A grilled cheese (or a cheese toastie, to some of you) is a little like pizza - even when it's not great, it's still great. Fortunately, with only the most basic of kitchen skills, a little tweak to the ingredients, and a secret ingredient for the outside of your bread, you can take your grilled cheese game from good to great. Extra great, even. Super-great.
Sandwich superlatives are in store, is what I'm saying.
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Oh cheesy goodness. If the food trucks, cooking shows, and yes, food blogs are to be believed, we're going through something of a grilled cheese renaissance. I'm not going to complain; grilled cheese was never fancy fare growing up, but it was always welcome. Grilled cheese and tomato soup is rainy-day-comfort-food through and through as far as I'm concerned. It's also simple stuff - and I think that's always something worth keeping in mind. I have no plans to unleash (yet another) overwrought, over-thought sandwich recipe on the world.
So why are we here? Because I was hemming and hawing over loaves of bread at Vancouver's wonderful A Bread Affair bakery, having narrowed my choice down to two loaves, when one of the staff mentioned just how good their Apple of My Eye loaf (an apple-sunflower bread) is as the foundation for an apple grilled cheese.
Yes please. Cheese and apples, apples and cheese. Specifically, sharp cheese and tart apples. There are few culinary combinations so phenomenal (and yet so odd-sounding on the surface) as old cheddar cheese and crisp green apple. You know that weird tingle you get inside your jaw when something starts to make your salivate? I get that just from thinking about apple and old cheddar cheese. So I decided that I'd put together a little apple grilled cheese.
Now, you could probably figure out the rest of the recipe from here. I'm not exactly reinventing the wheel. But it's worth noting that there's one other little trick to perfect grilled cheese - and that's worth reading about in the Recipe Notes below. I've also got some tips and variations, so I hope you'll enjoy playing around with the recipe a bit.
Recipe Notes
There's nothing complicated going on here. It's grilled cheese. Easy. In fact I made this while watching (and feeding) two little kids, and a significant portion of the cooking and prep was done one-handed thanks to a curious toddler who insisted on watching the culinary action. That being said, there are a few tricks involved in elevating your grilled cheese game and really knocking this recipe out of the park.
Mayo. Yes, Mayo.
This recipe relies on a simple but slightly unconventional method for astonishingly good grilled cheese crust - mayonnaise. I assure you that I'm not crazy. A few years ago this little trick made the rounds on the food blog circuit, but I've found that a lot of people still aren't familiar with it, so I'm going to do my best to spread the gospel. Slather the outside of the bread with mayo instead of butter and you get an even, crispy, and delicious crust with a much lower likelihood of burning.
I've used two kinds of standard store-bought mayo to do this - the usual American-style stuff (e.g. Hellmann's) made with real eggs, and Japanese mayo. As a general rule, I'm a BIG proponent of Japanese mayo (it's made with egg yolks instead of whole eggs, plus rice vinegar in place of white vinegar), but I haven't found that it makes a huge difference when it comes to grilled cheese.
Bread
As I mentioned above, I used an apple and sunflower seed bread to make the grilled cheese you see in the photos. Of course, you don't need to have that specific bread - any light and slightly crusty, not-too-dense bread for making grilled cheese. This kind of loaf does tend to have more air bubbles and holes which can lead to some cheese melt-through, but that just means more crispy cheesy goodness in my opinion.
A standard grocery store sandwich loaf is certainly a classic way to go with grilled cheese, and you'll still have a tasty sandwich if you go that route, though the bread doesn't contribute as much in terms of actual flavour that way. If you can, go with whole wheat and/or something with grains or seeds for a bit more texture and pop.
Finally, you can swap in any good gluten-free loaf if you want to make this celiac-friendly. If you can find (or make) one, I'd go with a GF french bread for that airy-yet-crispy texture.
Cheese
Alright, I have some strong opinions on this, but here goes. Don't even bother making grilled cheese with mild cheddar. It's rubbery, bland, and it doesn't stand up to the tart taste of apple in the slightest. At the very least, use a standard old cheddar (i.e. the kind easily found in any grocery store), as it will have enough of that distinctive cheddar bite. If you're a true cheddar lover, you can't go wrong with a really nice and very sharp aged white cheese. The older the better, in my opinion.
Now, you can also go in directions other than cheddar, though you'll be changing the character of this sandwich quite a bit. That's not necessarily a bad thing - an aged Gouda, Comté, or Gruyère would all be amazing. I can imagine even a brie making a really interesting sandwich, albeit one with a totally different flavour. Tart apples and all kinds of cheeses just go together.
Now that we've established my love o' cheese, I want to say one more thing: don't overdo it. You'll notice that I haven't taken any gooey-melty-cheesy photos here. You know that kind I mean - the cheese oozing out as a gooey sheet, trying its best to draw the two sandwich halves back together through shear force of elastic will. But let's be real: that much cheese on this sandwich is not a good thing. It makes for a fatty, oily, overpowering mess. Yes, it means that I don't have any of that photogenic cheese overload running over the crusts and sizzling in the pan, but I think it's a lot more important to aim for (and show) quality over quantity. I also prefer a sandwich that doesn't have 218% of my daily recommended intake of saturated fat.
So how much cheese is good? Well, as a general rule, I use enough cheese (fairly thinly sliced!) to cover one side of the bread, plus about half that again on the other side of the apple. This sandwich-within-a-sandwich holds the apple in place and keeps everything from falling apart when flipped or eaten.
Apple
I've specified Granny Smith apple here because it's generally the only tart apple available to most consumers. It's sour, crisp, and a little bitter - perfect for a cheesy sandwich. Nonetheless, any apple with a tart profile will work well. Jonagold would be a great choice too - it's a little sweeter, but that would be really nice with a very strong aged cheddar. Belle de Boskoop apples (a wonderful heirloom variety I wrote about in my Apple a Day feature) would also be amazing, and the apples are so big that you could probably cover an entire slice of bread with one or two slices.
