheese that is widely available in the U.S. and makes for a richly flavorful grilled cheese.
- Raclette. Another gorgeous Alpine-style cheese that is quite literally made for melting. This washed-rind cheese is funkier than Gruyère and will definitely take your grilled cheese into grown-up territory.
- Blue / Chevré. Tangy chevré or sharp blue cheeses can be delicious additions to a grilled cheese, but we like to use them sparingly and coupled with mild, melty cheeses like Jack or cheddar.
It Was Finally Time To Try Fieri’s Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich
“Now, I want you to take that championship bite, I want you to show me how that bite is really done,” Fieri said as I took the grilled cheese in my hands.
“Alright, cheers,” I told him before digging in.
“That’s a good bite!” he said. “There’s that cheese working.”
And the cheese was definitely working. Fieri’s sandwich is without a doubt one of the creamiest grilled cheese sandwiches I’ve ever had. The mac and cheese explodes in your mouth, and there’s so much depth of flavor thanks to the five different types of cheese all working together with the sausage. There’s also a nice hint of sweetness from the bread. Add some hot sauce and the entire thing is perfection.
“That’s so good,” I told Fieri, going for another bite.
“Do we know how to party or what?” Fieri said. “And to the background of the melodic energy and music of the fire alarm!”
“It’s been a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” I told him.
And it definitely was. But thankfully, I’ll still be able to make Fieri’s ultimate grilled cheese sandwich as many times as I want.
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Grilled Cheese With Smoked Polish Oscypek Cheese
This grilled cheese with smoked Polish oscypek cheese and strawberry jam uses a particular cheese is called Oscypek.
Its a delicious smoked cheese made of salted sheeps milk from the Tatra Mountains region of Poland. We discovered this seductive brine-soaked, 14-day-smoked bundle of goodness last year when we visited Kraków, Poland.
This sandwich has been known to make hardened men cry. Its warmed up on a grill and then drizzled with some hot strawberry jelly. It tastes as if the sheep that birthed this smoky-salty treat was milked by the gloved hands of an angel. A real one, straight outta the cheesiest heaven.
For Memorable Grilled Cheese Good Cheese Matters
The first big tip? I dont recommend Velveeta. Those sandwiches of my childhood stood out in my memory as the ne plus ultra of grilled cheeses, until I replicated one as an adult and found it impossibly insipid.
Oooozy melted cheese is our goal. Hard cheeses like parmesan dont get very oozy when they melt, and soft cheeses like ricotta are too high in moisture. What cheeses work best? Melting cheeses, of course. Such as:
- Swiss
- Havarti
- Fontina
A cheese thats too flavor-packed can overwhelm the sandwich. My cheesemaker friend, who has weekly Grilled Cheese Thursdays at her creamerys tasting room, handles this by blending a few cheeses together for grilled cheese: about 30 percent something exceptional and expensive to 70 percent workaday .
Real talk: I make utterly satisfactory grilled cheese sandwiches with mass-market orange cheddar. Ultimately, if you are hungry, the cheese you happen to have in the fridge is plenty good enough.
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Garlic Bread Grilled Cheese Sandwich
If you’ve ever had garlic bread with mozzarella cheese then you know how delicious this sandwich can be. Slices of bread are spread with a delicious garlic-parsley butter, toasted until golden, and then sandwiched around shredded cheese and cooked until melted. Serve with marinara or pizza sauce for dipping.
Dont Skimp On The Butter
You need enough butter to achieve the crackly-crisp, buttery, golden exterior that we all crave. If you always keep a stick of butter on the counter, you can simply spread the softened butter generously over the outside pieces of bread. If you dont , you can melt a pat of butter in the skillet before you add the bread.
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How To Make Grilled Cheese
How long to cook grilled cheese? Total cooking time for grilled cheese over low to medium/low heat is 6-7 minutes. That is enough time for the exterior to crisp and brown and allow the cheese to fully melt.
How I Tested The Grilled Cheese Recipes
Wherever possible, I used the same brands of cheese and bread for all four recipes. I cooked all the sandwiches back-to-back, and with the exception of the bread, I kept the ingredients refrigerated until I was ready to make the sandwich . I tasted each sandwich immediately after making it so that I could judge them while they were hot and fresh.
