The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Grilled Cheese

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

News to us at Radiotopia, but there are some of you out there who have some really strong feelings about grilled cheese, almost enough for a whole separate podcast. What is it about this seemingly mellow, humble sandwich — a favorite of both small children and stoners — that elicits all this controversy? (It’s always the quiet ones.) Even if you don’t like grilled cheese, it’s worth listening just for Kenji’s genius lifehack involving sausage.PS - If you are Team Triangle (IYDKNYK), get yourself this rad t-shirt (100% of profits go to ACLU) PPS - for perfect grilled cheese, listen to this playlistRecipes mentioned: Deb’s Frico Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (from Smitten Kitchen) Deb’s Classic Grilled Cheese + Cream of Tomato Soup (from Smitten Kitchen) Kenji’s Grilled Cheese Sandwich (from Serious Eats) Kenji’s Good Grilled Cheese (from Kenji’s Cooking Show) Kenji’s Late Night Chorizo Grilled Cheese (from Kenji’s Cooking Show)

Hey friends, it's Kevin Pang from America's Test Kitchen. I want to tell you about our storytelling podcast, Proof. We tell stories like follow the U.S. military's decades-long journey of creating an MRE pizza. We go behind the scenes of the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd to learn just how do the show's infamous pies get made. Every episode is filled with dynamic characters and lots of twists and turns. Check out Proof wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Hey, Recipe listeners. We are planning a special mailbag episode and we want, no need to hear

from you. We have thrown a lot of information at you, so we want to know, do you have any questions about anything we've cooked so far this season? The second thing we want to know is what are your pantry and kitchen essentials? If someone is brand new to cooking or setting up their first kitchen, what are the must haves? And we'll share ours too, of course. We have a few ways that you can get in touch with us. Number one, post and tag us at Kenji and Deb on Instagram or TikTok. Send us a DM if you're shot. Number two, email us at TheRecipeWithKenjiAndDad at gmail.com.

You can send us a message or a voice note. And finally, you can leave us a voicemail at 202-709-7606. We're so excited to hear from you. Thanks in advance. Deb, can I tell you what my grilled cheese ritual is? Yeah. I get the pan, grilled cheese ritual is? Yeah. I get the pan, I put it over heat four.

I let it heat up while I'm preparing the grilled cheese and while I'm putting the cheese in and while I'm slicing the bread and everything. As soon as I put it in the pan, I turn on the George Michael and Elton John version of Don't Let the Sun Go Down on me. And then I flip it when Eldon John comes in. Maybe it's just like a Pavlovian thing,

but that song I just associate it with the Good Girl Cheese. The timing works like with November Rain also, if you flip it when the guitar solo comes on. I'm going to try it for the full experience you need to have at the soundtrack too. From PRX's Radiotopia, this is The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for The New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen and she's also the author of three bestselling

cookbooks. We're both professional home cooks, which means we can and will make the same dish 57 times in our quest for the perfect recipe. And on this show we're going to share our techniques and ingredients so that you can figure out what works best for you. So we're talking grilled cheese this week. Yes! Not necessarily a follow up to our. So we're talking grilled cheese this week. Yes! Not necessarily a follow-up to our tomato soup episode,

but grilled cheese doesn't have to be something that only goes with tomato soup. Yeah, but you can't have tomato soup without grilled cheese. That would be like a crime. That's what's coming up on the recipe, so stay with us. Kenji, were you doing a little cooking before you came on today? My fingers are greasy with cheddar fat right now. Sounds like heaven to me. Cheddar fat seems to be more difficult to get off your fingers than just plain butter,

I find. I don't know. Interesting. There must be some science there. I don't think I can speak to it, but I can speak to the fact that when I make your Frico grilled cheese sandwich, everything gets greasier than with a normal grilled cheese.

You're welcome. It's a gift. My husband, when my daughter was little and she would make a mess at the table, he would be like, may I introduce you to Mr. Napkin? This is Mr. Napkin. And I'm having this moment where I'm looking at the table, he would be like, may I introduce you to Mr. Napkin? This is Mr. Napkin. And I'm having this moment where I'm looking at the table and I'm like, let me tell you about Mr. Napkin, Kenji. So first of all, let's talk about what recipes we made. Because the recipe of yours that

I made is your Frico grilled cheese. And so I followed this recipe very precisely to the point that I pulled out a ruler to make sure I was slicing my sourdough exactly a half inch thick. Oh my God. I pulled out the scale to make sure that I had exactly two ounces of grated sharp cheddar cheese and two tablespoons of butter. I made it exactly the way you said it.

The issue I ran into, and I ran into this every time I make a grilled cheese on sort of more rustic, like a sourdough bread, something with a bigger hole structure, is that no matter how much cheese you put into it in the middle, the cheese kind of just gets absorbed by the bread. When you make it on white sandwich bread with a denser crumb, you get that layer of cheese

in the middle and when you pull it apart, you get that real like gooey, oozy cheese pull. Whereas when you make it with an airy or sourdough with bigger holes in it, all the cheese kind of melds into it. And so you can put as much cheese as you want and it kind of just becomes one with the bread almost. I did say, I think that sandwich needs more cheese

than I wanted it to have the day I wrote it. Like these days I probably use at least, probably a little more, I mean, two ounces is like. That's the equivalent of four slices. Oh, okay, just because I half a cup of like grated cheddar. That's not really, that's not really a lot. I feel like you could definitely put more in there. But that was really all about the frigo.