When I Dip You Dip We Dip
It has come to my attention that many folks like a bit of ketchup with their grilled cheese. This was never something I did as a kid, but I'm no anti-ketchup crusader. It's a good condiment. But when it comes to this grilled cheese, skip the standard tomato ketchup (it doesn't do the apple any favours) and try your hand at something a little different.
I've had two very different homemade preserves with this, and both have been awesome. The first was an amazing pineapple mustard from Pat Crocker's book "Preserving." It's seriously delicious stuff, easy to make, and a wonderful preserve to do in the winter when local fruits aren't available. The second preserve is shown in the photos, and it's one of my own invention - blueberry plumcot ketchup. If that sounds bizarre to you, let me reassure you that before tomato ketchup became the universal standard, the condiment was actually made with all kinds of different fruits, vegetables, and even mushrooms. All kinds of flavours play really well with the sweet-and-tangy mixture of vinegar, sugar, and spices used to make ketchup. Now I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you hanging here, because I don't have the recipe up yet - but once blueberry season rolls around again I'm going to try to get it up on the side. Go make a couple of practice sandwiches to get yourself ready.
Nutritional Summary
I was pleasantly surprised here. As long as you don't drench the sandwich in cheese and extra mayo, it comes out pretty good for you. The apple also adds a healthy edge and a lot of flavour. The key to keeping this healthy is to use good ingredients -- it's a lot easier to overdo it with flavourless cheese and blah bread.
The cheese makes this is a little high in saturated fat and salt.
Ingredient & Pantry Pages
Categories
Granny Smith Apple Grilled Cheese
Ingredients
- 100 g extra old cheddar cheese
- 8 slices bread (apple-sunflower if you can get it!)
- 1 granny smith apple very thinly sliced
- mayonnaise
Instructions
- Spread a generous layer of mayonnaise on the outer faces of the bread slices.
- Sprinkle some cheese on the inside of each sandwich, then a layer of apple slices, followed by a thicker layer of cheese, more apple, and a final thin layer of cheese. The two outer layers of cheese help glue the whole sandwich together.
- Heat a cast-iron frying pan or a griddle over medium-high. Add the sandwiches and cook until golden brown. Flip and cook the other side.
- Allow to cool a few minutes before slicing and serving so that the sandwiches stay together better.
Notes
Nutrition
More Cheesy Goodness
Pickled Pepper
Grilled Cheese
Healthier Broccoli
Cheddar Soup
Baked Brie with Apples,
Walnuts & Caraway
Share this Recipe
More Cheesy Goodness
Pickled Pepper Grilled Cheese
Healthier Broccoli Cheddar Soup
Baked Brie with Apples, Walnuts & Caraway
Share this Recipe
Comments
Who buys mild cheddar! People who hate cheese! Haha but seriously I’m old/fort all the way.
Right? I don’t get mild cheddar… all that fat and calories with none of the taste. Why do that to yourself?! High-five for team old cheddar.
Weren’t we just chatting about this? Lol. Love the idea with the mayo and it is on my hit list of ‘to try’. Can’t go wrong with grilled cheese!
Indeed we were! 😀
I remember the whole mayo-grilled-cheese thing showing up on a bunch of food blogs back before I was doing this, and I kind of figured it would become a widespread phenomenon. But here we are in 2017 and tons of people haven’t heard of it. So I’ll keeping preaching the gospel!
Love the blueberry ketchup idea, Sean! I will definitely have to try this sandwich- it looks so delicious and I love the photos (you have exceedingly high standards! 🙂
Thank you Terri! It’s a really cool and very different recipe – I’ll have to get it written up this summer. Ketchup is actually a really fun and surprisingly fun thing to make at home, and you can depart a great deal from the standard tomato type. I’m glad you like the photos too – and what can I say? I want to look back at my own recipes and think “Oh yeah, that… I could totally eat that again.” Haha 🙂
This looks amazing. I love apple in my sandwiches. Yum!
Thanks Julie!
wowsa, this is the mac daddy of grilled cheese! Mayo, you say? Hmm, will have to give this a test 🙂
I’m tellin’ ya Bernice. It’s like magic. It works so well it’s a little crazy. And thanks for the compliment! Honestly I’ve seen lots of really gooey melty grilled cheese recipes out there before but it always feels like overkill. I think the key is a balance and flavour, and not just 10 lbs of cheese. 😀
Love the updates here, Sean! If I could eat bread, or cheese (ha — I wish I was kidding!) I would seriously be all over this. I used to love the combo of apple and cheese before I developed an intolerance to dairy. For now, I’ll just drool on my keyboard and get back to my green smoothie. Hahaha!
Justine, I feel for you. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to give up on good cheese. There are some pretty stellar vegan cheeses starting to show up on the market these days (and not the heavily processed packaged/shredded stuff – real, aged cheeses made with traditional techniques on cashew bases in place of dairy). I haven’t gotten to experiment with them yet myself but I reallllly want to. As for the bread thing… well that one needs exploring too. I’ve had too many wheat-free breads that taste like wet cardboard. I’m sure the better stuff is out there… just have to keep hunting! 😀
Oh, and I’ll add (for anyone who happens to be reading this) that if the issue is lactose (and not, say, milk protein) there are some awesome cheeses out there with nearly zero lactose. In fact, many aged cheeses are very low in lactose because the bacterial cultures chow down on it during the aging process. Emmental is a great example of a tasty lactose-free cheese that I happen to think would make killer grilled cheese.