A grilled cheese sandwich clad in crispy cheese: Recipe

A grilled cheese sandwich clad in crispy cheese.

I’ve been using this technique, adapted from a long-deleted text message of a photo of a newspaper.  That means I’m not sure who actually invented this method, but it works!And it must be incredibly healthy, because it uses no butter. 

It may be the only thing I cook without butter, actually. 

The ingredients 

1. Bakery bread. Not pre-sliced bread from a plastic bag — bread from a bakery.
2. Mayonnaise.
3. Cheap Brie cheese.
4. Cheap Mild Cheddar cheese.
5. Creamy cheese.
6. Garlic.
7. Green onions
8. Shallot

Preparation and Quantities 

Slice the bread about 1 cm thick (=half an inch). Two pieces per sandwich.

Slice the brie about 1 cm thick (=half an inch). One slice per sandwich.

Grate the Cheddar. 125mL (=1/2 cup) per sandwich, measured after grating.

Grate the creamy cheese 125mL (=1/2 cup) per sandwich , measured after grating

Mince the shallot. 2.5mL (=1/2 teaspoon) per sandwich, measured after mincing

Mince the garlic. 2.5mL (=1/2 teaspoon) per sandwich, measured after mincing

Finely slice the green onion, both the green parts and the white parts. 1/2 an onion per sandwich.

Open the mayonnaise jar.

Easy! 

Mix half of the Cheddar with all of the creamy cheese and all of the vegetables. (leftmost bowl)

Reserve the remaining cheddar (rightmost bowl).

The top bowl is Cheddar and Havarti with no vegetables, because my brother doesn’t like green bits in his sandwiches. He is wrong. Don’t be like him. 

Construction 

Bread on the bottom.

Brie on the bread. 

Veggie-Cheddar-creamy cheese mix goes on next. Mound it high! 

Bread on top. My bread has a bunny-shaped cross section. Bunny-shaped is optional.

Mayonnaise on top of the bread.

Cheddar on the mayonnaise.

Cooking, and further construction

Non stick pan heated to medium. Don’t cook too hot — the outside will overbrown before the inside goes gooshy. No butter, no oil, nothing. Just a dry warm pan.

Sandwich straight into the pan, cheese side down.

While the bottom sandwich coating is starting to melt, add mayonnaise on top of the top piece of bread. See the cheese melting below?

Add more cheese on top of the new mayonnaise. The cheese beneath looks very melted, but you must wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Inhale. If you don’t smell smell browned cheese, keep waiting.

Wait.

Wait.

Inhale. There’s that smell — browned cheese.

Flip it. Mmmm, crispy lacy cheese coating.

Wait until the other side is cooked, sqooshing the sandwich with a spatula to make sure the inside is melting too. You should be able to see some filling ooze out as you sqoosh it.

Remove the sandwich to a cutting board. Look at all that leftover fat that we didn’t eat. We actually removed fat from the cheese. This must be the healthiest grilled cheese sandwich ever invented!

Wait one minute, if you can. The inside will get a little gooshier.

Cut in half carefully. The crispy cheese should be well connected to the bread, and the inside should be almost leaking.

Put it on a plate. Not those crispy fallen bits you saw in the previous picture, though. They’re not at all appealing — you’d better eat those yourself before someone sees them and judges you.