March 4, 2024 • 31 mins
Get ready for a 'grate' episode all about the greatest sandwich ever . . . Grilled Cheese!Who knew there were so many versions of this delicious, gooey staple?Tyler and Wells dive into the fascinating story behind this crowd-pleasing classic and, of course, have step-by-step instructions on how to 'Kraft' your own delectable sandwich! From the "spectacular" cheese to use, the best bread for your grilled cheese, and why Tyler suggests putting butter on your bread after, not before, you grill it!!Plus, a quick and easy roasted tomato soup that will pair beautifully with your delicious sandwich. This is one heck of a 'gouda' episode you don't want to miss!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's two Dudes in a Kitchen with Tyler Florence.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
And Wells Adams, an iHeartRadio podcast. All right, time for
our episode of two Dudes in the Kitchen. It's Wells
Adams and Tyler Florence hanging out with the Tyler. Where
are you? You don't, I don't know. Where are you
in Florida? Now?
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Are you still in the sound? Does it look very
It looks Florida right my backdrop.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It looks sunny back there.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeahah, yeah, I'm in Tampa. I'm actually staying in this
really fabulous hotel. I don't think I've suggested one hotel
that I've stayed in since i've beenwn the road. I've
been on the road for five weeks. Brother, ross long time.
What I do to the craft? Right? Yeah, it's too long,
(00:42):
but wrapping up this week. But I'm staying at this
place called the Pally House in Tampa. And it's in
a really groovy neighborhood called the Hyde Park and it's
very soho house if you know what that is. The
design is amazing. My wife found it and so yeah,
I've been here for I don't know two days, but
I'm heading to Miami. For the finale of the Great
(01:03):
Food Truck Race, which is you know what, We've been
on the road for this long and I'm super pumped
about it because we just got a brand new president
of Programming with the network and it was her fabulous
idea to say, let's do the finale at the biggest
Food Network festival in the country. And so I'm going
to get fifty thousand dollars away next weekend to one
(01:24):
of the top two food trucks that we have left.
And it's been going to be really, really exciting. I
can't wait for that great programming.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
That's amazing. What is the best restaurant in Tampa?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Gosh, well, there's Burned Steakhouse, which is well there. You know,
it's kind of interesting, like Tampa is kind of a
really up and coming foodie town. There's lots of really
good food here. My favorite restaurant has to be Burned Steakhouse.
And as a guy who has a steakhouse, you know,
the steaks are like like, okay, I guess right. I
mean it's but the facility on the inside's kind of wild.
(01:55):
They ban saw and cut every steak to order. I
got a chance to walk in the kitchen and watch
them work. It's a it's a mammoth operation. They do
five hundred covers of night. It's kind of like one
of those places, right, So you order steak, you get
the temperature and it comes with what it comes with,
and I think it's a baked potato and like broccoli, right,
But the meat is pretty good. But what they're really
really known for is they're wineless.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The wineless wine cellar.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
The wine cellar, I mean it is. It is a
world phenomenon. It's like going back into like Pompeii, Like
they've been collecting wine since like the fifties and sixties
and they just have an epic, world class collection of
some of the best grape juice on planet Earth and
some vintages that kind of go back, you know, half
(02:37):
a century and stuff like that. So it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I've been there, went there for my brother's bachelor
party and boyl boy, was that a fun restaurant to
go to. So I's highly recommend in the heat map. Well, yeah,
going from pinkies up, great steak to kind of simple food.
You know today is a is an answer you know
(02:59):
list in her question day. But we decided to kind
of deviate from that because we had a revelation last
week based on the conversation that we had when we
were talking with Nicole about grilled cheese sandwiches, and we
thought we would do an entire episode just talking about
(03:20):
arguably one of the greatest sandwiches ever created, in the
grilled cheese sandwich. And before we start talking about the
grilled cheese sandwich, I thought we would just kind of
go through some kind of fun facts about grilled cheese
sandwiches that you might not know about that our producers
put together, which I thought was really really cool. So
number one, grilled cheese did not start out as a
(03:42):
sandwich during World War Two. It was just one piece
of bread with a sliced cheese on top. That just
sounds kind of like a poor man's pizza. But in
the sixties that's when they added the top piece of
bread and then it became the grilled cheese. La once
had a grilled cheese invitational from nineteen ninety three to
twenty fourteen. Self proclaimed experts gathered to compete where one
(04:04):
of the makers would be crowned the best. Sadly, the
fest ended three years ago, but feel free to start
your own time.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That's very la by the way, right, Yeah, like the
grilled cheese invitation in Los Angeles, I would show for that.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
One sandwich has around three hundred calories. This according to
my fitnesspal dot com. But obviously you can make that
less with like lower fat cheese. It was originally called
a cheese dream between nineteen twenty and nineteen seventy. This
is what you would ask for at a restaurant. And
I don't know why I went away from that because
(04:39):
I do. I feel like it it more embodies what
it is. It is very very dreamy dream of a.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Grilled cheese, right, Like that's the stretch. Come on, yeah,
and here's the dreaming.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Here's the weirdest one. A grilled cheese once sold for
twenty eight thousand dollars. Diana douce Heer, work from home
jewelry designer, said her ten year old grilled cheese sandwich
bore the image of the Virgin Mary. She put it
on eBay and it sold to Goldenpalace dot com and
online casino for twenty eight thousand dollars. Have you ever
(05:11):
sold anything for twenty eight thousand dollars auction items.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, for sure, man, much more. Yeah, like dinner for
you know, six people at their house, hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh, which kind I've just done, kidney.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
But listen, it wasn't blessed with you know, the Virgin
Mary Christ Yeah, exactly, or whatever the in Virgin Mary
on top of it. Yeah, I do remember that. Wasn't that.
You know there's people who make grilled che sandwiches with irons, right,
I mean I've seen that a couple of times. Oh yeah,
it wasn't a fame. That was kind of a famous
Johnny Depp scene too, right in one of his movies.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Or are you talking about the grill the thing that
that like.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
It like an iron? Yeah, not a penny. Oh I'm
not like, just like make it with an iron, so
you can make it anything high? Yeah, totally, you can do.
Like if you're in your hotel.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Room, you could probably make grilled cheese with the iron
there and uh.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Listen, you know I'm just looking around right now, there
a microwave ove in. I always tell people I can
cook on a car hood, and it's kind of true.
If I can get heat, I can make something delicious.
I promise you.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, Well, we're not too far away from National Grilled
Cheese Day, which is coming up on April twelve, So
let's start talking about the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. I
think the first question that we need to ask Tyler
is what is the best bread for a grilled cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Well, listen, there's lots of places to get started with that,
and I like that kind of historical recap, but it
goes a little deeper than some of those great facts
that are producer put together, because the first American grilled
cheese recipe was actually written by Sarah Tyson Royer in
nineteen o two and it was in the Missus Royer's
(06:46):
cookbook and was published by the Lady Swam Journal. And
it was a very very like simple recipe because it
was really more like grilled cheese toast. Right. And I'm
kind of reading this right now. I have to look
it up, but the recipe reads, it's one paragraph. The
whole restle right, arrange squares of buttered toast on a
silver or stoneware platter, cover thickly with grated cheese. Stand
(07:09):
the dish in the rack in the middle of the oven,
and serves as soon as the cheese melts. Okay. So
that was the first documented American version of a grilled
cheese sandwich, dating back to nineteen oh two. And then
if you go around the world, there are versions of
a grilled chees sandwich virtually everywhere, with like crispy stuff
on the outside and melted cheese in the middle. And
if you go to England, there's a thing called the
(07:32):
grilled cheese toast he that you're gonna pick up at pubs,
which is really kind of cool. It's usually dry on
the outside, so they don't put any butter on the outside.
