7 Tips for the Best Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Hey there, Mark again from Wicked Awesome Food here on a nice windy fall day up here in the Boston area and it's a perfect day for me to show you this. Cheesy, gooey, buttery, crunchy, savory, out of this world grilled cheese sandwich. This isn't your mother's grilled cheese. Grilled cheese sandwiches, a staple of five-year-olds across the country. If you're still eating grilled cheeses made from white bread, butter, and American cheese, this video is for you. I'm going to give you my seven tips to a great grilled cheese sandwich so you can make a grilled cheese even Julia Child would appreciate. Call her a Guy Fieri. Hey, maybe both. First thing we're going to do is prep our cheeses. That's right, floral. And look at that, tip number one right off the bat, use more than one type of cheese. Today I'm going with Gruyere because as you'll see later, our grilled cheese is going to have a distinctive French je ne sais quoi. To balance off all that Frenchness, we're going to add in some of Wisconsin's own Colby cheese and some white cheddar from my New England peeps in Vermont. That brings me to tip number two, use shredded cheese. Bonus points if you shred it yourself. So we're going to grab our box cutter and using the biggest holes, we're going to start shredding our cheese. You can use a food processor with shredding blade, which is probably what I should be doing here, but oh well, too late now. There are some people that like to use mayo instead of butter when making grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm not one of those people. I'm not mad. But we can step up our butter game with tip number three. Let's make some clarified butter. Making clarified butter is extremely easy. Just melt some butter over a low heat to separate the milk solids from the milk fat. Skim off what you can and then pour the rest through some cheese cloth and you're done. I have four sticks of butter in my pan and it's starting to melt nicely. Our butter is nearly melted and you can see the white milk solids foaming up and coming to the top. I'm going to use a spoon to skim off what I can off the top. Just be patient and work slow. You don't want to stir it. You don't want to reincorporate those milk solids back into the butter. And once you've scooped up about as much as you can with a spoon, you're going to want to just slowly pour this through some cheese cloth. You want to do it slow because you want to leave that big clump of white that's at the bottom. You want to leave that in the pan. There's going to be some more stuff floating that's going to get caught by the cheese cloth so don't worry about that but just take it nice and slow and get as little of that white stuff in as you can. And of course do this inside it's a lot less of a pain in the a**. And once you finish pouring it into the cheese cloth just pick that cheese cloth up and give it a little squeeze to get every last bit of that golden goodness out. And there we have it, clarified butter. The French cousin of the American grilled cheese sandwich is a croque monsieur. We're actually stealing an element of that classic French sandwich which is tip number four. We're going to make a bechamel sauce. This is a super easy sauce, don't worry. We have a pan on a medium low heat. We're going to melt two tablespoons of unsalted butter. Add a little whisk. Once that's melted and bubbly we're going to mix in two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. And now that this is starting to foam a bit, we're going to start mixing in our milk. I have one and a quarter cups of warm milk. You can just toss it in the microwave for a little bit. You want to add this slowly, whisking the entire time. If you go too quick this is going to get lumpy and nobody wants that. So just take your time here. Add a little, whisk it in, add a little more. And that's pretty much it. We're going to cook this for another six to seven minutes, whisking often. Time isn't important here, it's the thickness we're shooting for. Our heat is off and we're just going to put the finishing touches on our bechamel sauce. First we're going to add about three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of white pepper. If you don't have white pepper, then black pepper is fine too. And I like to add a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. And remember folks, if it's not from Dijon France, it's just sparkling mustard. And finally about a quarter teaspoon of freshly ground... mother... and finally about a quarter teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg. Give that a little stir and our bechamel sauce is done. And now it's time for our bread. I have a nice sourdough loaf from a local bakery. I like to use sourdough for my grilled cheese because it has a nice tangy flavor and a slightly chewy texture, which brings me to tip number five. Use good bread. You don't have to use sourdough, but please don't use plain white bread from the supermarket. Step it up a little bit. I mean, look at this thing. I'm going to slice this beauty now. I'm going to grab my slices from the middle. Look how pretty that looks. Now it's time to assemble and make our grilled cheese. I have a cast iron pan preheating on low, and this is tip number six. You want the heat on low to medium low. If the pan is too hot, then the bread is going to toast before your cheese has time to melt. So make sure to keep that temperature down. First off, let's get some bechamel sauce on the bread. Now some clarified butter into the pan, cold enough that it's solidified. So I'm going to just use this, melt it right in the pan, and we'll put the bread right on top. That may have been a little too much. Okay, get our gruyere cheese on. Pile this nice and high. If some falls in, it's okay. It's going to make nice brown bits. It's going to be delicious. Then another slice with some more bechamel sauce. Down. We'll add butter to the side. We're going to flip it. Now I'm going to cover this to help melt that cheese, and we'll check it in a minute. Okay, it's been about a minute. Let's check our bread. Oh, look at that. Nice and toasty. Get some more butter in there. This side down. Nice. Now a little more bechamel on this side. A little more. And then some of our Colby and cheddar on top of this. Oh yeah. And this is tip number seven. Make a triple deck. More bechamel on that side. I'm going to push it down so we have good contact with the pan. Cover it up. Check it again in another minute. Okay, it's been another minute. Let's take a look. Eh, it can go a little longer than that. Let's get some more butter in there though. Okay, it's been a couple minutes. Let's take a look. Oh, look at that. That's nice. All right. Let's push this off the side. Get some more butter in there. Nice. Cover up for a couple more minutes. And after a few more minutes, let's take a look. Oh, look at that. Oh, that is pretty. This is looking awesome. I'm so excited to eat. Let's go. And just like that, our triple decker grilled cheese is done. Let's sprinkle a little bit of parsley on top of some green, which is going to probably blow away. I'm going to cut this diagonally because I think you're legally required to cut a grilled cheese that way. Hear that? Oh, boy. Look at that. Look how amazing this looks. You can see the different color cheeses and that beautifully crisp sourdough bread. This just looks amazing. Look at that. How cool. Okay, time to taste it. Oh, man. You hear that crunch? Oh, man. Wow. This is fantastic. It's like a cheese bomb in your mouth. Oh, my God. And that bread has a nice, subtle tang to it. Not overpowering, just enough to let you know it's there. I need another bite. Oh, man. Especially the sauce really classes this up. Look at all that cheese. One more. I might just eat this whole thing. Damn it. And there you have it. My seven tips to make the best grilled cheese on the planet. Please give this a try. I mean, yeah, it's the world's best grilled cheese, but it's super easy to make. You drop this in front of someone and they lose it for sure. If you like this recipe, please help me out by giving that like button a little boop. If you'd like to see more wicked awesome recipes, hit that subscribe button as well. And if you're looking for something to make that goes along with this, then check out this video here. It's a great way to compliment this awesome grilled cheese. Thanks. See you next time.