Grilled Cheese - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by foleyisgood 

I like Munster on just about anything

My personal twist on grilled cheese is taking fresh croissants and laying a slice of munster on them face up, then putting them in a toaster oven. Its pretty much the most amazing lunch ever.

Open-faced munster grilled cheese croissants FTW

I'm with you on the muenster...Smoked mozzarella is also good but I must admit, give me the clasic grilled cheese with 3 slices of American, plain white bread and tomato soup out of the can and I am happy

Vintage chedar or Jarlsberg are the main ones I use. Edam is good too.

Grill cheese is the most underated lunch sandwicth in the U.S .Just think just off the tip of my toung you have the Patty melt,Monte cristo, Corn beef reubon, French dip,chicken parm sand, Lets not forget the Ham and cheese. All these and many many more all from your plain grilled cheese sandwich.This is a very fun topic Great job.      Chef AlexanderZ

Grilled cheese is very popular in my restaurant. I think the key to great grilled cheese is :

GOOD BREAD - you need bread that is a little firm, too soft bread gets gummy and gross.

GOOD CHEESE - and use REAL cheese! Not the imitation plastic not-fantastic stuff.

The most popular grilled cheese I make is with Cottswold cheese, it's wonderful, light onion flavor. So good on an artisian multigrain bread.

Red Leicester is a good one. Havarti is a good melting cheese, however it doesn't have too much flavor, I like to mix it with gruyere or a nice aged swiss.

If you can find Stripey Jack I have heard from one of my customers that it makes a good grilled cheese. I also have used Tintern cheese, again, a great melting cheese with a light scallion flavor.

Smoked provolone also tastes great, but it doesn't tend to be a very good melter, I will usually pair it with another cheese that melts really good like havarti. The havarti will help it melt a little better, but you still get the smokey flavor of the provolone.

I also grill both sides of the bread, it aids in the melting of the cheese and adds great texture.

A thin slice of rosemary ham makes it just HEAVEN.

Hello Chef21!

i like grilled cheese! That's delicious & i used Gouda cheese.

While I prefer a nice aged cheddar, I make a lot of kinds of grilled cheese, some with just cheese, some with other ingredients, but what I do to the outside is what makes them special. I butter the outside of the bread (sometimes I use mayonnaise, instead of butter), then sprinkle a little shredded cheese on the pan before I lay in the sandwich. Then I sprinkle a little more on top and press it in with the spatula. Fry on both sides as usual. The cheese gives the sandwich a nice crunch and adds a ton of flavor.

You FRY grilled cheese?

Doesn't that make the resultant sandwich really greasy?

Not in the grease in the pan meaning of frying, but grilled cheese in the US is often neither grilled or fryed, but buttered bread toasted in the pan. And the technique will be called frying for no reason I can think of but that English (in the US at least) is just that way.

Phil

I'm guessing you don't want to know about dipping a cheese sandwich in beaten egg, like you would French toast, then frying it in butter.

Phatch and Ishbel, isn't cooking something in butter frying?  Not deep frying, but frying?  I know usually people put the butter on the outside of the sandwich and then cook it in a frying pan, but the butter melts, thus frying, not toasting, the bread. In fact after trying to butter soft bread with hard butter, i quickly figured out to put a little butter in the hot pan, swirl it a bit and put the sandwich in on top of it.   In italy they will grill a sandwich in one of those double grills (i think in the states they call them panini makers) - but no butter.  The effect is toasted cheese sandwich, and far inferior to the buttered version. 

If i put a little bit of butter in a non-stick pan and fry an egg, isn't that still fried? Or is there another term?

GrannySmith, that's "mozzarella in carrozza" in Italy, but with mozzarella inside, of course. 

If You don't have a Panini Maker try this. Make any kind of grilled cheese sandwich you want. Butter ever so lightly the 2 outside peices bread. Wrap in foil. Take Moms \Steam Iron preheat. Press sandwch both sides About 1 1/2 minutes per side till golden brown. >Unwrap and enjoy. No pots, no cleanup and really hot.

Nope, think I'm going to stick to the UK's welsh rarebit style of grilled cheese sandwich!  Make a rarebit.  Toast one side of the bread under the grill (US broiler?).  Slather untoasted side of bred with a generous dollop of rarebit.  Stick under grill until bubbly, slightly brown and delicious!

Ishbel

, How is rarebit made in UK I have both had it and made it here in US was wodering if it is the same. Rarebit here is kind of like a cheese sauce served over toast points

 Welsh Rarebit is more than just a cheese sauce.

