Toasted Grilled Cheese is the Bestest


 
     Everyone loves grilled cheese, right?  But toasting the cheese makes it even better, IMO.
 

 
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All the ingredients of a grilled cheese sandwich!  Cheddar works best for toasting.  Most other cheeses will transition from "melted" to "burned" without undergoing the magical transformation.  Toasted cheddar has a sharper, slightly smoky flavor.  I think of it as the cheese version of bacon.

This episode was filmed before a live studio audience!

Heavily buttered two slices of bread and sliced a good thickness of cheese.
    

I will toast the bread over a medium-high heat first and add the cheese later.

My heat was a little high, so the bread didn't get as toasted as I would have liked.  Leaving it on any longer would have burned it in the center.  The cheese starts sizzling as soon as it hits the pan, and wanders a bit as it begins to melt.  I crank up the heat to high.

The larger piece goes on top of the cheese and will become one with it.  The cheese will spread out quite a bit as it melts, and stop when it starts toasting.  Toasted cheddar has a hard texture, like rock salt.
    

I've reduced my heat slightly and also buttered the untoasted side of the other piece of bread.  The cheese is still quite visibly not-toasted, as evidenced by its light color and the way the heat-bubbles collapse as it sizzles.  When the cheddar is toasted, those bubble-pores will become permanent fixtures.

Some toasting is evident around the edge of the cheese.  Also, its oil is separating out.  These are all good things.

I flipped this a little too early, but that's okay.  That darker streak in the lower left is how the toasted cheese should look all over.  Running a fingernail or spatula over it, the surface should be hard and rough.
    

The other slice of bread goes on top of the cheese.  It actually doesn't even need this much butter because it's going to be browned in the cheese-oil left in the pan.

Flipping it over so that the bread can toast.  The two slices are not square-on, which would usually irk me, but I'm liking how the misalignment serves to show the layers.  Going to pretend I meant to do that.

Scooting it around in the pan to soak up all that cheese-oil, which browning will transform into yumminess.  The temperature is still really high, so I turn it off after this and just let it coast while I clean up the leftover ingredients.
    

Flipping it again, this is what toasted bread should look like.  The fragment of toasted cheese to the lower right testifies to the toasted cheese's transformation.  It is crunchy and brittle, like potato chips.

Slice and serve!  Yum yum.  And of course the live studio audience gets to share in the end product.


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