Frigo is a traditional dish, which is potatoes with melted cheese that gets sort of crisp. And it's basically used to use up old rinds and end parts of cheese. But it's also refers to sort of these crackers made solely of melted cheese. And you probably see these all over restaurants and it's sort of these crackers made solely of melted cheese. And you probably see these all over restaurants

and it's sort of taken on a life of its own. But I love the idea of like taking the best parts to me of grilled cheese is the parts of the cheese that trickle out of the sandwich and land in the pan and get crispy and brown and more flavorful. It's like the brown butter of cheese, getting those and intentionally amping. Right, right, right. Getting those and intentionally amping them up,

putting extra in. So that was the concept behind the Frico grilled cheese recipe. And so you're spreading cheese into your flat pan, into your cast iron pan, then you're putting the sandwich into it. And the cheese melts and it leaves the layer of grease in the pan, but also when you peel it off and get it out,

you have that like sheath of cheese that protects the outside of the bread and prevents, you know, like when you make a normal grilled cheese, the butter soaks into the bread. But when you make a Frico grilled cheese with cheese on the outside and on the inside, the fat kind of glistens and sits on that kind of sheath of cheese and doesn't really penetrate. So it really gets on your fingers, which is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It's just a comment that we are recording this episode and I'm getting cheese fat all over my laptop and my desk and my pants.

So when we talk about grilled cheese sandwiches, you know, like the logistics of it, do you think that there's like one type of bread that's best for it? This is a good question. If I'm in the mood for a classic grilled cheese, which is like, you know, white sandwich bread, sliced sandwich bread from the supermarket,

maybe American cheese, maybe like, maybe cheddar, maybe a combination of the two in there, I would say there isn't an ideal bread, but there is an ideal bread given every mood and situation. And for the most part, if I'm in the mood for grilled cheese, I want it on sliced sandwich bread or shokupan. That would be sort of the one I turn to most as Japanese. So you like it, which just usually has a little bit

of sweetness to it. Shokupan has a slight sweetness. I would say less than standard American supermarket sandwich bread though, which can be very sweet. Definitely. But shokupan for me, it's more about the texture. It's like a thing I grew up with. My grandmother always got thick sliced shokupan

from the Japanese bakery. And so that kind of extra, I don't know what the texture is. It's a little bit firmer than sandwich bread, but it's also simultaneously kind of fluffier and certainly sort of more full in flavor than a supermarket sandwich bread. I think out here we have Oro Wheat, and on the East Coast it's called, what's it called?

Arnold, Arnold and Oro Wheat are the same brand. Yeah, Arnold is definitely the one we have. If we're buying a sandwich one, it'll be, you know, where the shelf life is the goal. Look at that, or we'll get a Pepperidge Farm country-wide or whatever. But there are a couple bakeries here where I've bought a good white sandwich bread

that had sourdough in it. It's not whole grain, it's not really a tough bread. It just has like a little more nuance to it, and I haveough in it. It's not whole grain. It's not really a tough bread. It just has like a little more nuance to it. And I have really enjoyed it, but that's not like a standard grocery store thing. So it's not necessarily applicable to everything. But this is not to me, like it's heavier than a supermarket plastic bag one,

but not heavy and dense like a, like a meesher, like a whole grain sourdough. Right, right, right. I wanna jump back to your Frico grilled cheese. I wish to register a complaint. Complain, is it that you don't have any napkins? It's partly that I don't have any napkins. But it's also that I don't like Frico grilled cheese.

I know I have a recipe for it in my book. I know I have a recipe for it on Serious Eats. I know it's a thing and people see it and it's like, oh yes, how could it not be better when there's extra cheese on the outside? I don't think the extra cheese on the outside actually adds to the grilled cheese experience. But for me, it takes away from the buttery bread.

And so the sandwich becomes kind of unbalanced. And for me, a grilled cheese, it's the cooked flavor of the cheese that suddenly transports me to a different dish. And so for me, like it loses the familiarity and the comfort when you do that. And I can understand why people like it, but every time I've done it,

I've come away thinking, I wish I hadn't done that. So you don't like the Frico on the outside and that is fine, because we respect all opinions here, even the wrong ones. But how would you feel if the couple, you did a couple little Frico puddle crisps and then you put them inside

your grilled cheese sandwich before you cooked it? Is that just still weird? Like think of it, it's like the potato chips inside a sandwich of grilled cheese. I think I'd have to be mentally prepared for it. It's also, you know, Frico is one of those things also where when it first comes out of the pan, Frico is kind of pliable the way like a twill is,

you know, like an almond twill, for example. Like it's still a little pliable and when you bite into it then it's kind of chewy. It has to kind of cool to turn crisp. So I'm worried that if you stick it in the middle, yeah, it'll end up chewy and pull out and give you like a layer of toughness in the center of the sandwich

as opposed to a layer of crispness. Okay, I see. There's no right and wrong. I think everybody wants it to be There's no right and wrong. I think people, everybody wants it to be a competition of right and wrong. And especially, and we've talked about this, like the spirit of this show is that like, we're excited by all things and you know,

we can joke that each other are wrong, but like, I think it's fun to talk about this stuff. Not everybody has to agree on one type of grilled cheese being the ur-grilled cheese. Plus I also have like five grilled cheese recipes on my site and they each do something different. Kenji, your Sirius Eats grilled cheese sandwich, which is very classic and it uses butter, hearty white bread you say such as Pepperidge Farm or Arnold, and then you use two to four

slices of American cheddar or Jack cheese. But the thing that's cool about your sandwich is that it is extra buttery. Because first we're going to brown your two pieces of bread in butter. And I love that you salt the pan too, which is like such a nice little extra on the bread. I actually do that when I roast vegetables, partly out of laziness, like if I'm tossing a bunch of vegetables with olive oil,