That put the butter in usually sharp cheddar in the middle,
and that's something that you're gonna get with, you know,
a nice pint at a pub someplace. Also in the UK,
they have a version of a grilled chees sandwich called
the Welsh rare bit. Have you had that before? No?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
But I like the names. It sounds almost like my name,
the Welsh rabbit.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, well w e lsh Welsh, right and exactly. And
instead of rabbit, it's it's it's spelled rare bit, but
it's pronounced rabbit, right. And this is an open faced
grilled chees sandwich and they make a cheese sauce which
is kind of muddy. This is not my favorite grilled
chees sandwich, but it's kind of interesting anyway. But it's
made with beer grated cheese, mustard and worcesterre sauce, right,
(08:21):
so it's kind of savor a little bit of paprika
and salt pepper, and they'll smear this on the toast
to put more cheese on top of this, and then
they bake it. Okay, So is that one? And then
there's there's the the I think the pinnacle of the
European experience when it comes with grilled cheese, and that's
the croke monsieur. Okay, So if you go to France, right,
so we're in France, you got to talk about brioche, right,
(08:42):
So that's I think the best. Now, a croke monteur
is made with a grey are bechamel, which is sort
of a sauce made with whole milk and u and
then ingrated green are cheese and then they'll they'll put
a smear of this cheese sauce on the inside the
bread and then on one side is thin sliced ham
the size it's grated grear cheese. They'll smash them together
(09:03):
and they'll put a nice lick of the grier bescha
melt on top of that more grated grear cheese, and
they'll bake that until it's bubbly and golden brown. And
then there's the female version, which is the croke Madam,
which is a croke monsieur with a sunny side egg
on top of it. And that's just spectacular, not justis rwich. Well, yeah,
you cut into that and the yolk melts and oh,
(09:23):
it's just so creamy that that is as good as
it gets, right. And then there's the panini right in Italy,
which is really interesting. And then the first recipes for
a panini dated back to cookbooks from the sixteenth century.
So the idea of putting like cheese and bread, it's
not an American thing necessarily, although I think we do it,
of course, very very well. But the panini is the
(09:46):
first sandwich that really starts to incorporate different things other
than just cheese and meat, right, because obviously there's vegetables
out of top, a nod artichoke spread, you know, mortadella fontina,
great soft you know, mozzarella cheese or brought the like
really good extra virgin olive oil parmesan cheese, of course,
and I think that's really delicious. And then there's like
(10:07):
there's one in Australia called Tiger Toast, which they make
with vegemite, which is really kind of interesting, vegemite and
grated cheese. Do you like vegemite?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
I don't. It's a little pungent for me.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
It's salty, you know what I mean. It's just a
nice smear. But they call it Tiger Toast in Australia.
And then there's Arepa Dequeso from from Venezuela, and Arepa
is made kind of like with a massa dough, right,
and they stuffed cheese on the inside. And I'll make
these like little hockey puck things and they'll griddle them
very similar to an English muffin, where it gets crispy
(10:40):
on the outside and you kind of break it open
and it's super yummy. So anyway, grilled cheeses are all
over the place. We didn't necessarily invented it, although I
think we've took it to the next level.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
What about fondue? Is fondue a grilled cheese.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
No, I mean vondu is cheese, but you stick kind
of toasted bread. Plus she put mushrooms or sausage or
all kinds of stuff in that, right. I mean, I'd
like a good fun do. And that's a really great
topic for a whole other kind of fan podcast if
anybody wants a good low down, low down and how
to make a really good fun do. I got a
great recipe for that as well. But so they answer
your question, I think to make a really good grilled cheese,
(11:20):
of course, you got a couple of things here, right, Yeah,
of course you need really good cheese. Now you can
go like old school and talk about craft American cheese, right,
because that's the thing, and it's I like to go
double thick with that. If you're gonna make it, right,
it's two slices, not one, because you really want that
deep stretch. I think it's really nice. I don't think
it's as satisfying as other cheeses, you know. Okay, my
(11:43):
favorite cheese in the world, hands down is mount Ham
Triple creambree from Cowgirl Creamery in Point Raise, California, and
it's in Moren County. It's in the same county where
I live, and I just think it's the world's greatest cheese.
It's the cheese that we put on top of our
burger at Miller and Lux and that inside of a
(12:05):
grilled cheese sandwich. And it's basically breed California bree full fat,
super kind of like white mushroom, nutty notes to it,
good wash line on top of that. That's just spectacular, right.
And then if you like the cheddar thing, I think
that's pretty good too. But Monster, if you're really going
for that instagram super stretchy thing, right, munster cheese Because
we actually did this in one of my old cookbooks.
(12:27):
We did a cheese stretch comparison, like what cheese is
the stretchest. We were doing it for a recipe for
macaroni and cheese, which kind of gives you that same
stretchy vibe. But Monster cheese had the biggest stretchy effect
that tasted the best, And it's kind of like one
of those cheeses that's sort of off the radar that
not a lot of people talk about. Do you hunt
(12:48):
down munster cheese at a grocery store?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I don't, but I do like munster every time I've
had it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, you know it's delicious. I think it's really really great. Okay,
So I like what I like, You like what you like.
Put it together. It doesn't really matter, right. The bread
is gonna be really important now. Now. I like a
really good sour dough bread. But sometimes I'll get a
loaf of sour dough bread and I'll cut into it
and the holes are gigantic. Like if you get like
a really big guitar that does not make a good
(13:15):
grill cheese sandwich. You need a tight crumb, right, You
need something that's like a really kind of tight uh
small hole bread because you really want the hold the
whole thing together. Right, So I like sandwich bread. As
a matter of fact, I had to call my wife
and there's there's a brand that she buys from Costco
okay called Artizano. Do you know this? I don't a
(13:37):
R T E S A n O. She buys it.
She gets it delivered for the Costco delivery once week
and it is the sp It's like I call it
marshmallow bread. Okay, Artisano. Check it out.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Artisana, we hold on it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
You can get Costco delivered to you.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
You don't get Costco delivered, Bro, we don't. It's just
two of us.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
What we what we buy in bulk for Oh, I.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Don't know what I got. Like I've got three kids
and you know, yeah, it makes total sense for you, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
But I've been wanting to become a Costco guy and
I did not know they delivered, so that might change
things for me.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Do you have a Costco membership?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I was actually given one for Christmas and I haven't
gone and like turned it in.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It's a very adult thing to have, you know what
I mean. It's like if you got a Costco membership,
that means you're officially in the suburbs for the weekend
and you like to buy things a book. But anyway,
so that's how we grocery shop. My wife puts that
order in, it comes in. But to me, this is
my favorite new bread just because it has like there's
a little bit of sugar to it. It's technically a
white bread. It's kind of nice crust on the outside
(14:35):
of it, and the texture is just so like a marshmallow.
It's just so fabulous, really really good bread. And that
to me, I think I've made like the best real
cheese sandwiches in a while with that particular bread. Although
I do love a really good bit hard, hard crust
sour dough bread. And then you have to kind of
cut around it because sometimes you get this big jigging
in the coals and it doesn't make a really good
(14:56):
grobble cheese sandwich. Okay, there's that now, the mayonnaise versus
butter story, right, people, you know, like there was a
whole bit thing a couple of years ago where people like,
you gotta put mayonnaise on the outside of the bread.
