yay, tacos!

I probably make grilled cheese sandwiches for Emily or myself at least once a week. They’re delicious, light and quick snacks. Plus – cheese. I have my own method of cooking grilled cheeses that’s pretty basic but it works really well. Grilled cheeses themselves are about as simple as they come, so this was more of an experiment in using Altons cooking method.

Grilled Cheeses made with suggestions from Alton Brown

Alton’s recipe calls for:

• 2 slices of bread. duh
• 1 tsp of dijon mustard
• pepper to taste
• 1 cup of grated cheese – we used gruyere
• the book calls for clarified butter. the website calls for olive oil. I clarified some butter ahead of time

The cooking method is where things get wacky. Spread the dijon on one slice of bread and pepper to taste. Cover that slice with the cheese and cover with the second slice of bread. Brush the top of the sandwich with the butter/oil – enough to cover but not soak. Put it butter side down onto a heated cast iron skillet. Butter the new top of the sandwich and put the another heated cast iron skillet on top of the sandwich. After 3-5 minutes, remove everything and let it cool.

Alton has used this method in a few other episodes as essentially a sandwich press. Logically, it makes a good bit of sense. But does it all work? Unfortunately, we don’t have two cast iron skillets – so I decided to the one pan I usually use to make grilled cheeses and the one cast iron that we do have. Adding to that, the cast iron is only large enough to fit one sandwich at a time.

Since Emily doesn’t like mustard, and the pepper seemed out of place, I decided to make her an unseasoned grilled cheese first and then make the one following Alton’s recipe and method more specifically – and take photos during that second pass.

I piled the cheese onto one of the slices of bread, closed up the sandwich, coated the sandwich with butter on both of the outsides of the bread slices and put the cast iron on top. After about three minutes, I went to lift off the cast iron – and just lifted the whole sandwich up with it.

My grilled cheeses don't usually look like this.

Even after peeling the burnt cheeses off, there's still lots of work left to be done

I called Emily over to look at it all and laugh. She asked if the under-side of the cast iron was seasoned. She had a good point. Yes, the butter helps brown the toast, but it doesn’t work as a non-stick coating. The sandwich just ends up sticking to the cast iron pan – and it stuck bad.

At that point, I decided to just make the sandwiches using Alton’s recipe but without the make-shift sandwich press. I assembled the sandwiches and toasted one side and then flipped them. They may not have been all “squeezy” like Alton intended, but they were damned good.

This is how I normally cook grilled cheeses

Verdict
How do I call this one? The recipe – if you can call it that – was great. The mustard, pepper and cheese work great together. It makes me wish gruyere wasn’t quite so expensive. The method though – that was a colossal failure. Maybe if I were to season the bottom of my cast iron – but who does that?

Grilled Cheese Squeeze Rating:

This is what Alton Brown's method resulted in