I don't wanna do it in a bowl. So what I usually do is I coat a baking sheet with olive oil or whatever oil I'm gonna roast and then I sprinkle it with salt and pepper and then I toss the vegetables on there and I feel like I just get more seasoning. I do it in the frying pan because generally, I'm one of those people that generally

doesn't keep salted butter at home. And so most of the recipes when I call for butter, I'm using unsalted butter. But I find that part of the essential flavor of a grilled cheese is that kind of salty buttery crust, that part where your tongue first hits is the salty crust. With unsalted butter, it just doesn't taste quite right. So I, yeah, I usually like to melt the butter in the pan

and then salt the pan so that the bread kind of absorbs it as it's cooking. And I would say, I don't find that most commercial salted butter is actually that salty. And I'm also thinking if you're buying a commercial sliced sandwich bread, usually it's a little bit sweeter. And so I think the salt would always be welcome. Anyway, I'm gonna be doing that for now on.

I love the idea of salting the pan. I'm gonna do it when it's olive oil too, because pretty much if I'm frying something, I also want a salty crisp on it too. My friend Adam Kuban, who was the managing editor at Serious Eats, he founded a site called Slice and a site called Hamburger Today.

Back probably around the same time that Smitching Kitten was founded. I remember those sites. Yeah, but his grilled cheese recipe, his trick was to grill the bread and butter first and then that becomes the inside of the sandwich. You're toasted on the inside, then you assemble the sandwich and then you grill it again on the outside. You're toasted on the inside, then you assemble the sandwich,

and then you grill it again on the outside. It's like a double butter crisp sandwich. It was so good. And then you do the outside, and then you're also frying in a butter, and it's just an absolutely, it was really lovely. I'm a butterhead. I was just in Paris where we ate butter every day

and pretty much everything, so it made me very happy. I liked it a lot. I am one of those people that really wants the cheese to be a distinct pocket of melted gooeyness in between the bread. And so grilling the inside of the bread creates a little bit of a barrier, a fat barrier, so that the cheese doesn't soak into the bread too much,

and so you get that really, really nice cheese pull. And it also, of course, gives it sort of a jumpstart melting because the inside of the sandwich is warm when you assemble it. I cribbed that from Adam Kuban and I am forever grateful to him for it. So the best cheese, I mean, I feel like American cheese is the classic. I actually think that what we know as grilled cheese in America comes from the fact that we have packaged American cheese. It's an ancient dish in some form or another, but the modern form that we know

it in arose around the same time that we know it in, arose around the same time that Kraft cheese, like government cheese, American processed cheese, was invented. Yeah, 1910s is what I read for the patents on that. And then in the 1920s, you had the first commercial sandwich slicer. So you put those two things together and you have our episode today. So American cheese is the classic. I think it gets a really bad rap.

If you talk to anyone who's like serious about food, they're going to tell you like point blank, probably they don't buy it or they don't eat it or they don't eat it because it's not real cheese. And I know all of those things, but I think we can respect the melt here. Well, yeah. So I am serious about food and I have deep respect and love for American cheese. So American cheese is not cheese in the same way that sausage is not meat, right? American cheese is like, is cheese with a couple

of other things added to adjust its texture. In the same way that sausage is meat with a couple of other ingredients added to adjust its texture and flavor. Like American cheese starts with cheese. It's a cheese product. It is a cheese product, yeah. It is a cheese product. It is a cheese product. Yeah, it is mostly cheese.

It has added milk and added milk proteins and then it usually has, well, always has some kind of emulsifying salts. It's what makes American cheese melt. It's what makes American cheese for some people have a sort of plasticky texture. My theory is just that it's basically poured in some sort of liquid state onto these,

onto a giant piece of plastic and then a machine cuts it, yeah, it's not like shaped like a flat square and then wrapped. You're talking about like singles. Yeah, I'm thinking like it's definitely, you can tell by the look of it that it's shaped by the plastic and now I need to see it. I have to watch it happen.

I want to see how my American cheese is made. We have a recipe on Serious Eats for making your own American cheese. You can use whatever sort of base cheese you want. It could be cheddar, it could be Gruyere, whatever you want, and you add a little bit of liquid to it and then you add sodium citrate, which is sort of the most widely available

emulsifying salt and you blend those up, you melt them and then you spread plastic over a sheet tray and then you basically pour this, what looks like a nacho cheese sauce over it and then just let it set and then you can cut it into squares and those squares can be wrapped in plastic and stacked if you want like a single or you can use them immediately.

