First, I was trying to make them with margarine, and wondering why it didn’t work. Then I read to use butter, and it was a huge improvement, but I was buttering the bread, which was a huge PITA if the butter was cold, which it always was. Then…a revelation! You heat the pan up and melt the butter in the pan and set the sandwich in it, and it grills to perfection, and it’s so much easier it’s not even funny.
Skip the butter and use mayo on the outside of the bread.
Pro tip: put the cheese between the slices of bread. It helps hold the sandwich together snd prevents the cheese from sticking to the pan.
Stranger
:smack:
I tried mayo for the first time a couple weeks ago for this year’s round of reubens. It works great and I’m converted.
Melt another knob of butter in the pan while the first side is cooking (tilt the pan slightly so it doesn’t just soak in), then brush it across the top so it’s buttered and ready to rock when you flip it.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to calling it ‘grilled cheese’, but I know what you mean.
I’ve been using the OP’s method for many years. I thought everybody did it that way. I usually add a bit of olive oil to the butter, so the butter doesn’t get overly brown.
Best tip from that link: grill BOTH sides of the bread. Melt some butter, put in two pieces of bread, flip them when they’re browned. Then add your cheese, flip the other piece of bread on top, brown the second side of the sandwich, and there is a perfect grilled cheese
If you use a lid on the pan, the cheese melts faster. Note that this means you can’t use a griddle.
I use a George Foreman grill(literally the only thing we still use it for). Anyway, can mayo be heated/grilled on one of those or will it burn too much?
Use a domed lid or upturned pan. Bish bosh.
That’s the thing. When I heard of people buttering the outside of the bread I was like WTF? That just seems so ass-backwards (and a pain-in-the-ass) to me. But it seems a lot of people do it that way. Melting a bit of butter in the pan, and then throwing another dab in when you flip works perfectly fine and gets you a nice, buttery grilled cheese.
I learned the mayo hack here, as well, and that does work fine (and for awhile I used to do it, but then it still ended up being kind of awkward and messy and, besides, the whole point is the buttery goodness of, well, butter!)
I’ve also done the “grill/fry both sides of the bread” thing, and that’s just too much extra work and I’m not sure I actually prefer to have both sides of each slice of bread crispy vs just having the outer sides crispy.
When I’ve tried mayo, it’s come out much more browned than I prefer it, so I’m back to margarine. One thing I sometimes do, though, is sprinkle a little cumin on the outside of the butter. It makes the sandwich a little messier, but I like the flavor.
Another trick is to assemble the sandwich directly in the pan. Butter one slice of bread, put it in the pan, add the cheese, butter the other slice, then put it on top. It’s a lot easier than trying to carry a sandwich covered in butter on both sides from the counter to the stove, and loses less cheese if you’re using pieces of cheese any smaller than your bread slices.
Huh. I actually thought that’s how the butter-the-bread people did it. You mean people pre-butter both sides of the bread first? What a mess! See, that’s what I don’t get. What does this approach get you that the buttering the pan approach doesn’t? Like I said, it just seems so needlessly messy and illogical to me.
I guess it depends on how soft your fat of choice is, but I find it easier to butter a slice of bread than to butter a pan.
And I don’t know if anyone else assembles the sandwich before buttering it; I just know that I used to, before I realized that I was doing it the hard way.
That’s a good idea, I’ve got to try.
Wait a minute, you guys don’t all have a butter crock on your countertop so you can keep some butter at room temperature?
I do. It’s still easier to throw it in the pan, like you do for literally everything else you brown.
I actually do both, some in the pan and spread on the bread after softening it up in ye olde nuker.
Well, I did anyway, back when I could eat them. On a low sodium diet, cheese choices are quite limited unless I want to blow my whole allotment in one sitting.
And no more salted butter makes me a very sad Panda.
The Good Housekeeping Cook Book says to brush the outside of a croque monsieur (essentially the same concept) with melted butter. Already having a hot pan on the go, using it for melting the butter seemed the most expedient way of doing so!