You gotta smear it's not butter, it's mayonnaise, right. I
actually don't like that, right, because like mayonnaise itself. And
I'm talking about like not aoli that you make from
(15:18):
scratch with really good extra virgin novel oil. I'm talking
about stuff that you buy commercially at the store. It's
made with soybean oil predominantly, and when you heat it up,
it just doesn't. It doesn't smell fantastic, Like it's really
good cold on a sandwich, right, but when you heat
it up, it just doesn't. I don't like it, right,
I mean, it's just it's just hot goo, to be
honest with you and it's fat and eggs and I
(15:38):
don't think it smells great, but I do love it
on the inside. Now it's a whole different thing. Yeah right,
So so pick your cheese, pick your bread, right, but
you gotta go mayonnaise on the inside. I think that's
really great. Sides another, both sides are yeah, yeah, because
you got to have the glue to hold the stuff together, right.
So if you're gonna put some stuff in it, right,
it could be meat or you know, I made like
(16:00):
a French onion grilled cheese sandwich with like deeply caramelized onions.
We've made a restaurant with like shredded braised short rib
and all kinds of cool stuff. But you need a goo,
right to hold the stuff together while you're flipping it
over it. Okay, So salt and pepper on the inside
of the of the bread, I think is really crucial
(16:21):
and not a lot of people do that, and I
think that's a that's a chef touch. So okay, bread
on the inside, mayonnaise and salt and pepper, got it,
salt pepper broke? Okay, great cheese. Try to make sure
that you've got into in coverage. Okay, so if you're
if you think about this, you don't want to put
cheese in the middle and then notice that you've got
a big, you know, half inch or quarter inch gap
(16:43):
from one another. Make sure that you because sometimes you
can take a few slices of cheese and kind of
get some good even coverage on both sides, which I
think is really important. But make sure you get it
goes edge to edge. I think it's good. That's critical
because you want you want the there's no bad bite anywhere.
Now what pan do you cook this?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
In? One question? First? Okay, so I've got two pieces
of bread. I've got mayonnaise on both sides of open
faces of the bread. Then I've got salt and pepper
on both pieces of bread. Then do I have cheese
on both on both pieces or just on one side?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
No, Well it doesn't matter right because you're gonna put bread.
You're gonna put the cheese on one side, and then you're
gonna take the top side of the of the bread
and you're gonna smush it together and the mayonnaise is
gonna hold it in place.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Got it, So you're not starting to cook it with
both the faces open, and then put on top, put
one on the top of the other. Do you see
what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I do see what we're saying. And that's what what's
his name did in Chef when he did that famous
cheese scene. You know, he cooked them both separately with
cheese and whatever. I don't think it's necessary, but it
doesn't matter. So you want to put the sandwich together.
So you've actually got at this point, you have an
untoasted grilled cheese sandwich. Okay, so now what's your pant Okay, okay,
(17:56):
I'm locked and loaded. I want to make this grilled
cheese sandwich. It's gonna be spectacular. What do you grab?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Well, I think there's a lot of options. I have
one of those pans that has like the grill marks
on it, and I kind of like that. It's like
a cast iron with grill marks on it, and then
it gives those grill marks on the grilled cheese, which
I think is kind of cool. But I will say
that's Panini, like right, yeah, it's kind of Panini, Like
you totally right. Usually, what I'm making this, I am drunk,
(18:25):
so I want the easiest thing possible, which is my
non stick. Yeah, pan butter in there and then I
throw it in. What's the right answer?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Okay, but how many grilled cheese sandwich? How many girl
cheese are you making it a time? This is the problem. Yeah,
I got a solution for you. Okay, tell me because
when this is where I think making a grilled cheese
sandwich is actually really relatively difficult to make because you
can only get one sandwich, like the average like twelve
inch saute pan. You can only get one sandwich in
there at a time. If you try to get two,
(18:56):
you know they one's climbing up the side and the
cheese melts out, and then you try to fly, you don't.
There's no room to flip, right, and so you kind
of make a mess and it takes a long time
to make, and I think a lot of people will
suffer from that. Do you have a pancake griddle, like
an electric pancake riddle that you get from Target for
like twenty five dollars? Do you have one of those? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
We got one, fancy one for when we got married.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Perfect. Okay, so I've got one, I swear god. We
got it at Target ten years ago when my kids
were little, little, little and I also make really good
pancakes at the house, and I pull this thing out
once or twice a month, and it is awesome. It's
like a horse, and it's got a digital thermometer. So
three seventy five is that magic temperature that makes a
(19:37):
really good grill chey sandwich, Right, So I can really
get pretty precise with this and make a fantastic one.
If you're gonna pull out a pan, I recommend pulling
out an electric, especially if you're making more than one
at a time, because you want everybody to eat at
the same time, right, So it wouldn't it be nice
if they all came off the griddle at the same time.
It would be nice. So plug in this pancake griddle.
(19:57):
I think it's bomb twenty five bucks. Get them from
Amazon and electric plug in countertop pancake grittle nonstick. Get
yourself one of those. You're gonna use it a bunch.
I use them all the time, not even for pancakes,
but especially for grilled tree sandwiches. Okay, So here was
my light bulb moment as a chef. And everything I've done,
(20:19):
I mean, I've written seventeen books, right, I mean, but
occasionally I'll have one of those like light bulb moments, like,
holy fucking shit, I've never thought about that in my life. Okay, So,
if you put butter on the outside of a slice
of bread, okay, butter contains a couple of things. It
contains butterfat, right, So if you melt butter in the microwave,
you'll see it separate in between the golden fat and
(20:40):
then what's called the way, which is the milk solids
in the bottom, and that's water. Okay. So if you
smear whole butter on the outside of a piece of
bread and you start to toast it, the butter, the
water is gonna melt with the fat at the same rate.
And I think it makes soggy bread.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I think it makes soggy toast, right, totally. So to
retell the story in case somebody missed the last episode,
my sixteen year old son came home from school for
lunch and I was on a conference call and he
was just like, hey Dad. You know, I'm like, do
you want do you I was mouthing to him, do
you want a grilled cheese? Right? He goes, yeah. So
I'm in the middle of this conversation I'm listening, I'm
(21:18):
talking as I'm starting to do this, and I forgot
to put butter on the outside of the bread, and
I dropped it into the pan dry, and I didn't
even think about it until I flipped it over, and
what was revealed to me, I think is just pure magic.
When you make toast, do you butter the toast before
you put in the toaster or after after? Right? Toasted
(21:42):
bread dry is a fabulous, fabulous texture. It is glass shattery,
really really crispy. It's not unctious yet because it doesn't
have that lick of fat on the outside, but texture wise,
it was the next level of a grilled cheese sandwich, okay,
because the bread was just like so incredibly crispy. And
(22:07):
I love the contrast between really really crispy and the
blubbery cheese in the middle. I don't like a soggy bread,
and then I don't like soggy and blubber. I like
crispy and blood. Right, that's when it just becomes like
you don't know what you're eating, Like what is this? Right? Okay,
So here's my thing, and I want everybody to give
(22:28):
this a try. Okay, so you can either do this
on the pancake griddle, because when I'm cooking at the house,
it's always for like, you know, two, four, six, five, ten,
twenty people, right, So I like to crank up the
pancake griddle and then if you're gonna make one grilled
cheese sandwich in the pant, drop it in dry. Right, So,
just to recap, you got the you got the bread,
two sides, mayonnaise on the inside, salt, pepper, smush, cheese, cheese,
(22:51):
your choice. You're gonna drop it in dry, flip it
over once. You're gonna flip it over a couple of
times to make sure it's nice. And even so, it's
not gonna burn, and it's certainly not going to burn
as fast as butter on the bread will burn, right,
So you can kind of let it go for a
while too, which is kind of nice. It gets really
really crispy now. And once with one girl cheese sandwich
(23:14):
in one pant, what I did was I threw in
butter at the end and then I started to base
it like a filetm in yon with brown butter. Have
you guys seen that Instagram thing if you follow chefs
and restaurants where they're like basing a beautiful steak with
butter and like herbs and garlic and all that kind
of stuff works, That's what I did. And so I
(23:35):
was licking this, you know, like throwing brown butter on
top of this earth shattering crispy toast, and it just
started to like sink into it in a way that
was just so interesting. And then I flipped it over
and I threw in another pat of butter, about two tablespoons.
