The Food Lab Turbo: How To Make The Best Grilled Cheese
A grilled cheese is a grilled cheese, right? I mean, it's the first meal that most of us learn how to cook at home by ourselves. It's the perfect midnight snack or soup-dipper. It's great for kids but is never turned down by an adult. It's salty, gooey, crisp, buttery, and comforting in all the right ways.
But there's grilled cheese, then there's GRILLED CHEESE. When you're faced with a perfect grilled cheese, globules of cheese slowly oozing out of the edges, a pure, even golden-brown face suffused deeply with butter, you know even before you bite into it if the experience is going to be transcendental. It's the way you can feel the butter in the bread, but it doesn't leave your fingers greasy (at least not too greasy). The way the crust is crisp but flexes ever-so-slightly so that you know there is a layer of tender crumb waiting underneath before you hit the molten core. The way the aroma—that buttery, brown aroma—curls up into your nose just before you take the first bite.
And that's all before you even get that glorious cocktail of textures and fat into your mouth.
So how do you get there? What are the secrets to the best grilled cheese?
We've learned a thing or two about it over the years. Here are our best tips and our favorite recipe.