Making the perfect grilled cheese is illusive to the beginning food chef with absolutely no culinary training. But it was on one very special day that I, the worst food chef of food chefs, mastered the ability to create the most beautiful golden brown burn on not just one, but both sides.
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It began with the choice of bread, which surprisingly was the most cost-effective brand at Aldi. In the store that makes you use a quarter to jailbreak a cart, I battled through the professional shoppers with their lists and coupons, pre-bought bags and maps of the store’s layout. It was not my first rodeo, but it might as well have been because I did not take shopping that seriously, putting me way behind the curveball.
The cheese I chose was cheddar. Say that sentence five times fast. It’s fun. Say it! I might make a song about it one day and ask Taylor Swift to put some music to it as an ode to my grilled cheese sandwich that will forever go down in history as a culinary masterpiece.
Cheese and bread were checked off of my list. I had weathered the hardest part of this mission, the trip to Aldi where people from all walks of life come together to make each other miserable with their cart crashes and bottlenecking in the narrow aisles.
The main trick to making the perfect grilled cheese is putting the butter on the bread. Some amateurs might put butter on the pan or even spray the pan with some non-stick special sauce. But I choose butter on the bread because it not only adds to the taste of the sandwich but it allows me just the right amount of lubricant to keep the bread from sticking to the pan.
Place one buttered slice of bread, butter down on the pan. Add a slice of cheese. Then, add one buttered slice of bread, butter up on the stack. Listen for the sizzle. It should only take about a minute if you have your heat a little over halfway up, a little less than halfway down. The best way to know this is to put the knob right in the middle on the five, then add just a bit more heat. Just a bit more though. Not a whole bit. Just a little bit.
When you hear the sizzle, first move the sandwich around on the pan to make sure it’s not sticking. Then, scoop it up with the spatula and flip it over. Do not do the new age way where some genius scooped up the sandwich, flipped the pan over it, flipped the sandwich and the pan back around, and then placed it back on the burner. That’s too many steps and all those steps aren’t necessary. Besides, some old-school ways are worth keeping. You can’t reinvent everything.
Wait once more until you hear the sizzle on the new side and flip again. Flipping is now up to your discretion at this point but do it often as you watch the sandwich turn from buttery yellow to golden brown. Don’t be stingy with the flips. Flip as many times as you want. Try a few flops. There is no limit to how many flips or flops you’re allowed. That’s all up to you. But if I were you, I would keep a record of the flips as well as the flops and store the file behind your clock on your nightstand where only your closest friends and family know where it is.
I suggest serving it with milk. But coffee makes another great drink. Tomato soup is also a nice accompaniment to a great grilled cheese. But don’t get me started on how to make that. We’ll have to save those steps for another day.
I mean, we’re talking about getting the right tomatoes and there’s a completely different store for that. A store that doesn’t make you use a quarter to jailbreak the carts. They even give you bags like they’re all special and everything. They live large in that store. You have to be ready for a completely different shopping experience when you go there.