It wasn't really that much. It wasn't crazy, right, and
then I was just sort of like licking it up.
(23:55):
I've got these big huge chef spoons that I use, right,
And then I put it on a paper towel. Let
it drink a couple seconds, and I'm like, holy shit,
did I just do something different with a grilled cheese
sandwich that no one? I started to look it up.
I couldn't find there's like, you know, science nerds that
are trying to like figure out how crispy dry bread is.
I found some science articles on it, but I'm like,
(24:17):
that's just like next level. I had never heard of
that before.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
So can you Is it easy to baste on a
pancake griddle?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Though?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Because I feel like the thing about pasting is when
you have that pin, you kind of tilted up and
you kind of let all the butter kind of come
to the one edge, and then you can start basting easily.
Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Here's the I'm glad you brought that up, because here's
the variation. Because you're right, you can't tilt a pancake griddle,
all right, So what I do, right, I'll riddle them
dry and then I'll take a butter, pop it in
the microwave, right with garlican oh yeah, and a little
bit of rosemary, and I'll melt it. And then I'll
(24:57):
take a pastry brush. I'll brush yep. Right, yeah, uh huh.
You dip it into the uh huh uh huh. You
dip it into the melted butter, and you start to
you start to paint, you know, the tops of these
grilled cheese sandwiches, and you flip it over, and you
flip it over, flip whatever. So it's the contrast that
you're going for that makes a spectacular grilled cheese sandwich.
(25:22):
You want the contrast between the crispy and the blubbery,
and that, to me is the spectacular texture bomb of
a really great grilled cheese sandwich flavor aside, right, because
you get the cheese you like, you get the bread,
you like, whatever, whatever, But it's the contrast of the
texture that I think takes it to the next level. Yeah,
(25:43):
And it was just so incredibly delicious, city bomb city
so incredibly good, so incredibly good. Now, the producer had
one on a food network dot com and pulled off
a recipe which was kind of like, kind of fancy,
and I think it's really great. If you just search
time Florence grilled cheese recipes will follow probably find this
one too, and then you could stuff you could stuff
(26:04):
anything into it. Right. The one that she found, which
I thought was really great, uses uh, not only mayonnaise
on the inside of the bread, but also a little
bit of mustard, which is really kind of nice. Yeah, okay,
light yep, yep, and then and then uh and then
you can uh I think it was I was bree cheese, right,
sliced apple mm hmm, and then fully cooked crispy bacon.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Okay, well, now I know you Stan watched that together.
Now it's a different type of sandwich though, I feel like.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, but but but well, listen, once you start going
down the rabbit hole, you can put anything in this
and then that's my point, right, you can. You can
really start. It's not like that sort of diner grilled
cheese sandwich kind of perfected, which to me, I always
think about how fabulous kind of make the most basic
thing in the world, And this the grilled cheese thing
I was telling about before. That's it for sure, for sure.
(26:54):
But then if you want to get fancy pants with it,
and sometimes you do, right yep, that's what you pull out,
the contrast between salty and sweet and savory, and you
can put I've made a grilled cheese sandwich. This one's
kind of fun too, and I'm thinking about this in
real time. I made a grilled strawberry a strawberry grilled
(27:15):
cheese sandwich one time, which is kind of fun, and
I haven't so funny, and think about this. I haven't
pulled this recipe out in fifteen years, but you would.
You take brioche, slice brioche, and you take a ring
cutter and you punch out circles in it, and then
you smear the outside with with butter and you dab
it in sugar. Ooh, right, and then on the inside
(27:36):
it's bree sliced strawberries and then a really great strawberry jam.
And then you put two of these together. Yeah, that's
and it's really really great. And then so it's breoshe
and then it's like the sugary crust on the outside.
And then you griddle this at a kind of a
low temperature because because the sugar will burn, and you
kind of create this like crim breuleg grilled cheese sandwich
(27:58):
with like fresh strawberries and bree in the middle. And
that's that's kind of next level fun too, So listen,
the grill chee sandwich is it's kind of one of
those things. If you can perfect the basic, then wherever
you want to take this, whatever is in your fridge,
you can make it your own. But the dry toast
then buttered. I think that's one of the greatest things
(28:20):
I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I'm gonna try this. I think this week I might
make a TikTok about it and totally make it right.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Talk. I'm gonna take talk it up. Listen. My ideas
belong to everybody. So I'm just excited that we're talking
about this because you know, it's these simple recipes that
everybody really really goes for. You know, I've written like
some pretty complex, fancy recipes, but it's always like the
simple ones that people you know, really crave and they remember.
(28:48):
And so that dunked into you know, I usually kind
of pair this with my roasted tomato soup. So grilled
cheese tomato soup, combo boom. Everybody likes that. So just
really quickly on that one. So that's I'll take two
Kansas Amrizono tomatoes, open it up, and then I'll drain
the tomatoes. Okay, keep the liquid, but drain the tomatoes, okay.
(29:08):
And then I'll take a little bit of white onion
and just kind of shift an ond that kind of
cut into like a little thin ribbons, right, Julianne actually,
and then and then a couple of cloves of garlic,
smashed fresh rosemary sprigs and just kind of put it
on the sheet tray, right, a little bit of olive oil,
little bit of salt, pepper, pop it out of the
broiler for like, I don't know, for like ten minutes
or so, and you want to let the tomatoes just
(29:29):
kind of cook and char a little bit and then
and then dump those into a saute pan. Finish it
with the tomato water, okay, because you want you want
to constitute the tomato flavor, cook them, and then reintroduce
that liquid back because that's got great flavor too. Finish
it with some cream, which is really nice. And then
I'll either take that liquid put into a blender like
a Vita Prep high speed blender and just make it
(29:52):
baby food smooth, which is so delicious, or if you
have a stick blender an immersion blender to drop it
in there. A lot of people like that too. Just
make sure that it's as a little pulp as possible.
And then I'd like, like the Pinky's Up version, We'll
take a little bit of the heavy cream, reduce it
with some rosemary and some garlic, and I'll do it
like a little fancy like rosemary drizzle with the cream
(30:13):
on top that with the grilled cheese dunk inside of it.
It's just heavn That's just one of the most fabulous
combinations ever.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Love it well, everyone, keep the questions coming in. If
you want to send in some audio messages or videos,
we'd love that as well. If you see a new
trend on the web that we need to know about.
Send it in and uh we're here to educate or
debunk whatever you got for us, So keep sending things
in roll into those dms, and as always, you can
follow us on at two Dudes in a Kitchen. Don't
forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll
(30:43):
be back on Thursday with Roddy dov Lukia who has
a new cookbook out called Joyful which is all plant
based recipes, which is gonna be a really really fun
interview you do not want to miss. We will see
you next time, or you will see me on TikTok
drunk making a grilled.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Cheese sandwich and you better be drunk.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Oh yeah, see you guys. All right, guys, thanks for listening.