But it's a way that you can take any cheese and turn it into something that'll melt the way American cheese does. And sodium citrate these days, like you can buy it online and they'll send you, it's cheap, they'll send you a jar of it and it'll last forever. So if you ever want to make like a gooey cheese, nacho cheese sauce or make your own American style cheese American processed cheese

You can do that at home these days pretty easily. Did you make grilled cheese with it when you guys were developing that recipe? Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah, we used it in grilled cheese. We used it in hamburgers. We used it in Yeah, all kinds of stuff Yeah, and and it's nice because you can adjust the flavor you can change the liquid base that you can do just plain water you can do milk you could do something like wine and you can simmer wine liquid base that you can do with just plain water, you can do milk, you could do something like wine, and you can simmer wine down with herbs and garlic and black pepper to infuse it into the cheese. You know, whatever flavors you want, you can add there if you want to, or you can go pure.

Nice. What I do at home when I'm making my grilled cheese, I will pretty much always use one slice of American and then combine it with other sort of more flavorful cheeses. So I'll combine a slice of American and then combine it with other sort of more flavorful cheeses. So I'll combine a slice of American with some sharp cheddar that I cut off a block or with like slices of Swiss or slices of Gruyere or something like that. Because even just one slice of American, there's enough emulsifying power in there that it

will get the other cheeses to melt. They'll be like, come with me and melt with me, melt with me. And it'll get the other cheeses to melt along with it. Pull them into the sauce. It does, exactly. I do that too, actually, when I make it at home these days. The way I riff on this, I usually do a slice of American cheese and then I do an ounce or two.

I usually do a grated orange cheddar just so it kind of like looks about the same, but it's a nicer quality one, so it has like a nice sharpness to it, but I could see how other cheeses would work nicely too. So you're a grater, not a slicer. I'm a grater. I want the loose bits that fall over.

I feel like I can spread it better. I feel like I can get better edge to edge coverage and I can distribute it better because often this slice of American cheese is smaller than the bread. So I will, why am I telling the world this? I will like break it into four strips and I'll just kind of spread it out

down the length of the bread. Oh. And then I'll put the grated cheese over that. Got it. If I don't get full coverage with one slice. So what I'll do is I'll put a slice of the cheese sort of on the middle of the bread, whatever bits are hanging over the edge of the bread,

I break those off and then I kind of Tetris them into position to fill up any holes that are on the other edges of the bread. So I try and break my cheese up into a shape that it'll give coverage. It's a problem that you don't have with grated cheese, but I am too lazy to pull out a box grater when I'm going to make grated cheese. I have one of those like flat things. Well, whatever, any kind of grater. I don't like cleaning graders.

I love the fact that people are going to like be on their drive home and like hear us talking about like the correct way to stretch a slice, like a square over a rectangular piece of bread. It makes me very happy that I get to call this my job. All right. So we've got the best cheese. We talked about the blend and whatever makes you happy. We talked about frying and butter, which I think is the most classic, but I do the mayo thing. You do the mayo thing, yeah. And it's just personal preference.

I know a lot of people are going to say, oh, I hate mayo. I don't want it. It doesn't taste like mayo. It basically, you can spread it very thinly on the outside of the bread before you brown it, and it gives you a little bit more flavor. It's got a little more tang to it. It does not taste like mayo, but it just gives you that perfect even brown crisp. It's got a little more flavor. You don't need to add salt to the pan. So the idea is you spread mayonnaise on

the outside of your sandwich and then you fry it just like that instead of spreading butter or instead of putting butter in the pan. It doesn't taste like butter, so that's just a personal preference, but I find it very easy. It's nice that the mayo spreads so easily onto the bread. And so you can get really nice, even coverage. It browns really nicely. You do get a little bit of that tang. I will say stick with either homemade mayo or with something like, you know, Hellman's or Kraft or best foods.

Did you know Josh Ozerski? Yeah, not well, but I knew his work. Yeah. He passed away in 2015, but he was a James Beard award-winning food writer. And I remember I specifically had this email exchange with him about grilled cheese and we were debating Whether you put the butter in the pan So what I do is I put the butter in the pan I swirl it around I let it melt I put my sandwich in there and then I kind of swirl the sandwich around to mop up that butter and then when I flip it

I put more butter in the pan and do the same thing for the other side What Josh was insisting was that you need softened room temperature butter that you spread over the bread before you put it into the pan and that you get a different result by doing that. You get better coverage. The issue I had is that I don't have room temperature butter. Like I've tried keeping butter in a buttered bell and for whatever reason, you know, maybe it's because my house is dirty, it all is like... Does it get moldy? It doesn't get moldy but it gets like a kind of cheesy smell to it. So I just keep my butter in the fridge.

And so I never have softened butter and Josh's response was, well, that's why God invented the microwave. But just like I don't have the patience to pull out a box grater when I'm making a grilled cheese, I also don't have the patience to microwave butter. I'm actually team Azersky on this, but I'm also team Kenji because I agree.

