Hacking Extreme Grilled Cheese

Even if you have been a reader of my blog and fan of Cast Iron Guy since it’s very early days, chances are high that you didn’t know me before the pandemic.

I used to be a guy who spent ten to twelve hours per day either downtown, or transporting to and from downtown for work. My home kitchen was something that was reserved for Saturday pancakes, Sunday dinners, and a few home-cooked meals each week between when we we’re dashing about here, there and everywhere.

But the last two years has set a lot of people up with new routines, lifestyles and habits.

I not only started baking a lot more sourdough bread, but my kitchen also got regularly used for the preparation of lunchtime meals: quick foods to be cooked and consumed in time to squeeze a walk in with the dog before heading back to the computer for work.

It’s probably not surprising then that I started making a lot of sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches. Quick, easy, and filling.

It’s probably also not surprising then that I got very bored very quickly with standard cheese on grilled bread fare that is the obvious grilled cheese sandwich recipe for most fans of this dish.

Don’t get me wrong: the classic bread, cheese, butter, heat combo is still a tried and true standard for any time and anywhere.

Yet, even greatness risks becoming mundane in high enough volume. It didn’t take too many months of pandemic-days working from home before I found myself experimenting with this great recipe, bending the rules, pushing the boundaries, and testing the limits of what could be grilled on or between two slices of bread and still taste good and not stray too far from this formula. Simple grilled cheese was no longer sparking my culinary curiosity the way it had, even with fresh sourdough and a hot cast iron griddle to work with.

Now, as much as I’d like to make this a simple post with a great recipe for readers to follow I think the point here is that culinary curiosity and creative cooking is not something that is reserved for highly trained chefs nor does it required elaborate recipe bending.

It can be something as simple as trying new things with something as standard as a grilled cheese sandwich. Adding ingredients (like in the attached photo which includes a fried egg, ham and hot sauce into a tasty grilled sandwich) or changing the order of things (like putting the cheese on the outside of the bread!)

Creating extreme versions of your favourite meals is about pushing the edges of the recipe, understanding what makes it work and cook properly all the while testing the edges of what could make it better, tastier, spicier, crunchier, more satisfying, or changing any variable that makes you happier cooking and ultimately eating it.

My comfort in doing this came from the simplicity of the standard grilled cheese sandwich which is tough to ruin even with a mediocre chef at the helm, but simultaneously can take on new tasty twists even with minor adjustments. It’s a safe food on which to experiment.

My joy came from pushing the boundaries of grilled cheese, changing the cheeses, dusting with spices, and adding or substituting other layers… but still ultimately grilling cheese inside buttered bread on my cast iron griddle.

It is said that in order to learn how to fix something, take it apart and break it first. I learned how to fix computers as a kid by frantically trying to repair the damage I did installing games, trying to get the machine working again before my parents found out. It seems some kind of similar sentiment exists in cooking: learn to fix (or improve a recipe) by taking it apart, breaking it, and trying to make it better. Hacking it.

I didn’t break the grilled cheese sandwich, but during the pandemic the grilled cheese sandwich broke me … enough that I wanted to pull it apart and make it into something better, if only for myself. I wanted to hack the recipe into something more exciting, something more extreme.

I think it worked.

I think it’s still in the works and probably will be for a long time.

Ten Deliciously Bready Ideas for Using Your Cast Iron

I love sandwiches, wraps, and more. Putting almost anything between, atop, or inside bread …and toasting it up on a cast iron pan (of course!) makes for a great meal… or just a quick snack. Here are 10 Friday ideas for putting that iron to work for a hot treat.

1. Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Simple: bread, butter and cheese grilled on a hot pan and served with your choice of sauce, or just as is.

2. Inside Out Cheese Toasty. Hot iron meets an outer coat of shredded cheddar and the fried cheese goodness wraps the toasty bready middle.

3. Quesadilla. A hot pan fries up your fillings, then fold a tortilla in half, add some cheese and salsa, and toast to a crunchy finish.

4. Burrito. Fry your veggies. Fry your meat. Wrap tight and toast into a warm, toasty one-hand meal for home on on the go.

5. Panini. A specialty hot press or just an extra pan heated up, the pressed sandwich is great with all variety of fillings.

6. Meatball Sandwich. Orbs of pan-fried meat coated in a warm tomato sauce fill up a toasted bun and leave a delicious mess.

7. Egg Muffin. A fried egg. Some grilled ham. Stacked together and melted with cheese and served on a toasted English muffin is better than the drive thru version.

8. Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Fry up a bit of breaded chicken, smother in hot sauce, and squeeze it into a bun with some crisp lettuce for a worthwhile weekend lunch.

9. Calzone. Pizza dough, filled and folded, crimped around the edges into a sealed sandwich and finished in the oven.

10. Campfire Pie. A couple slices of white buttered bread pinch-seal a bit of hot fruity filling to warm you up around the evening fire.

People like lists. I like people. So I’m giving the people what they like. I ran a blog for 16 years and one of the most popular posts ever on that blog was a list of “100 things” that I’d compiled and posted. I’m trying to recreate something similar over the next couple months for the cast iron guy blog. This post will eventually form part of that mega list.

Gaige’s Famous Inside-Out Grilled Cheese

Some day I’ll dig into my second-favourite cooking topic after cast iron, and write some posts about sourdough bread.

In the meantime, know that my classic sandwich loaf sourdough serves as the base for a mouthwatering recipe that blurs my passion for cast iron cooking with fresh bread and delicious lunch foods.

It’s a simple hack for your grilled cheese, but add a bit of grated cheddar to the buttered outsides of a classic grilled cheese sandwhich (bread, butter, cheese and heat.)

2 slices of sourdough bread
1 tablespoon of butter or margarine
1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese

Grill as normal. (My normal is on a hot-hot cast iron griddle.)

If you’ve got a soft spot for fried cheese, the crisp exterior of your sandwhich will warm your heart (and probably clog your arteries … did I mention that this is a sometimes food?)