Follow us on Instagram at two Dudes in a Kitchen.
Make sure to write us a review and leave us
five stars.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
We'll take that and we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I see you next time
It's two Dudes in a Kitchen with Tyler Florence.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
And Wells Adams, an iHeartRadio podcast. All right, time for
our episode of two Dudes in the Kitchen. It's Wells
Adams and Tyler Florence hanging out with the Tyler. Where
are you? You don't, I don't know. Where are you
in Florida? Now?
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Are you still in the sound? Does it look very
It looks Florida right my backdrop.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It looks sunny back there.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeahah, yeah, I'm in Tampa. I'm actually staying in this
really fabulous hotel. I don't think I've suggested one hotel
that I've stayed in since i've beenwn the road. I've
been on the road for five weeks. Brother, ross long time.
What I do to the craft? Right? Yeah, it's too long,
(00:42):
but wrapping up this week. But I'm staying at this
place called the Pally House in Tampa. And it's in
a really groovy neighborhood called the Hyde Park and it's
very soho house if you know what that is. The
design is amazing. My wife found it and so yeah,
I've been here for I don't know two days, but
I'm heading to Miami. For the finale of the Great
(01:03):
Food Truck Race, which is you know what, We've been
on the road for this long and I'm super pumped
about it because we just got a brand new president
of Programming with the network and it was her fabulous
idea to say, let's do the finale at the biggest
Food Network festival in the country. And so I'm going
to get fifty thousand dollars away next weekend to one
(01:24):
of the top two food trucks that we have left.
And it's been going to be really, really exciting. I
can't wait for that great programming.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
That's amazing. What is the best restaurant in Tampa?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Gosh, well, there's Burned Steakhouse, which is well there. You know,
it's kind of interesting, like Tampa is kind of a
really up and coming foodie town. There's lots of really
good food here. My favorite restaurant has to be Burned Steakhouse.
And as a guy who has a steakhouse, you know,
the steaks are like like, okay, I guess right. I
mean it's but the facility on the inside's kind of wild.
(01:55):
They ban saw and cut every steak to order. I
got a chance to walk in the kitchen and watch
them work. It's a it's a mammoth operation. They do
five hundred covers of night. It's kind of like one
of those places, right, So you order steak, you get
the temperature and it comes with what it comes with,
and I think it's a baked potato and like broccoli, right,
But the meat is pretty good. But what they're really
really known for is they're wineless.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The wineless wine cellar.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
The wine cellar, I mean it is. It is a
world phenomenon. It's like going back into like Pompeii, Like
they've been collecting wine since like the fifties and sixties
and they just have an epic, world class collection of
some of the best grape juice on planet Earth and
some vintages that kind of go back, you know, half
(02:37):
a century and stuff like that. So it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I've been there, went there for my brother's bachelor
party and boyl boy, was that a fun restaurant to
go to. So I's highly recommend in the heat map. Well, yeah,
going from pinkies up, great steak to kind of simple food.
You know today is a is an answer you know
(02:59):
list in her question day. But we decided to kind
of deviate from that because we had a revelation last
week based on the conversation that we had when we
were talking with Nicole about grilled cheese sandwiches, and we
thought we would do an entire episode just talking about
(03:20):
arguably one of the greatest sandwiches ever created, in the
grilled cheese sandwich. And before we start talking about the
grilled cheese sandwich, I thought we would just kind of
go through some kind of fun facts about grilled cheese
sandwiches that you might not know about that our producers
put together, which I thought was really really cool. So
number one, grilled cheese did not start out as a
(03:42):
sandwich during World War Two. It was just one piece
of bread with a sliced cheese on top. That just
sounds kind of like a poor man's pizza. But in
the sixties that's when they added the top piece of
bread and then it became the grilled cheese. La once
had a grilled cheese invitational from nineteen ninety three to
twenty fourteen. Self proclaimed experts gathered to compete where one
(04:04):
of the makers would be crowned the best. Sadly, the
fest ended three years ago, but feel free to start
your own time.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
That's very la by the way, right, Yeah, like the
grilled cheese invitation in Los Angeles, I would show for that.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
One sandwich has around three hundred calories. This according to
my fitnesspal dot com. But obviously you can make that
less with like lower fat cheese. It was originally called
a cheese dream between nineteen twenty and nineteen seventy. This
is what you would ask for at a restaurant. And
I don't know why I went away from that because
(04:39):
I do. I feel like it it more embodies what
it is. It is very very dreamy dream of a.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Grilled cheese, right, Like that's the stretch. Come on, yeah,
and here's the dreaming.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Here's the weirdest one. A grilled cheese once sold for
twenty eight thousand dollars. Diana douce Heer, work from home
jewelry designer, said her ten year old grilled cheese sandwich
bore the image of the Virgin Mary. She put it
on eBay and it sold to Goldenpalace dot com and
online casino for twenty eight thousand dollars. Have you ever
(05:11):
sold anything for twenty eight thousand dollars auction items.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, for sure, man, much more. Yeah, like dinner for
you know, six people at their house, hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh, which kind I've just done, kidney.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
But listen, it wasn't blessed with you know, the Virgin
Mary Christ Yeah, exactly, or whatever the in Virgin Mary
on top of it. Yeah, I do remember that. Wasn't that.
You know there's people who make grilled che sandwiches with irons, right,
I mean I've seen that a couple of times. Oh yeah,
it wasn't a fame. That was kind of a famous
Johnny Depp scene too, right in one of his movies.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Or are you talking about the grill the thing that
that like.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
It like an iron? Yeah, not a penny. Oh I'm
not like, just like make it with an iron, so
you can make it anything high? Yeah, totally, you can do.
Like if you're in your hotel.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Room, you could probably make grilled cheese with the iron
there and uh.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Listen, you know I'm just looking around right now, there
a microwave ove in. I always tell people I can
cook on a car hood, and it's kind of true.
If I can get heat, I can make something delicious.
I promise you.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, Well, we're not too far away from National Grilled
Cheese Day, which is coming up on April twelve, So
let's start talking about the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. I
think the first question that we need to ask Tyler
is what is the best bread for a grilled cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Well, listen, there's lots of places to get started with that,
and I like that kind of historical recap, but it
goes a little deeper than some of those great facts
that are producer put together, because the first American grilled
cheese recipe was actually written by Sarah Tyson Royer in
nineteen o two and it was in the Missus Royer's
(06:46):
cookbook and was published by the Lady Swam Journal. And
it was a very very like simple recipe because it
was really more like grilled cheese toast. Right. And I'm
kind of reading this right now. I have to look
it up, but the recipe reads, it's one paragraph. The
whole restle right, arrange squares of buttered toast on a
silver or stoneware platter, cover thickly with grated cheese. Stand
(07:09):
the dish in the rack in the middle of the oven,
and serves as soon as the cheese melts. Okay. So
that was the first documented American version of a grilled
cheese sandwich, dating back to nineteen oh two. And then
if you go around the world, there are versions of
a grilled chees sandwich virtually everywhere, with like crispy stuff
on the outside and melted cheese in the middle. And
if you go to England, there's a thing called the
(07:32):
grilled cheese toast he that you're gonna pick up at pubs,
which is really kind of cool. It's usually dry on
the outside, so they don't put any butter on the outside.