I actually, I would say my first choice is to spread it on the outside, but that does require that I took a tablespoon or two of butter out a little while ago and it's at room temperature. Realistically, I'm putting it in the pan, but I do really like the effect of just having it really nicely. I feel like it's just very evenly applied on the bread and it makes a nice surface contact, which gives you, I'm convinced it gives you more even browning, but that has to do with how the bread is sliced

and the shape of the pan too. In the times that I have done it, and I did it for your recipe because your recipe specifically calls for spreading butter on the outside. So I went and figured out how to set my microwave to 40% power, which is a task in itself, so that I could get softened butter and I did it. And I did feel like the act of spreading softened butter

on the outside of a sandwich before putting it into a hot pan and like hearing that sizzle as it goes into a hot pan is, it does add to the overall grilled cheese experience, you know? The GCE, it adds to the mood. Is this a good time to tell you that I actually, although that's not how that recipe is written, these days when I'm making on a weekday you that I actually, although that's not how that recipe is written,

these days when I'm making on a weekday night, I actually start in a cold pan. So for that, it requires either the softened butter on the outside or the mayo. So I'm using the mayo more often, but I put it in a cold pan. And I like that because it gives it a chance to first like, I feel like it gives it a nice chance to get melty

in the center and bring it up to a nice crisp on the outside. I also start things like bacon in a cold pan because I'm trying to like kind of render out the fat bring it up to a nice crisp on the outside. I also start things like bacon in a cold pan because I'm trying to like kind of render out the fat but also get a nice crisp. There's nothing worse than a grilled cheese sandwich that is cooked on the outside but then the center of the cheese is unmelted.

I've seen people suggest you put a lid on the pan to kind of steam it in but I feel like that would mess with the bread crisp a little bit and that's not okay. I've seen people say microwave it. I've tried that. Like, you know, you microwave it to melt the cheese and then you grill it.

That works not so well because it messes with the texture of the bread. I've tried doing it sort of the dumpling method where you fry it on one side, then you add a little bit of water to get it steamy. And then you put a lid on and then you let that water evaporate off and then re-crisp it.

That doesn't work too well. It also messes with the texture of the bread. I don't think there's any way around the fact that grilled cheese, when you do it properly, if you want the ideal texture, it just takes time. Right, you can't rush it. That's why I do the cold pan though. It really does work though.

It really, and I'm not cooking it on high or anything like that. I'm cooking it on medium or on my stove. It's really like a medium low because my stove is a little too robust. I set mine at four. But you're basically just cooking it. It might take a few minutes

until you get a nice, even golden brown underneath. Then you flip it. The second side can go a little faster because you've already got the center warmed up. So don't let the sun go down on this episode. We will be back after a short break and we are gonna talk about all the things

you can put in your grilled cheese sandwich, all the things you can dip your grilled cheese sandwich in. And we're also going to talk about why everybody but me is wrong about the way they cut sandwiches. That's coming up on the recipe. Kenji, have you ever put pickles in your grilled cheese before? Yes, I have put pickles in my grilled cheese, pickles and onions. I like to do it almost, I think of it almost like a, like a patty melt without the patty. Ooh. So wait, for a patty melt, the onions, are they raw or are they griddled or is it your

choice? They're griddled. So they're not like caramelized, but you, you grid, the onions, are they raw or are they griddled or is it your choice? They're griddled. So they're not like caramelized, but you griddle them. I would start with the onions in a pan and then I would slap my bread on top of it, flip it out, put the cheese on top, assemble the sandwich and then grill it like that. I've done onions.

In my first book, I have a recipe for like a kind of, I don't wanna say bougie, but it's not really, but it was basically like my comfort food, a little bit fussy, girl cheese sandwich. And it's on a brie bread and I use a baby Swiss cheese, like an Emmentaler or whatever. And then, I don't think I use Gruyere, but you could. And then it uses these sweet and sour red onions.

And I love that because I feel like you want a little bit of that bite, that vinegar. So I'm using some vinegar and a little bit of sugar to cook down some red onions I've sauteed in butter. And I love this sort of jammy onion layer where you get the acidity, you get a little sweetness and you get that flavor. I love that as a contrast for the cheese.

That sounds great. How are you making those onions? I probably saute them in a little bit of butter with salt, maybe a pinch of sugar, maybe a pinch of brown sugar. And as they cook down, I'm gonna add a little bit of either balsamic or sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar to the pan

and really kind of cook that out. So it's not vinegary, but it gets it really sweet and then just kind of finish it up with good seasoning. And then you let it cool a little bit. And I love that inside a grilled cheese sandwich. I like that more with a funkier cheese, like a nuttier cheese. Right, right, it needs something that'll stand up to it.

How do you feel about kimchi in your grilled cheese? I haven't had it, but I think I would like it. Roy Choi and his truck in LA, he popularized the kimchi quesadilla, and I think it sort of evolved from that. The people have done it for a while. The thing I like to do when I'm making a kimchi grilled cheese

is drain some of the kimchi brine, like the red brine out of the jar of kimchi, and combine that with butter in the skillet. You basically you put butter and a little bit of kimchi juice in the skillet, then you put your bread in there and it kind of soaks up a little bit of the kimchi juice. So you have to be a little bit patient because you have to wait for that kimchi juice to then evaporate off the liquid from it to evaporate off. But what happens is it kind of imbues the bread, it turns the bread red and then it

caramelizes a little bit. And if you're patient with it and you keep swirling the bread, it turns the bread red, and then it caramelizes a little bit. And if you're patient with it and you keep swirling the bread around as it cooks, it'll still crisp up the same way that it would if you're making a regular grilled cheese. If you really wanna go all out, you can saute it separately in butter and then mix that with the cheese

and put it inside the sandwich as well. Do you like things inside your grilled cheese sandwich or you prefer it as a dip on the outside? So sometimes I like just the classic grilled cheese. I do like putting stuff inside. And by the way, I am firmly of the mind that adding something other than cheese to the center of your grilled cheese

does not automatically make it into a melt. Are there people who disagree with you? Yes, yes. There's this like one of the most annoying copy pastas. You're familiar with what copy pasta is. I don't know, it's like an internet term for somebody who makes a joke and then copypasta is when the joke is just copied and repeated like a meme.