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Tips For The Best Grilled Cheese
- Low heat it takes a little patience to make the perfect grilled cheese. Keep your heat on low to give the cheese time to fully melt while the bread gets golden and crisp. If browning too fast, turn the heat down.
- Butter generously the amount of butter may seem like a lot, but it is important for a crispy exterior.
- Use thick-sliced bread we love using Texas toast because its sliced about twice as thick as normal sandwich bread. You want bread that is about 3/4 to 1 thick, but also avoid bread that is too thick or your cheese wont melt properly. Using bread that is too thin will produce a flimsy and sometimes soggy sandwich.
Grilled Cheese With Truffled Taleggio
Imagine this: Beautiful squash blossoms drizzled with honey and topped with candied pumpkin seeds layered between a toasted pretzel bun full of fluffy fresh ricotta, melted sharp cheddar, and truffled taleggio cheese. This insane truffled grilled cheese sounds pretty amazing, right?
Oh, and if you can’t find squash blossoms, or have never heard of them, check out your local farmers market during summer months to find these beautiful and delicate flowers that are perfect for all sorts of recipes.
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Perfect Cast Iron Grilled Cheese
A grilled cheese sandwich is only as good as its ingredients: tangy sourdough bread, a blend of high-quality cheeses, and plenty of Challenge Butter slathered on each side. For this recipe, we recommend a cast-iron pan for its even distribution of heat we also suggest a variety of filling options, depending on your mood or what you have on hand.
How To Make The Best Grilled Cheese Sandwich
The grilled cheese plays varied roles in our livesit may be the lunchtime diner order: two slices of white bread with gooey American cheese. It may be the late-night snack: leftover whole wheat with slices of Swiss eaten after a stressful day, à la The Devil Wears Prada. And, more and more often, it maybe be gourmet: great artisan bread, imported cheese, and fresh vegetables.
Thats the situation here. We matched slices of sourdough bread with Danish fontina cheese, which melts into an extraordinarily gooey filling. Weve also stuffed summer heirloom tomatoes, spicy leaves of rocket, and rings of red onion in between the bread.
Delicious as they are, the ingredients arent everything in a grilled cheese. Theres technique too. Youve got to get the bread crispy at the same rate as the cheese melts. Youve got to use enough fatbutter or olive oilin the pan so that the bread gets really golden. Below, were rounded up our tips for making great grilled cheese sandwiches. As if that werent enough, we asked our for their tips on crafting the perfect grilled cheese. Read on to become a sandwich pro!
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Making More Than One Grilled Cheese At A Time
For me, its easier to use a 10-inch skillet and grill just one or two sandwiches at once. Unless you have an amazing stovetop with giant burners, its difficult to have even heat distribution across a very large skillet, leaving your sandwiches with pale patches.
Need to make a bunch of grilled cheese sandwiches all at once? Try it in the oven:
The sandwiches wont be quite the same, being baked rather than grilled, but theyll all be ready to serve at once.
What Is The Best Cheese For Grilled Cheese
Grilled cheese sandwiches are not the place for cheese judgement. Anything goes!
- A classic grilled cheese is made with American cheese and white bread !
- Real cheddar, a bit of provolone, creamy processed cheese, leftover brie from last nights party. Any and all varieties work!
- Pick your favorite or all of them! Smooth, creamy and oh so dreamy!
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Apple Butter Pepper Jack And Croissant Grilled Cheese
Grilled Cheese Social
With some spicy pepper jack cheese from Tillamook Cheese, a heaping spoonful of sweet and creamy apple butter, and a buttery and perfectly flaky croissant, this apple butter and pepper jack grilled cheese encompasses one of our favorite flavor combos: sweet and spicy . Its an excellent little treat that pairs nicely with an acidic Sauvignon Blanc.