That put the butter in usually sharp cheddar in the middle,
and that's something that you're gonna get with, you know,
a nice pint at a pub someplace. Also in the UK,
they have a version of a grilled chees sandwich called
the Welsh rare bit. Have you had that before? No?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
But I like the names. It sounds almost like my name,
the Welsh rabbit.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, well w e lsh Welsh, right and exactly. And
instead of rabbit, it's it's it's spelled rare bit, but
it's pronounced rabbit, right. And this is an open faced
grilled chees sandwich and they make a cheese sauce which
is kind of muddy. This is not my favorite grilled
chees sandwich, but it's kind of interesting anyway. But it's
made with beer grated cheese, mustard and worcesterre sauce, right,
(08:21):
so it's kind of savor a little bit of paprika
and salt pepper, and they'll smear this on the toast
to put more cheese on top of this, and then
they bake it. Okay, So is that one? And then
there's there's the the I think the pinnacle of the
European experience when it comes with grilled cheese, and that's
the croke monsieur. Okay, So if you go to France, right,
so we're in France, you got to talk about brioche, right,
(08:42):
So that's I think the best. Now, a croke monteur
is made with a grey are bechamel, which is sort
of a sauce made with whole milk and u and
then ingrated green are cheese and then they'll they'll put
a smear of this cheese sauce on the inside the
bread and then on one side is thin sliced ham
the size it's grated grear cheese. They'll smash them together
(09:03):
and they'll put a nice lick of the grier bescha
melt on top of that more grated grear cheese, and
they'll bake that until it's bubbly and golden brown. And
then there's the female version, which is the croke Madam,
which is a croke monsieur with a sunny side egg
on top of it. And that's just spectacular, not justis rwich. Well, yeah,
you cut into that and the yolk melts and oh,
(09:23):
it's just so creamy that that is as good as
it gets, right. And then there's the panini right in Italy,
which is really interesting. And then the first recipes for
a panini dated back to cookbooks from the sixteenth century.
So the idea of putting like cheese and bread, it's
not an American thing necessarily, although I think we do it,
of course, very very well. But the panini is the
(09:46):
first sandwich that really starts to incorporate different things other
than just cheese and meat, right, because obviously there's vegetables
out of top, a nod artichoke spread, you know, mortadella fontina,
great soft you know, mozzarella cheese or brought the like
really good extra virgin olive oil parmesan cheese, of course,
and I think that's really delicious. And then there's like
(10:07):
there's one in Australia called Tiger Toast, which they make
with vegemite, which is really kind of interesting, vegemite and
grated cheese. Do you like vegemite?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
I don't. It's a little pungent for me.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
It's salty, you know what I mean. It's just a
nice smear. But they call it Tiger Toast in Australia.
And then there's Arepa Dequeso from from Venezuela, and Arepa
is made kind of like with a massa dough, right,
and they stuffed cheese on the inside. And I'll make
these like little hockey puck things and they'll griddle them
very similar to an English muffin, where it gets crispy
(10:40):
on the outside and you kind of break it open
and it's super yummy. So anyway, grilled cheeses are all
over the place. We didn't necessarily invented it, although I
think we've took it to the next level.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
What about fondue? Is fondue a grilled cheese.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
No, I mean vondu is cheese, but you stick kind
of toasted bread. Plus she put mushrooms or sausage or
all kinds of stuff in that, right. I mean, I'd
like a good fun do. And that's a really great
topic for a whole other kind of fan podcast if
anybody wants a good low down, low down and how
to make a really good fun do. I got a
great recipe for that as well. But so they answer
your question, I think to make a really good grilled cheese,
(11:20):
of course, you got a couple of things here, right, Yeah,
of course you need really good cheese. Now you can
go like old school and talk about craft American cheese, right,
because that's the thing, and it's I like to go
double thick with that. If you're gonna make it, right,
it's two slices, not one, because you really want that
deep stretch. I think it's really nice. I don't think
it's as satisfying as other cheeses, you know. Okay, my
(11:43):
favorite cheese in the world, hands down is mount Ham
Triple creambree from Cowgirl Creamery in Point Raise, California, and
it's in Moren County. It's in the same county where
I live, and I just think it's the world's greatest cheese.
It's the cheese that we put on top of our
burger at Miller and Lux and that inside of a
(12:05):
grilled cheese sandwich. And it's basically breed California bree full fat,
super kind of like white mushroom, nutty notes to it,
good wash line on top of that. That's just spectacular, right.
And then if you like the cheddar thing, I think
that's pretty good too. But Monster, if you're really going
for that instagram super stretchy thing, right, munster cheese Because
we actually did this in one of my old cookbooks.
(12:27):
We did a cheese stretch comparison, like what cheese is
the stretchest. We were doing it for a recipe for
macaroni and cheese, which kind of gives you that same
stretchy vibe. But Monster cheese had the biggest stretchy effect
that tasted the best, And it's kind of like one
of those cheeses that's sort of off the radar that
not a lot of people talk about. Do you hunt
(12:48):
down munster cheese at a grocery store?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I don't, but I do like munster every time I've
had it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, you know it's delicious. I think it's really really great. Okay,
So I like what I like, You like what you like.
Put it together. It doesn't really matter, right. The bread
is gonna be really important now. Now. I like a
really good sour dough bread. But sometimes I'll get a
loaf of sour dough bread and I'll cut into it
and the holes are gigantic. Like if you get like
a really big guitar that does not make a good
(13:15):
grill cheese sandwich. You need a tight crumb, right, You
need something that's like a really kind of tight uh
small hole bread because you really want the hold the
whole thing together. Right, So I like sandwich bread. As
a matter of fact, I had to call my wife
and there's there's a brand that she buys from Costco
okay called Artizano. Do you know this? I don't a
(13:37):
R T E S A n O. She buys it.
She gets it delivered for the Costco delivery once week
and it is the sp It's like I call it
marshmallow bread. Okay, Artisano. Check it out.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Artisana, we hold on it.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
You can get Costco delivered to you.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
You don't get Costco delivered, Bro, we don't. It's just
two of us.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
What we what we buy in bulk for Oh, I.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Don't know what I got. Like I've got three kids
and you know, yeah, it makes total sense for you, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
But I've been wanting to become a Costco guy and
I did not know they delivered, so that might change
things for me.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Do you have a Costco membership?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
I was actually given one for Christmas and I haven't
gone and like turned it in.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It's a very adult thing to have, you know what
I mean. It's like if you got a Costco membership,
that means you're officially in the suburbs for the weekend
and you like to buy things a book. But anyway,
so that's how we grocery shop. My wife puts that
order in, it comes in. But to me, this is
my favorite new bread just because it has like there's
a little bit of sugar to it. It's technically a
white bread. It's kind of nice crust on the outside
(14:35):
of it, and the texture is just so like a marshmallow.
It's just so fabulous, really really good bread. And that
to me, I think I've made like the best real
cheese sandwiches in a while with that particular bread. Although
I do love a really good bit hard, hard crust
sour dough bread. And then you have to kind of
cut around it because sometimes you get this big jigging
in the coals and it doesn't make a really good
(14:56):
grobble cheese sandwich. Okay, there's that now, the mayonnaise versus
butter story, right, people, you know, like there was a
whole bit thing a couple of years ago where people like,
you gotta put mayonnaise on the outside of the bread.