And so there's this very famous copypasta from the grilled cheese subreddit. It comes from nine years ago where this guy went on a multi-paragraph rant about how if you add anything to the inside of a grilled cheese, it is no longer grilled cheese and it is now a melt. Let me read you some excerpts from it. I need to hear it. So I'll read you the opening paragraph, which is,

a grilled cheese consists of only the following items, cheese, bread with spread, usually butter. This entire subreddit consists of melts. Almost every single grilled cheese sandwich I see on here has other items added to it. The fact that this subreddit is called Grilled Cheese is nothing short of utter blasphemy. Let me start out by saying that I have nothing against melts, I just hate their association with sandwiches that are not grilled cheeses. It goes on and on and on.

He curses a lot, I'm not going to curse on here. But he says, I am not a religious man nor am I anything close to a culinary expert. But as a bland white Midwestern male, I am honestly the most passionate person when it comes to grilled cheese and mac and cheese. All of you foodies stay the hell away from our grilled cheese and stop associating your sandwich melts with them. Yet again, it is utter blasphemy and it rocks me to the core of my pale being. You goddamn heretics respect the grilled cheese and stop changing it into whatever you like and love it for what it is or make your damn melts and call it for what it is a melt. Oh my god, I think I love him.

So first of all, I want to point out a couple of pieces of evidence against this. If you go to a diner and you ask for grilled cheese with a slice of tomato or with some slices of bacon, like those are very clearly common grilled cheese additions, right? And those are very, still very clearly grilled cheese sandwiches. Like I don't think there's anybody who knows grilled cheese better than a short order cook at a diner. And if they're calling a grilled cheese sandwich

with slices of bacon added into it, a grilled cheese, I think it's fair to say that it's still a grilled cheese. In the same way that I feel like adding some chopped kimchi to your grilled cheese doesn't make it into a melt. To me, a melt is like, a melt is a more strictly defined thing than a grilled cheese. Like a grilled cheese, you can have whatever you want. And as long as the cheese is still the main element of it,

it's still a grilled cheese. Whereas a melt, it's like, you're specifically taking something else that's going to be the main element and you're adding some cheese to it. And you're cooking it the way you would on a griddle, the way you would a grilled cheese. When I read that, I was like, my first thought is in a melt open phase.

It's like tuna melt or- Tuna melt is, but not a patty melt. A patty melt is good. Okay, but I feel like tuna melts more popular. Those are fighting words. But I've done a lot of melts. I've done mushroom melts and I've done broccoli. I have a broccoli melt on my site

and in my One Way Books. Oh yum, yeah that sounds great. It's really funny, you basically make this, anyway, but I always think of melts as an open faced thing. Aside from a patty melt, I think it was open faced. I would never, I have never heard of a grilled cheese sandwich with stuff inside of it called a melt outside of this rant, which I'm honestly charmed by because I like people

with strong opinions on food. I wouldn't mind, depending on the kind of cheese and the mood I was in, I wouldn't mind a thin smear of a sharp Dijon. Okay. I love pickles, but I don't really like hot pickles. So you're not a fan of like a media notche of like a Cuban sandwich.

I didn't say I wouldn't enjoy it. I just mean that if I was choosing it, I think that the pickle, pickles better on the side. It should be cold and crisp and a contrast. And if it's hot and buried in cheese, you know, you lose acidity when you cook things. I can't explain the science behind it. My name isn't Kenji, but like when the acidic things get warm, they get muted.

And if you cover it with like fat and oils and cheese, it's not gonna have the same bite to it because you want the pickle to taste like a pickle and it's not necessarily tasting like, it's tasting like a vinegared vegetable by then. So someone suggested to me that you dip your grilled cheese into pickle brine as you're eating it. And you have to do it quickly.

You dip it and then immediately bite it so that it's still crispy, but you get that vinegar, that briny hit right as you're eating it. I would do that. I think almost everything needs vinegar. There's a sandwich shop in Seattle. It started out as a truck, it's called Layers, and now they have a brick and mortar location.

But one of their signature sandwiches is a grilled cheese with dates and sliced jalapenos in it. And it is fabulous. I think it's a really good combination. Now, didn't you ask people on the internet what they like to dip their sandwiches in, their grilled cheese sandwiches in? Oh yes, do you want me to read them

and you give me a one word reaction to each? Yes, we are gonna see how long I can stick to my don't yuck my yum rule that I have for my children. Stay strong Deb. Okay, here we go, ready? Well, we've already done pickle brine. Pro. Mango chutney.

Pro. Hot sauce. Yes, personally I feel like buffalo sauce would be even better, but hot sauce could be good. Okay, here's a specific one. Ghost pepper hot sauce mixed into berry jam. I think it would be good for somebody else, but I'm sure it's delicious.

Ketchup? I could do it. How about sriracha ketchup? I'm not a big fan of the, at least of the Haiphong sriracha, you know, the Rooster brand sriracha in general. I'm just not a big fan of it. Okay. Here's a grilled cheese dipper.

Apple sauce. You know, I come from a big fan of it. Here's a grilled cheese dipper. Applesauce. You know, I come from a long line of people who love applesauce with their latkes, their potato pancakes, and that doesn't bother me at all. But for me, it's a stretch, but I want everybody to be happy. So you should do that if it makes you happy. That was the first one I heard where it was kind of like repressing a little bit of a gag.

