How to make the best-ever grilled cheese sandwich

How to make the best-ever grilled cheese sandwich

Photo credit Alinta Gas Copmpany

Gooey, salty, buttery, toasty, the ultimate easy-peasy comfort food. The grilled cheese sandwich is one of those very special dishes - incredibly simple yet mightily delicious. At its most basic it consists of only 3 ingredients - bread, butter and cheese - but to make the best-ever grilled cheese sandwich there are a few factors you have to get right. Get it wrong and you could either be left with cold, hard cheese encased in beautifully golden, warm bread or gooey cheese sandwiched by burnt toast. This is how to get it right, every time...

The ingredients

Is there an ultimate bread and cheese combo to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich? This is really a matter of personal taste and sometimes it’s all about what you grew up with - a grilled cheese sandwich prepared just the way your mum made can take you back to your childhood in an instant. However, we believe that certain types of bread and cheese really do make all the difference.

The cheese

The best cheese will have the right melting characteristics. Very hard cheeses such as parmesan and pecorino won’t melt, nor will crumbly cheeses such as stilton or feta. Young cheddars, gruyère, tallegio, mozzarella and brie are perfect - they melt beautifully and evenly and have classic flavours.

The bread

The only real rule here is that it shouldn’t have holes in it, or the cheese will bubble out. Crusty bread with some chew in it is ideal - sourdough is perfect, as is ciabatta. However, the great thing about a grilled cheese sandwich is that the bread doesn’t have to be of the highest quality as it’s the cheese and the grilling that are the stars of the show. You could even use day-old bread as the grilling process will revive it.

The butter

There are only two important points to note here - it should be salted and there should be lots of it!

The method

Bizarrely, most recipes for grilled cheese sandwiches involve frying them in a pan on your cooktop but we know that the best grilled cheese sandwiches are made on a grill. The great thing about using a gas grill is that you can turn one burner on to a high heat to create a hot zone on which you can get the toasty, melting process off to a good start and allow the bread to develop lovely grill marks, and leave one off to then give your bread time to develop a golden crust without it burning.

Generously butter each side of both slices of bread to make sure the bread doesn’t stick to the grill and that it oozes with buttery goodness. Top one slice with cheese, place the other slice on top and pop the sandwich onto the hot grill for 3 minutes, turning it 90 degrees halfway through to get those marks. You’ll then need to carefully flip it and repeat the process before transferring it to the unlit side of the grill and covering it for about 5 minutes to complete the cheese melting process. And there you have it - grilled cheese sandwich perfection!

See more at: https://alintaenergy.com.au/savewithgas/blog/grill/how-to-make-the-best-ever-grilled-cheese-sandwich#sthash.Aey8edgN.dpuf