You gotta smear it's not butter, it's mayonnaise, right. I
actually don't like that, right, because like mayonnaise itself. And
I'm talking about like not aoli that you make from
(15:18):
scratch with really good extra virgin novel oil. I'm talking
about stuff that you buy commercially at the store. It's
made with soybean oil predominantly, and when you heat it up,
it just doesn't. It doesn't smell fantastic, Like it's really
good cold on a sandwich, right, but when you heat
it up, it just doesn't. I don't like it, right,
I mean, it's just it's just hot goo, to be
honest with you and it's fat and eggs and I
(15:38):
don't think it smells great, but I do love it
on the inside. Now it's a whole different thing. Yeah right,
So so pick your cheese, pick your bread, right, but
you gotta go mayonnaise on the inside. I think that's
really great. Sides another, both sides are yeah, yeah, because
you got to have the glue to hold the stuff together, right.
So if you're gonna put some stuff in it, right,
it could be meat or you know, I made like
(16:00):
a French onion grilled cheese sandwich with like deeply caramelized onions.
We've made a restaurant with like shredded braised short rib
and all kinds of cool stuff. But you need a goo,
right to hold the stuff together while you're flipping it
over it. Okay, So salt and pepper on the inside
of the of the bread, I think is really crucial
(16:21):
and not a lot of people do that, and I
think that's a that's a chef touch. So okay, bread
on the inside, mayonnaise and salt and pepper, got it,
salt pepper broke? Okay, great cheese. Try to make sure
that you've got into in coverage. Okay, so if you're
if you think about this, you don't want to put
cheese in the middle and then notice that you've got
a big, you know, half inch or quarter inch gap
(16:43):
from one another. Make sure that you because sometimes you
can take a few slices of cheese and kind of
get some good even coverage on both sides, which I
think is really important. But make sure you get it
goes edge to edge. I think it's good. That's critical
because you want you want the there's no bad bite anywhere.
Now what pan do you cook this?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
In? One question? First? Okay, so I've got two pieces
of bread. I've got mayonnaise on both sides of open
faces of the bread. Then I've got salt and pepper
on both pieces of bread. Then do I have cheese
on both on both pieces or just on one side?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
No, Well it doesn't matter right because you're gonna put bread.
You're gonna put the cheese on one side, and then you're
gonna take the top side of the of the bread
and you're gonna smush it together and the mayonnaise is
gonna hold it in place.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Got it, So you're not starting to cook it with
both the faces open, and then put on top, put
one on the top of the other. Do you see
what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I do see what we're saying. And that's what what's
his name did in Chef when he did that famous
cheese scene. You know, he cooked them both separately with
cheese and whatever. I don't think it's necessary, but it
doesn't matter. So you want to put the sandwich together.
So you've actually got at this point, you have an
untoasted grilled cheese sandwich. Okay, so now what's your pant Okay, okay,
(17:56):
I'm locked and loaded. I want to make this grilled
cheese sandwich. It's gonna be spectacular. What do you grab?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Well, I think there's a lot of options. I have
one of those pans that has like the grill marks
on it, and I kind of like that. It's like
a cast iron with grill marks on it, and then
it gives those grill marks on the grilled cheese, which
I think is kind of cool. But I will say
that's Panini, like right, yeah, it's kind of Panini, Like
you totally right. Usually, what I'm making this, I am drunk,
(18:25):
so I want the easiest thing possible, which is my
non stick. Yeah, pan butter in there and then I
throw it in. What's the right answer?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Okay, but how many grilled cheese sandwich? How many girl
cheese are you making it a time? This is the problem. Yeah,
I got a solution for you. Okay, tell me because
when this is where I think making a grilled cheese
sandwich is actually really relatively difficult to make because you
can only get one sandwich, like the average like twelve
inch saute pan. You can only get one sandwich in
there at a time. If you try to get two,
(18:56):
you know they one's climbing up the side and the
cheese melts out, and then you try to fly, you don't.
There's no room to flip, right, and so you kind
of make a mess and it takes a long time
to make, and I think a lot of people will
suffer from that. Do you have a pancake griddle, like
an electric pancake riddle that you get from Target for
like twenty five dollars? Do you have one of those? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
We got one, fancy one for when we got married.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Perfect. Okay, so I've got one, I swear god. We
got it at Target ten years ago when my kids
were little, little, little and I also make really good
pancakes at the house, and I pull this thing out
once or twice a month, and it is awesome. It's
like a horse, and it's got a digital thermometer. So
three seventy five is that magic temperature that makes a
(19:37):
really good grill chey sandwich, Right, So I can really
get pretty precise with this and make a fantastic one.
If you're gonna pull out a pan, I recommend pulling
out an electric, especially if you're making more than one
at a time, because you want everybody to eat at
the same time, right, So it wouldn't it be nice
if they all came off the griddle at the same time.
It would be nice. So plug in this pancake griddle.
(19:57):
I think it's bomb twenty five bucks. Get them from
Amazon and electric plug in countertop pancake grittle nonstick. Get
yourself one of those. You're gonna use it a bunch.
I use them all the time, not even for pancakes,
but especially for grilled tree sandwiches. Okay, So here was
my light bulb moment as a chef. And everything I've done,
(20:19):
I mean, I've written seventeen books, right, I mean, but
occasionally I'll have one of those like light bulb moments, like,
holy fucking shit, I've never thought about that in my life. Okay, So,
if you put butter on the outside of a slice
of bread, okay, butter contains a couple of things. It
contains butterfat, right, So if you melt butter in the microwave,
you'll see it separate in between the golden fat and
(20:40):
then what's called the way, which is the milk solids
in the bottom, and that's water. Okay. So if you
smear whole butter on the outside of a piece of
bread and you start to toast it, the butter, the
water is gonna melt with the fat at the same rate.
And I think it makes soggy bread.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I think it makes soggy toast, right, totally. So to
retell the story in case somebody missed the last episode,
my sixteen year old son came home from school for
lunch and I was on a conference call and he
was just like, hey Dad. You know, I'm like, do
you want do you I was mouthing to him, do
you want a grilled cheese? Right? He goes, yeah. So
I'm in the middle of this conversation I'm listening, I'm
(21:18):
talking as I'm starting to do this, and I forgot
to put butter on the outside of the bread, and
I dropped it into the pan dry, and I didn't
even think about it until I flipped it over, and
what was revealed to me, I think is just pure magic.
When you make toast, do you butter the toast before
you put in the toaster or after after? Right? Toasted
(21:42):
bread dry is a fabulous, fabulous texture. It is glass shattery,
really really crispy. It's not unctious yet because it doesn't
have that lick of fat on the outside, but texture wise,
it was the next level of a grilled cheese sandwich, okay,
because the bread was just like so incredibly crispy. And
(22:07):
I love the contrast between really really crispy and the
blubbery cheese in the middle. I don't like a soggy bread,
and then I don't like soggy and blubber. I like
crispy and blood. Right, that's when it just becomes like
you don't know what you're eating, Like what is this? Right? Okay,
So here's my thing, and I want everybody to give
(22:28):
this a try. Okay, so you can either do this
on the pancake griddle, because when I'm cooking at the house,
it's always for like, you know, two, four, six, five, ten,
twenty people, right, So I like to crank up the
pancake griddle and then if you're gonna make one grilled
cheese sandwich in the pant, drop it in dry. Right, So,
just to recap, you got the you got the bread,
two sides, mayonnaise on the inside, salt, pepper, smush, cheese, cheese,
(22:51):
your choice. You're gonna drop it in dry, flip it
over once. You're gonna flip it over a couple of
times to make sure it's nice. And even so, it's
not gonna burn, and it's certainly not going to burn
as fast as butter on the bread will burn, right,
So you can kind of let it go for a
while too, which is kind of nice. It gets really
really crispy now. And once with one girl cheese sandwich
(23:14):
in one pant, what I did was I threw in
butter at the end and then I started to base
it like a filetm in yon with brown butter. Have
you guys seen that Instagram thing if you follow chefs
and restaurants where they're like basing a beautiful steak with
butter and like herbs and garlic and all that kind
of stuff works, That's what I did. And so I
(23:35):
was licking this, you know, like throwing brown butter on
top of this earth shattering crispy toast, and it just
started to like sink into it in a way that
was just so interesting. And then I flipped it over
and I threw in another pat of butter, about two tablespoons.