But there's no down vote button. Like you can only say you like it, you can't say you dislike it. So I think that's key. You know why it sounds gross to me is because I have these traumatic memories of childhood when my mom would pack lunches with applesauce mixed with cottage cheese,

which I just found revolting. And she would put that into my lunch maybe once a week. And so the idea of mixing applesauce and cheese to me is just like an immediate gut level, deep seated reaction that I can't seem to suppress. And I'm sorry, that's not, that's a hard thing. All right, HP sauce, are you familiar with HP sauce? Is that like the UK brown sauce?

Yeah, brown sauce. It's kind of like a vinegary. It's not quite like Worcestershire sauce. It's a little more vinegary and thicker, but it's got the texture of thin ketchup, but it's brown. I feel like if I had that kind of whole grainy bread and then a nice slick of Dijon and a good sharp English cheddar, I would like it.

I wouldn't hate it. I've also never eaten it, so. I've got a reaction, my own reaction to this one, so I wanna hear yours. French dip jus, you know, so like powdered beef bouillon or like French onion bouillon. I need for that one it to be more of like a French onion grilled cheese.

Like I want caramelized onions and they were like the brown onions. Like I need it to be more of like a French onion grilled cheese. Like I want caramelized onions and they were like the brown onions. Like I need it to be more of a well-rounded. To me, I'm not picturing white bread with Kraft cheese for that one. How do you feel about that Kenji? I feel the same. So my initial reaction is that sounds awesome

cause I love French dips and I like dipping bread into beefy broth. But yes, I'm a hundred percent in agreement with you that this is one that requires a heartier bread and a heartier cheese, like a Swiss cheese or more of like an aged Gouda, something with a little more flavor. Here's one, queso dip, fight me.

So you're dipping your cheese into cheese. Yeah. I respect it. All right, and here's the last one, bloody Mary mix. It's not for me. I haven't tried most of these things. We should try all these on video and maybe do it together. So I was gonna say, when we take our show on the road and we do live episodes, we can do a tasting.

Kenji, did anyone suggest putting chorizo in your grilled cheese? Because I heard on the internet that that is a very good thing to put in grilled cheese. Sometimes even goes viral on YouTube. My most popular YouTube video of all time, which has how many views? 14 million views.

Wow. Is a two minute long video where I made a grilled cheese late at night when I came home drunk from a karaoke bar, I strapped a camera to my forehead and I made a grilled cheese sandwich. It's on sourdough. It's on my friend's sourdough from Bokhouse or bakery in San Mateo.

Sourdough bread, I put grated cheddar cheese that I mixed with some cilantro. And then what I did was- You took out a grater? I did. You know what it is? I probably just come from singing don't let the sun go down on me.

Yeah. So I was in the mood for grilled cheese. I grated grilled cheese and then I kept a stick of chorizo in my freezer. Spanish cured chorizo, which is meant to be eaten raw the same way salami or pepperoni is. Sometimes I like to grate chorizo. I also do this with pepperoni.

I keep a stick of pepperoni, a stick of chorizo in my freezer because I like to grate it on a box grater. And it's good like over pasta, something like, any place where you would grate cheese, you can grate a stick of pepperoni or chorizo and it comes out in these tiny little bits that melt into it. For some reason, I don't know if it's the vibe

of the video or the specific sandwich itself, but people seem to love it. That's the one and only time I've ever made that sandwich. So Deb, tell me about how you cut your grilled cheese. You've got a square in front of you, roughly a square in front of you. In what orientation do you hold your knife as you push it through the sandwich?

I am cutting it horizontal. I should make clear that that's not really a square, like loaves are a little more vertical than they're horizontal. You end up with two rectangles. I end up with two rectangles, and to me this feels correct. I made a video demo of a classic cream of tomato soup, the one on my site that's adapted from Cooks Illustrated. It was September, it was seasonal, it was the first day with a cool crisp in the air.

To me, this is peak tomato soup and grilled cheese season. So I made a video with it and the very end, I just, I've made dinner for my family and I cut four grilled cheese sandwiches in half and I got some comments about it. It started with how can you cut a sandwich that way? And then you're supposed to cut a grilled cheese sandwich on the diagonal. And then this looks amazing, but my brain screamed when you cut the sandwich that you're doing it wrong. And this was an amazing video

until I got to the shocking twist at the end. Now I can't get the image of those sandwiches being cut sideways out of my mind. And then there was like a hands covering the eyes emojis, a series of them. And then someone said, either diagonal or vertical would be okay, but what you did was like opening a bag of chips upside down.

That by the way, led to a lot of people defending the fact that they liked to do it that way. And then the person corrected it and said, it would be more like opening it sideways. And I said, this actually led to a lot of side patter where a lot of people told me they liked to open their chips upside down, because that's where the best flavor is at.

And so the person came back and said, it would be like opening a bag of chips sideways. You mean cutting it horizontally as opposed to vertically. Either diagonal or vertical would be okay, but what I did was inexcusable. I'm just gonna throw a few more. My soul gasped when I saw the horizontal cut. And then this is another one of my favorites.