Certainly it's a cheese sauce (traditionally cheddar was the only choice, but as with everything else, that's changed a lot). But it's one made with either beer or ale. Then proceed as Ishbel details; i.e., toast one side, flip the bread, cover with sauce, pop under the broiler.

References to Welsh Rarebit (actually "rabbit" back then) go back to at least the 1700s. Although I haven't found any documentation on this, I've often thought it evolved from the cheese & beer soups that go back several hundred years before that. Although the consistency is different, the flavor profiles are very similar. Almost as if somebody, enjoying a bowl of the soup, said to themselves, "hey! This would make a great sandwich!"

On the other hand, the Welsh were known for cooking with cheeses, and are considered to be among the first people to do so. So maybe the two dishes have nothing to do with each other.

Toast points really came into vogue, in the U.S., in the '50s and '60s as a way of plating a plebian dish so that it sounded haute. This was more often done by caterers than by restaurants, but not exclusively so.

Probably the most famous such description was "creamed chipped beef on hot toast points"---which certainly sounds better than the name given that dish by servicemen. This being a family site, I'll refrain from repeating it.

To my mind, Welsh Rarebit and similar dishes (Kentucky Hot Browns come to mind) are not what most people think of when the term "grilled cheese" is used, anymore than they'd think of fondue that way. For most folks, "grilled cheese" connotes a regular sandwich (i.e., a filling between two slices of bread) that's been cooked with butter on a griddle-like surface.

As an interesting sidelight, earlier references do not use a sauce in making Welsh Rabbit, but, rather, refer to melted cheese.

For instance, in her 1745 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse presents this recipe:

To make a Welsh Rabbit

Toast the bread on both sides, then toast the cheese on one side, lay it on the toast, and with a hot iron brown the other side. You may rub it over with mustard.

Ms Glasse also has versions of Scotch and English Rabbit as well. Special for Ishbel, here are her instructions

To Make a Scotch Rabbit

Toast a piece of bread very nicely on both sides, butter it, cut a slice of cheese about as big as the bread, toast it on both sides and lay it on the bread.

Finally, she has one version that's similar to how we do it nowadays. However, according to Ms Glasse, it's a variation of English Rabbit:

Or Do It Thus

Toast the bread and soak it in the wine; set it before the fire, cut your cheese in very thin slices, rub butter over the bottom of a plate, lay the cheese on, pour in two or three spoonfuls of white wine, cover it with another plate, set it over a chafing-dish of hot coals for two or three minutes; then stir it till it is doen and well mixed: you may stir in a little mustard; when it is enough, lay it on the bread, just brown it with a hot shovel. Sever it away hot.

Interestingly, American cookbooks, through about the middle 19th century, do not use any of the rabbit terms. For instance, in the 1839 The Kentucky Housewife, Lettice Bryan presents a recipe simply called "To Toast Cheese," which is, with only a minor variation, Hannah Glasse's Welsh Rabbit. Mrs Bryan's recipe actually uses bread as a variation. Her main instructions are to toast the cheese on both sides, period. But she then points out you can toast slices of bread on both sides, lay slices of cheese on them, and melt the cheese with a salamander.

So what we actually have is a dish that started out more as what we think of as a grilled cheese (albiet, open faced) sandwich, then evolved into a gooey, saucy dish as it's known nowadays.

Siduri, I've made it with mozzarella, but never knew it had a fancy name.

I've also made Welsh rarebit, but didn't put it under the broiler. I'll be that would be good! I might make that for lunch today.

Creamed Chipped Beef and Military S>O>S are very different The military used chopped meat not smoked or salted chipped beef which happens to be quite expensive.. When I worked in NY Friars Club  Making Rarebit was  like making a Mornay only we used Aged Cheddar and Bass Ale with a hint of Mustard,worchestire and tabassco. We sold a lot of it.

You must of been in the army, Ed. In the Navy it was made both ways, and referred to as SOS in either form.  I still make creamed chipped beef the way I learned it then, except that I usually add some grated cheddar to the sauce. And sometimes serve it on waffles instead of toast.

The chopped meat version was much less popular, and, while it appeared at shore stations, I can't recall every seeing it made on a ship.

Of course, I'll be the first to admit that if blue-water sailors don't get their three hots and a cot everyday it's somebody else's war.

When I make Welsh Rarebit I pretty much use the same recipe as you, except I use dark beer instead of the ale.

Believe it or not I was in Coast Guard statoned in Cape May NJ   I loved it. I was drafted into Army but they gave me to Coast Guard , Never even went to basic training. What a Racket I had.