Before My Zoom Interview With Guy Fieri Began I Got A Look At All The Ingredients For His Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich
To make Fieri’s grilled cheese for four, you’ll need:
- King’s Hawaiian sweet sliced bread
- Provolone cheese
- 1 lb ground Italian sausage
- 1 ½ cup mac n cheese
To make the mac and cheese, you’ll need:
- 1 lb elbow macaroni
- 1 cup American cheese
- ½ cup Monterey Jack cheese
- ½ cup cheddar cheese
- ½ cup smoked Gouda
- 2 ½ cups half-and-half
Fieri’s team instructed me to do some prep before our interview, so I cooked the elbow macaroni until the noodles were al dente and got the half-and-half simmering on the stove.
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Or Go Healthy Add Fermented Deliciousness
A forkful of pickled peppers, pickled cucumbers, pickled onions, or sauerkraut adds tangy crunch to the inside.
Or slice up an apple and add some fresh thyme. “The apple adds a little crunch and pop of tartness, and the thyme gives it freshness with just a tease of its flavor, just enough to make this sandwich special,” says lutzflcat.
The Best Bread For Grilled Cheese
When it comes to bread, any loaf that you like will work well. What matters most is how you prepare if. For the best results, toast your bread first. A quick toast will help your bread develop the golden edges and luscious crisp that youre after. Itll also help prevent the bread from getting soggy, no matter how many fillings you add.
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Making Incredible Grilled Cheese
This takes the same amount of time as your regular grilled cheese but will taste 5 times better.
Amazing Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
April is National Grilled Cheese Month and I have 30 amazing grilled cheese sandwich recipes for you, one for every day of the month! Grilled cheese sandwiches are so easy to make and always good, especially when you add tasty extras to them like bacon, avocados, BBQ pulled pork, etc. As easy as they are to make there is a huge difference between a poorly made grilled cheese sandwich and a well made one so check out my tips on how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich! I am a huge fan of grilled cheese sandwiches and I have over 60 recipes for them on my site so it was difficult for me to choose just 30 of them but all of these sandwiches are truly amazing! Get your grilling gear ready and celebrate National Grilled Cheese Month the proper way, by having at least one grilled cheese sandwich every day in April!
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The Art Of The Perfect Grilled Cheese
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A grilled cheese is a grilled cheese, right? I mean, it’s the first meal that most of us learn how to cook at home by ourselves. It’s the perfect midnight snack or soup-dipper. It’s great for kids, but is never turned down by an adult. It’s salty, gooey, crisp, buttery, and comforting in all the right ways.
You know before you even bite into a grilled cheese whether it’s going to be transcendent or not. In a really good one, the cheese slowly oozes from the edges. The bread’s face is an even golden brown that’s suffused with butter. Pick it up and you can feel the butter in the bread , while the crust is crisp yet flexes ever so slightly, revealing a layer of tender crumb underneath.
And that’s all before you shove that glorious cocktail of textures and fat into your mouth.
So, what are the secrets to the best grilled cheese?
We’ve learned a thing or two over the years. Here are our best tips and our favorite recipes.
Getting The Perfect Crust
As to that crust on the outside of your sandwich, how to attain that? We had heard that using mayonnaise instead of butter was the secret. We werent sure so we did a butter-versus-mayo taste test over here. The results were a bit mixed but clearly the better texture came from the mayonnaise. In your quest for the ultimate grilled cheese, you should try it at least once.
There you have it. The perfect grilled cheese. The recipe is below. Enjoy!
- 1/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
- 1 oz. smoked gouda cheese, sliced
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Finish Your Grilled Cheese With A Crispy Cheesy Outer Crust
This is a trick that my grandmother Mimi used to pull off. Maybe you have encountered it at a restaurant and wondered how it works. It can be a little tricky, depending on how non-stick your pan is. If you have a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, its worth a shot.
Simply sprinkle some additional grated cheese over your buttery skillet, and flip the hot sandwich over on top of it. Listen, and once the cheese has stopped sizzling, wait a few more moments longer before flipping it back over. Ta da.
Non-stick skillet notes: I have always recommended using cast iron or stainless steel skillets when possible, since theyre non-toxic. When I worked on this post, Id been testing out a non-stick ceramic skillet from Green Pan. While it was non-stick enough to successfully make these sandwiches, Im no longer recommending this pan. See the section on ceramic non-stick pans over here.
