GRILLED CHEESE Best Recipe
Discover how to make grilled cheese best recipe in a pan or skillet. Read further to have all 5 of my restaurant secrets, grilled cheese sides, and how to make grilled cheese fancy or simple as an unforgettable experience. Also, this is part of our Sandwiches, Fast Food, Main Dishes, Cheese, and Stove Top Recipes categories.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich Ideas
This entire article and recipe covers the grilled cheese best recipe ideas. It gives you options for either classic or fancy as well as using different types of cheeses. Also, a choice to use butter or not, seasonings or none, and so on. So, keep reading to see all 5 restaurant secrets of how to make this sandwich in pan or skillet.
Grilled Cheese Fancy: 5 Secrets How to Make it Gourmet
These are the specific steps that make this a gourmet sandwich. It’s going to be these 5 aspects:
- cheeses
- condiments & toppings
- butter & spice
- bread
- grilling method
1. Grilled Cheese Cheeses To Use
There are 2 aspects of grilled cheese cheeses that make it taste gourmet. Firstly, use 2 slices of cheese. Secondly, make each a different cheese type. For example, one of them is American cheese and the other is Provolone cheese. Another example is grilled cheese provolone with both slices being provolone.. You can, of course, still use both as American cheese, if desired.
Also, here are the grilled cheese cheeses you can consider: American, Velveeta, Provolone, Swiss, Mozzarella, Sharp Cheddar, and Pepper Jack.
Grilled Cheese Shredded Cheese
Also, you can make it a grilled cheese shredded cheese. That’s better shredded if using the sharp cheddar or mozzarella.
Grilled Cheese With Velveeta
Grilled cheese with Velveeta is what I grew up with. It’s the great American classic grilled sandwich from a skillet. It’s a cheese that families use for mac n cheese also. So, with that said, you just use a cheese slicer and put on single Velveeta slices. You only use one thick single layer of Velveeta but you do add in extra little pieces to fill up that bottom bread slice. In other words, it might take 1-1/2 Velveeta slices to make a full Velveeta sandwich.
2. Add A Condiment & Topping
While the classic sandwich doesn’t have anything but cheese, the gourmet recipe has options. For changing it up, you can add a bit of yellow or Dijon mustard inside before cooking. And, for a further option, you can add some sliced dill pickle chips.
A stark, out-of-this-world option is to make it a loaded fancy cheese sandwich. You can do this by adding in a leaf of lettuce and a slice or two of tomato just before grilling in the pan. In this example, you’ll also want to have 2 condiments spread on the bread. During preparation, one slice is spread with Dijon mustard, and the other is mayonnaise. It’s very important to keep the cheese slices in contact with each bread slice and the toppings in the middle.
3. Use Butter and a Touch of Garlic
Next, ensure you grill it in butter, instead of margarine. It’s a world of difference. And, when you grill it, ensure it’s at a modest medium heat to avoid burning the butter and to allow the cheeses time to melt and meld together.
To take it even further, you can also sprinkle a pinch of garlic powder on top of just one bread slice per sandwich during grilling. Also, another option is to not use butter and use mayonnaise instead. Yes, that’s correct; however, there’s a slight difference in method. So, you’ll spread each outer side of bread with a small amount of mayo instead of butter. And those will be the two sides that get grilled.
4. Use Homemade Bread
To finish out the gourmet status, make it using homemade bread. When using homemade bread, you have complete control with its ingredients. Typically, it will be much healthier and more flavorful using bread from scratch.
5. How To Cook The Gourmet Grilled Cheese Sandwich
This is how to cook the gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. First, you don’t have the burner on higher than medium. Next, you put the butter in the preheated skillet only. Immediately after it’s fully melted, place the sandwich on the just melted butter and slide it around to coat it fully.
Add some butter slices to the uncooked top. Lift to check it for being browned enough. When it’s ready, turn it over and slide it around to coat the other side as the butter melts.
Finally, you never, ever smash the sandwich down in the skillet. It changes the entire outcome if you do. You will have turned a simple classic American sandwich into a multi-star feature production getting lots of “Wows”!
Grilled Cheese Recipe Simple
You can still have the best grilled cheese recipe simple sandwich. Just follow some of the ideas shown above but just make these changes and follow these easy steps.
- Keep it simple by having both cheese slices as American cheese or Velveeta cheese.