It wasn't really that much. It wasn't crazy, right, and
then I was just sort of like licking it up.
(23:55):
I've got these big huge chef spoons that I use, right,
And then I put it on a paper towel. Let
it drink a couple seconds, and I'm like, holy shit,
did I just do something different with a grilled cheese
sandwich that no one? I started to look it up.
I couldn't find there's like, you know, science nerds that
are trying to like figure out how crispy dry bread is.
I found some science articles on it, but I'm like,
(24:17):
that's just like next level. I had never heard of
that before.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
So can you Is it easy to baste on a
pancake griddle?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Though?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Because I feel like the thing about pasting is when
you have that pin, you kind of tilted up and
you kind of let all the butter kind of come
to the one edge, and then you can start basting easily.
Do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Here's the I'm glad you brought that up, because here's
the variation. Because you're right, you can't tilt a pancake griddle,
all right, So what I do, right, I'll riddle them
dry and then I'll take a butter, pop it in
the microwave, right with garlican oh yeah, and a little
bit of rosemary, and I'll melt it. And then I'll
(24:57):
take a pastry brush. I'll brush yep. Right, yeah, uh huh.
You dip it into the uh huh uh huh. You
dip it into the melted butter, and you start to
you start to paint, you know, the tops of these
grilled cheese sandwiches, and you flip it over, and you
flip it over, flip whatever. So it's the contrast that
you're going for that makes a spectacular grilled cheese sandwich.
(25:22):
You want the contrast between the crispy and the blubbery,
and that, to me is the spectacular texture bomb of
a really great grilled cheese sandwich flavor aside, right, because
you get the cheese you like, you get the bread,
you like, whatever, whatever, But it's the contrast of the
texture that I think takes it to the next level. Yeah,
(25:43):
And it was just so incredibly delicious, city bomb city
so incredibly good, so incredibly good. Now, the producer had
one on a food network dot com and pulled off
a recipe which was kind of like, kind of fancy,
and I think it's really great. If you just search
time Florence grilled cheese recipes will follow probably find this
one too, and then you could stuff you could stuff
(26:04):
anything into it. Right. The one that she found, which
I thought was really great, uses uh, not only mayonnaise
on the inside of the bread, but also a little
bit of mustard, which is really kind of nice. Yeah, okay,
light yep, yep, and then and then uh and then
you can uh I think it was I was bree cheese, right,
sliced apple mm hmm, and then fully cooked crispy bacon.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Okay, well, now I know you Stan watched that together.
Now it's a different type of sandwich though, I feel like.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, but but but well, listen, once you start going
down the rabbit hole, you can put anything in this
and then that's my point, right, you can. You can
really start. It's not like that sort of diner grilled
cheese sandwich kind of perfected, which to me, I always
think about how fabulous kind of make the most basic
thing in the world, And this the grilled cheese thing
I was telling about before. That's it for sure, for sure.
(26:54):
But then if you want to get fancy pants with it,
and sometimes you do, right yep, that's what you pull out,
the contrast between salty and sweet and savory, and you
can put I've made a grilled cheese sandwich. This one's
kind of fun too, and I'm thinking about this in
real time. I made a grilled strawberry a strawberry grilled
(27:15):
cheese sandwich one time, which is kind of fun, and
I haven't so funny, and think about this. I haven't
pulled this recipe out in fifteen years, but you would.
You take brioche, slice brioche, and you take a ring
cutter and you punch out circles in it, and then
you smear the outside with with butter and you dab
it in sugar. Ooh, right, and then on the inside
(27:36):
it's bree sliced strawberries and then a really great strawberry jam.
And then you put two of these together. Yeah, that's
and it's really really great. And then so it's breoshe
and then it's like the sugary crust on the outside.
And then you griddle this at a kind of a
low temperature because because the sugar will burn, and you
kind of create this like crim breuleg grilled cheese sandwich
(27:58):
with like fresh strawberries and bree in the middle. And
that's that's kind of next level fun too, So listen,
the grill chee sandwich is it's kind of one of
those things. If you can perfect the basic, then wherever
you want to take this, whatever is in your fridge,
you can make it your own. But the dry toast
then buttered. I think that's one of the greatest things
(28:20):
I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I'm gonna try this. I think this week I might
make a TikTok about it and totally make it right.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Talk. I'm gonna take talk it up. Listen. My ideas
belong to everybody. So I'm just excited that we're talking
about this because you know, it's these simple recipes that
everybody really really goes for. You know, I've written like
some pretty complex, fancy recipes, but it's always like the
simple ones that people you know, really crave and they remember.
(28:48):
And so that dunked into you know, I usually kind
of pair this with my roasted tomato soup. So grilled
cheese tomato soup, combo boom. Everybody likes that. So just
really quickly on that one. So that's I'll take two
Kansas Amrizono tomatoes, open it up, and then I'll drain
the tomatoes. Okay, keep the liquid, but drain the tomatoes, okay.
(29:08):
And then I'll take a little bit of white onion
and just kind of shift an ond that kind of
cut into like a little thin ribbons, right, Julianne actually,
and then and then a couple of cloves of garlic,
smashed fresh rosemary sprigs and just kind of put it
on the sheet tray, right, a little bit of olive oil,
little bit of salt, pepper, pop it out of the
broiler for like, I don't know, for like ten minutes
or so, and you want to let the tomatoes just
(29:29):
kind of cook and char a little bit and then
and then dump those into a saute pan. Finish it
with the tomato water, okay, because you want you want
to constitute the tomato flavor, cook them, and then reintroduce
that liquid back because that's got great flavor too. Finish
it with some cream, which is really nice. And then
I'll either take that liquid put into a blender like
a Vita Prep high speed blender and just make it
(29:52):
baby food smooth, which is so delicious, or if you
have a stick blender an immersion blender to drop it
in there. A lot of people like that too. Just
make sure that it's as a little pulp as possible.
And then I'd like, like the Pinky's Up version, We'll
take a little bit of the heavy cream, reduce it
with some rosemary and some garlic, and I'll do it
like a little fancy like rosemary drizzle with the cream
(30:13):
on top that with the grilled cheese dunk inside of it.
It's just heavn That's just one of the most fabulous
combinations ever.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Love it well, everyone, keep the questions coming in. If
you want to send in some audio messages or videos,
we'd love that as well. If you see a new
trend on the web that we need to know about.
Send it in and uh we're here to educate or
debunk whatever you got for us, So keep sending things
in roll into those dms, and as always, you can
follow us on at two Dudes in a Kitchen. Don't
forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll
(30:43):
be back on Thursday with Roddy dov Lukia who has
a new cookbook out called Joyful which is all plant
based recipes, which is gonna be a really really fun
interview you do not want to miss. We will see
you next time, or you will see me on TikTok
drunk making a grilled.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Cheese sandwich and you better be drunk.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Oh yeah, see you guys. All right, guys, thanks for listening.
Follow us on Instagram at two Dudes in a Kitchen.
Make sure to write us a review and leave us
five stars.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
We'll take that and we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I see you next time
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.