Coast Guard, huh? We used to say that a prerequisite for being in the CG was that you were at least six feet tall. That way, if your ship went down, you could just wade ashore.

Seriously, I had nothing but respect for the old Coast Guard (that is, pre-Homeland Security). It demonstrated, on a daily basis, the best of everything that a police department should be; and which very few are. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so few done so much for so many for such little pay.

What a Racket I had.

You must have been permanently ashore, then. I love the Cape May area---it's a fisherman's paradise. But, from a boating point of view, it's among the three most dangerous areas on the East Coast (the other two being OBX and the greater Montauk region). If I had to serve on a cutter out of Cape May, particularly when a Nor'easter swept through, I'd describe it a lot of ways. But a racket wouldn't be one of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Granny Smith 

Siduri, I've made it with mozzarella, but never knew it had a fancy name.

 

I

I forgot to translate it, Granny smith, Mozzarella in carrozza means mozzarella in the carriage.  I don't really see the carriage, but anyway...

Siduri, I'm glad you explained that. This is the third time in the past week that I've run across 'in carrozza' in a recipe name and wondered what it meant. Maybe 'in a carriage' is a way of saying a food has some sort of covering, something to carry it. In this case, it would be the 'batter' (for lack of a better word)

I am 6 ft 4 so I can stand in the hull if water comes in. But that asside, yes I was stationed on land (rescue).Racket meaning  the cooks and chefs and kitchen  were held in high esteem and treated well by everyone else/  If I wanted new sheets and pillowcases, I could get them daily. It's wild what an apple pie will get you.

 I was in charge of kitchen brigade and officers private functions. Yes ! private functions, they had weddings and the like .Kennedy past a law that married men with children or childrn on the way would be last draft, so since I was drafted by the army my stay was cut short and had to go home. I had s great time and met some forever buddies.

I am 6 ft 4 so I can stand in the hull if water comes in

See. WadIsay!

Racket meaning  the cooks and chefs and kitchen  were held in high esteem and treated well by everyone else/

I figured that was what you meant. Aboard ship you'd have gotten the same respect (possibly even more). But you'd of had to put up with the toss-and-turn-and-pound-and-pitch-and-creak & groan you sunofab-tch- a terrible-life-my-boys-on-a-destroyer (substitute cutter) that that entails.

Sailors ate well at shore stations. But not as well as they did on the ships. I spent a few weeks at a recieving station, for instance, and rather than eating in the mess hall we'd pick a ship, each day, and go eat there. The food was that much better.

In any military or military-like organization, the cooks have always ruled supreme. You found (and still find) that to be true, not only in the military but in logging camps, and remote work camps, and live-at mines, and on long-haul fishing boats, etc. Why? Cuz if the workers aren't fed well they get surley, and the work suffers.

On the cattle drives of the late 19th century, the cooks were paid three times as much as the cowboys. And if there was a serious-enough personality clash between cookie and one of the wranglers, guess who got fired?

I think I'd have preferred working the officer's mess. I worked the chief petty officer's mess (yes, they had their own mess, having more to do with fiscal reasons than rank), and there's nobody more jealous of their perogatives than chiefs (for those vets not ex-maritime, that's pay grades E-7-E9). On the other hand, we got to prepare foods well outside the normal box. Just imagine working the kitchen in a small, exclusive, private men's club. Along with the chief in charge, we'd design the menus, buy the provisions, and so forth. Lord, did I learn a lot from that experience.

I tried broiling the Welsh Rarebit yesterday and it was delicious. It adds a whole new dimension.

KY One of my ccoking instructors when I was in HS  name was Sid Aptikar being a food writer you may know him. He later wrote cooking manuals called Volume Cooking for the Navy and later yet changed his name to  pen name    Thomas Mario  and became Hefners first food writer(Playboy) check early issues. He knew his onions and was way ahead of his time.

Can't say as it rings any bells, Ed. Perhaps if I'd have gone to Commisary school he'd be more familiar.

I wasn't actually a cook, at the time. What happened is that I was mess cooking (for you Army guys, think "KP") and got assigned to the chief's mess. Ironically, a friend who I'd gone to boot camp with was the cook. He loved to party. So, knowing I was into cooking, we did a deal. I took care of the evening meal, which freed him to hit the beach. And I got to skip the breakfast service in return.

Only did it for 30 days, then went back to my regular duties. But it was fun while it lasted.

I don't think it's possible to ruin a grilled cheese sandwich. Mix cheeses, meats even tuna is delicious. I've been known to put last night's crock pot leftovers in a grill cheese sandwich for today's lunch!