- Use regular sandwich bread.
- You can use margarine instead of butter.
- You can spread the margarine on both sides of the sandwich before placing in the skillet.
- Keeping the heat on medium or a little under, flip the sandwich a couple of times until it’s brown enough on both sides. You still don’t smash it down.
Here’s Land O’ Lakes classic, simple cooked cheese sandwich.
How to Make Grilled Cheese Without Burning
This is how to make grilled cheese without burning the bread or cheese. The following are some great tips of guidance. They come from my decades of practice on other people. Lol. So, these should be very helpful.
- Most important of all: The burner heat can be up to a little less than medium heat, no higher.
- Let the skillet heat up first.
- After the skillet is hot (and sandwiches prepared), put a slice of butter in one spot, stir it around a bit quickly (I use a fork for this) for one sandwich, and place the sandwich on top of that melted butter. Slide around the sandwich to coat it even better. Place a butter slice on the top of the sandwich. When it’s browned enough, it’s time to flip it over. Then, move it around a bit to coat it more evenly as the butter melts.
- Don’t smash down the sandwiches during cooking.
- You can easily flip the sandwiches multiple times for inspecting doneness and to confirm any side is not overcooking.
Grilled Cheese Sides
Here’s a long list of grilled cheese sides that go great together. The typical grilled cheese sides are tomato soup and potato chips. Also, some of these sides can build up into a full dinner meal instead of a simple lunch. So, the choice is yours.
- Tomato Soup
- Homemade Cream of Celery Soup
- French fries from the Air Fryer
- Tator Tots
- hash browns
- potato chips
- fried mushrooms with fried mushroom dipping sauce
- onion rings with onion ring sauce
- dill pickle spear
- Celery Soup (clear)
- Onion Soup
- baked beans
- Cole slaw
- apples
- apple sauce
- carrot sticks
- celery sticks
- dip for fresh veggies (like carrots and celery)
- potato salad.
Grilled Cheese Nutrition Info
Here is some grilled cheese nutrition info. There are about 348 calories per sandwich. Protein is about 15g and carbs about 28g. The detailed nutrition info is available in the <Print> option of the recipe.
How to Make Grilled Cheese Healthier
There are several ways on how to make grilled cheese healthier. Here are some ideas that cover several nutritional changes.
- Firstly, you can choose your cheeses wisely. You can use more natural cheeses with less processing or lower fat cheeses. Also, you can opt to use 1 slice instead of 2 slices.
- Secondly, you can choose your bread to be healthier. For example, go with a whole wheat or a gluten-free bread. Among the best choices is to use a homemade bread that you can control what goes in it.
- Thirdly, you can minimize the amount of butter used when grilling, which is something I always do. Or, another choice is to not use butter at all. You can use a healthier light olive oil instead. Also, you can even use an oil sprayer to spray the olive oil directly onto the bread before you place it in the pan to grill it.
Related Recipes
Other similar fast cooking main ideas are shown here as options besides this sandwich.
Conclusion of How To Make Grilled Cheese Best Recipe
As you can see, how to make grilled cheese best recipe in pan can be fancy or simple with just a few easy changes. And, with even more options, you see how you can completely change it up like having a grilled BLT in a skillet with cheese. Also, you’ve seem some expert tips on how to make grilled cheese best recipe without burning. And I’ve covered popular grilled cheese sides that pair well with these sandwiches. Finally, you’ve seen the different restaurant secrets I’ve shared for converting a simple sandwich into something remarkable.
So, I’d like to hear from you on how you have changed up your sandwiches. Other readers would be interested to hear also. Send me a comment below!
Grilled Cheese Gourmet Recipe
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Ingredients
- 4 slices bread
- 2 slices American cheese
- 2 slices Provolone cheese
- 1 Tbsp butter
Instructions
- Make each sandwich: Add 1 slice of American cheese and 1 slice of Provolone between 2 bread slices and set aside.
- Heat a frying pan to medium and enough butter for one side of each sandwich to start melting. Add each sandwich and use a spatula to move each around in the pan to get coated on one side with the melted butter.
- Add small slices of butter across each sandwich top.
- After 1-2 minutes, use a spatula to lift and inspect one side of a sandwich. When browned enough, turn each sandwich over to brown the other side. After 1-2 minutes, repeat inspection, and serve when done.
Nutrition
This was beautiful. Thank you.