Someone said, I have no idea why I'm having such a strong reaction to a sandwich cut. I'm normally a live and let live gal, but I actually gasped out loud when I saw the cut. It would taste better if it was cut properly. So I posed a little poll vote and I asked people if they would cut it diagonal, vertical or horizontal, like what was the correct way? And the most popular answer was a write-in and the person said all of the ways, but the way you did it. Then somebody had said that they cut theirs vertically and I said, well, that's weird. And then somebody said to me, I'm shocked that you're

shocked by a vertical cut when you do the cut that has no name because it goes against all mankind. I woke up to 620 messages the next morning, all about cutting a sandwich. And it was hilarious to the depths, which I've triggered like a national psyche over a grilled cheese sandwich. And it was also probably the most fun I've had on the internet. It was such a fun couple of weeks. I had friends and family texting me from all over telling me I cut my sandwich wrong. Yeah, well, they're right. Yeah, you're wrong.

NPR did a segment on it. The Washington Post wrote about it. A couple weeks later, the Today Show had a segment on it. Cutting a sandwich, guys. I can't make this up. So we called it Sandwich Gate. So what I learned is that for other people, there are different rules depending on what the sandwich is. Let me push back again. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I just made your Frigo grilled cheese sandwich on a boule. So, you know, flat out, if you look at the shape of it,

it's flat on one side and round on the top. And I did not just cut it straight up and down. I cut it at a diagonal because you want points to bite into. That's the whole point of cutting it on a diagonal, whether it's a square slice of bread you're cutting across or a boule that you're cutting at a bias. You get two points and then the rest of it is even less angular.

You want acute angles. You want things less than 90 degrees. You only get one acute angle, like two. I mean, obviously the two sides. I just mean like once you've bit the tips off those cones, it's all just blobbed from there. You need an obvious point of entry. You need a point of entry to your sandwich. You need the place that dips into your soup

or dips into your dip and then goes into your mouth the furthest without having to open your mouth too wide. I want my sandwich innards to stay inside the sandwich. And so I want the least chance of them escaping. And so I'm gonna make the smallest cut so the least can spill out. I feel like a triangle, it would just like flop open. To put this in context,

you're talking to someone who designed a t-shirt that says triangles taste better. I'm very pro triangle for a long time. In fact, if you want, if anybody listening wants, if anybody wants this t-shirt, you can order it from cottonbureau.com. Just look up Triangles Tastes Better on cottonbureau.com. You can own this shirt that has pictures of food,

all the triangular foods that are better than rectangular foods. And you actually wore that t-shirt when we last were on stage in Seattle, which was perfect. I wore the shirt knowing that it would, uh, that it would push some buttons for you. So Deb, you're, you're among friends here at this point. Can you admit that you secretly agree with everyone? You've been convinced that triangles are better and this is

now just kind of a bit for you. Actually, what's happened is that my son, who was 14, was following along and now he, and you know, children, they need a place to rebel, you know? And he now says that I've been cutting my sandwiches wrong. And so I've actually been bullied by my own family to cut them on the diagonal. And so that's how it really came down. And so I do actually cut them on the diagonal now,

but only because I have a child harassing me. I still think that my logic stands and that my sandwich cutting is consistent. I also would just like to add that if you are interested in dipping your sandwich into your soup, which I do all the time, I literally made it last night, I cut it into fingers. Like I cut it horizontally into four strips

and that is my favorite way to dip it. That feels acceptable. Kenji, can you waffle a grilled cheese sandwich? Yes, absolutely. I'm talking about like a raw grilled cheese sandwich into a waffle that's been buttered. It's kind of like the equivalent, an extension of like a British toasty maker.

And they're called cheese toasties. They're so common. By the way, I was also informed around Sandwich Gate that the toasty maker, it makes a cut in half and that cut is on the diagonal. If you got a toasty maker that came with a rectangular cut, you would return it. All right.

Can you taco a grilled cheese sandwich? Hmm. If you get that Pepperidge Farm extra thin bread and make a really thin grilled cheese, you could probably use a grilled cheese as a taco shell for other fillings. Can you fry it in butter in a pan? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Does it leftover? I think we're on the fence about that question anyway. But it doesn't leftover well. I'd say no. Of all the indignities we eat off our kids' plates, I would say the cold grilled cheese is pretty up there. Well, I hope that people have enjoyed us 100% not settling the sandwich gate debate.

I mean, I feel like grilled cheese is one of these things that you don't have to settle. It's good in all its forms. There's no bad grilled cheese other than cold grilled cheese. And the heart wants what the heart wants, even when the heart is wrong. And the heart wants what the heart wants, even when the heart is wrong. At therecipepodcast.com, you'll find links to my recipes, to Deb's recipes. You'll find the link to pick up that Triangles Taste Better t-shirt if you'd like. You'll find a link to our Spotify playlist, including Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Duet with George Michael and Elton John so that you can time your grilled cheeses. Soon you'll have a link to the t-shirt I'm going to make, which is called Everybody Is

Wrong But Me. Thank you for joining us. If you liked what you hear and you want to find out more about the show or if you have suggestions for upcoming episodes, you can visit us at therecipepodcast.com or follow us on Instagram at Kenji and Deb and shoot us a message. Deb And we now have a phone number where you can call us. It's 202-709-7607 and you can leave us a voicemail. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Peter Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions. Deb Edwin Ochoa is the project manager.

The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich and Yori Lissardo is the director of network operations. Cher Delva, Apu Gotay, Emmanuel Johnson and Mike Russo handle our social media. See you next time. Thanks for listening. The Recipe with Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator-owned listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm.