Grilled cheese. The perfect quick meal. Most of us can agree on that. However, I was reading some food thing today, some health column, and they wrote about a grilled turkey-cheddar-apple sammie. They made it sound really "new" and nontraditional. Yeah, whatever. Apples in grilled cheese, how long has that been going on? There is nothing new there, but I appreciated the promoting of the grilled cheese.
But the clincher for me, the really obvious detail that made me know that they (whoever "they" are) had no idea of what they were talking about was this: "... grill in a pan over medium heat for two minutes per side."
Two minutes per side for a sandwich that, in the photo, had at least an inch of filling? Meat, cheese and whatever. Two minutes? You must be kidding. The bread doesn't even get hot in two minutes, not to mention melting the cheese in two minutes. Well, of course, you can crank that heat up and at medium temp (which is mercurial at best) get the bread nice and brown on each side and the ingredients inside are barely tepid. No melting of cheese happening there.
That's the thing about grilled cheese sammies. Like scrambled eggs ** grilled cheese needs to be slow and low. Use whatever bread or cheese or anything else, but you have to use low heat to get all the stuff hot and you need to cook it slowly. You need to turn it a time or two for the same reason. You need to have some oil or butter on the bread to get that toasty goodness. Perhaps if you use skinny white bread and American cheese (gasp!) it can be finished in a couple of minutes but not if you put good stuff inside. Ham, cheese, tomato, green onion, chicken, left over steak...... the possibilities are endless. A smear of mayonnaise on the inside is always a good thing but not always necessary. (Hmm. To me it is.) But even just ordinary cheese on good bread and nothing much more than that will give you a satisfactory grilled cheese sammie. A quick grind of pepper on top of the cheese will make it a dozen times better.
I could go on but this is not a cooking blog so I won't. Rest assured that a good grilled cheese sandwich means cheese is melted, a little runny. Everything inside is hot. Bread is toasty, golden brown. It should rest a minute before you cut it. And then: goodness. On good bread, with decent cheese and a slice of tomato, a little mayo inside... well, let's just say that I was surprised when my daughter-in-law Annie, a petite, smart, discerning food woman once said "yes, please" to the query of "do you want another one?" It was a sandwich of simple cheddar cheese, a thin slice of tomato on honey-wheatberry bread. Nothing fancy, but it was the first grilled cheese sammie I had made for her and she loved it. Just saying, keep it simple, keep it slow and let it do its thing and it will reward you with deliciousness.
It should, of course, look close to this:
Go forth and grill a cheese sammie. Don't blame me if you get addicted to their goodness and to their simplicity.
** thanks for the compliment on my eggs last Sunday, Jenn!
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Mom - you make the best eggs. Seriously. The only eggs I will always at least taste are yours. And you know that's a huge compliment because I have to be in the mood for eggs.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note - an ex of mine once taught me the dipping method of mayo with your grilled cheese because sometimes it doesn't NEED mayo but you don't really know if it needs it or not until it's done cooking and then you don't want to open it up to put mayo in there, so you just add a dollop of mayo to the side of your plate and if it needs that little creaminess because your cheese is too sharp or the butter just didn't make the bread soft enough - it's right there. Just a thought...