This 2-Minute Trick Ensures Completely Crispy Grilled Cheeses Each Time

You realize earlier than you even chunk right into a grilled cheese whether or not it’ll be an amazing one or not. In a very good one, the cheese slowly oozes from the lower edges. The bread’s exterior is a good golden brown that is calmly permeated with butter, however not overly greasy. Decide it up and you’ll really feel the crust is crisp and helps the beneficiant portion of melted cheese inside, but it flexes ever so barely. It is salty, gooey, buttery, and comforting in all the correct methods, however most significantly it retains that good crispness, as a result of there are few issues worse than a soggy griddled sandwich.

I take grilled cheese, pressed panini, tuna melts, and all griddled sandwiches fairly severely. I take my time, as Kenji suggests in his grilled cheese recipe, to griddle either side of the bread. I prepare dinner the sandwich slowly in order that the cheese melts in correct synchronicity with the bread toasting, reaching their desired states collectively. I do that as a result of good issues are value ready for. 

However there’s no level going to all that bother simply to have my methodically, flawlessly executed sandwich flip right into a soggy, slumpy mess once I go for that first chunk.

That’s what occurs should you put a scorching grilled cheese—or any griddled sandwich—instantly on a plate proper after cooking. Condensation builds up beneath the sandwich, undoing all that cautious crisping and you find yourself with a sandwich which may look crunchy on prime, however it’s moist, limp and unhappy once you decide it up. It is a grilled cheese–ruining expertise.

To keep away from this, it’s essential to let it relaxation in an elevated place for a couple of minutes earlier than slicing into it. By setting the just-cooked grilled cheese on a wire rack or another setup that enables air to flow into across the complete sandwich, steam can escape with out sogging out the underside aspect. I even had an outdated roommate who would elevate her grilled cheese by putting two chopsticks beneath it.

And for anybody who’s apprehensive concerning the sandwich cooling an excessive amount of throughout this raised-up relaxation, do not. Not solely does this further step keep away from a steamy underside, it additionally provides the cheese an opportunity to chill down simply sufficient, firming ever so barely in order that it does not ooze out of the sandwich too shortly when you do lower and chunk into it.

It is a small further step, however a essential one for a grilled cheese to achieve its rightful heights.