- [Andrew] This episode of
Basics with Babish is sponsored by Bright Cellars, a monthly
wine club that matches you with fine wine you'll love, and delivers it right to your door. Bright Cellars is offering you 50% off your first six bottle
box plus a bonus bottle. So follow the link in
the description below to take the quiz and get started. The flavor profiles of these
wines are going to pair perfectly with the concept
of today's episode, advanced grilled cheese. Let's get down to basics. (upbeat music) (relaxed music) All right, so first we must
ask the essential question what is a grilled cheese? Despite the specificity of its name, it is not necessarily grilled, but rather a sandwich that is grilled, fried, or toasted containing cheese, bread, butter, and nothing else. Purists will tell you that if
you shove anything in there like tomatoes, or ham, or
even condiments like mustard, you've disqualified your
sandwich as a grilled cheese and in fact have made a melt. And the classic yellow American cheese and buttered white bread combo is immutably a perfect invention. So how can we do something so bold as to even attempt to improve upon something which needs no improvement? Well, we're gonna have
to focus on technique and bend the rules a little bit by introducing some interesting cheeses and flavors to the party. Let's start with some best
grilled cheese best practices. You could use anything from oil to mayo to toast your bread in, but the undisputed reigning champ 10,000 years in a row is butter. Ideally room temperature, softened butter. You could melt some butter in
a pan to get it on your bread if you're in a time crunch,
but soft, spreadable butter like this enables you to get
true edge to edge coverage on the surface of your sandwich. Next up cookware, the
most ideal candidates for which are nonstick and cast iron. Lastly, the method. I like to start my
sandwiches on a cold pan, which sort of helps the bread adhere to the cooking surface
and cook more evenly. So we're gonna start by plopping down our first slice of
buttered bread in our cold pan, laying down our cheese or
cheese mixture of choice, cranking the heat up to
medium and keeping it there until the sandwich is toasted on one side. Give it the old flip-see-doo and repeat until golden
and toasted all over. Once complete it's gotta cool
for at least like a minute before your delicate human
fingers can handle it, which I like to do on a wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet. This both gonna prevent the
crust from getting soggy and is a great place to keep
your grilled cheese warm in a low oven if you're
making more than one. Then you know the rest, slice in half, use your nose to scoot
your knife out of the frame like an adorable otter. Kinda wiggle the two sides together and press 'em into each other if you wanna maximize your cheese stretch, yank into two and devour. Now, a few ways that we can have some fun with this time tested format. First up the inside out grilled cheese that I know most of us
learned from Chef John, which calls for lightly grading cheddar over the outside of your
already buttered bread. Toast and top up as normal,
keeping a slightly closer eye on things because this
can burn more quickly. Flip and finish on the other side, and there you have it, the only
way to make a grilled cheese even more cheesy, by applying
cheese to nearly every inch of its internal and external surface area. But what if we wanna change up the cheese on the inside of the sandwich? The vast majority of cheeses
are not great melters. The vast majority of
cheeses just don't melt as well as American. If you click the link in
the upper right hand corner right now you can see how to
stabilize almost any cheese into a good melting cheese, but otherwise we're gonna resort to a very innovative method
from America's Test Kitchen that involves using a food processor. This gives us the opportunity
to emulsify together cheeses with lots of flavor that normally might not melt so well. Case in point, aged cheddar. Here we have seven ounces
of aged white cheddar that we're gonna place
into the food processor along with an excellent melter, two ounces of rind removed brie. We also need to up the liquid content so we're gonna add two
tablespoons of dry white wine and process together for about
30 seconds to make a paste. Then we can optionally
add half a large shallot, roughly chopped, tossing
it in the food processor and pulsing just a few times
until it's incorporated into the cheese mixture. And there you have it, a
super flavorful cheese paste that's gonna behave a whole lot better than any of the individual
cheeses would on their own. Once you've buttered your bread you could pat this cheese
mixture into a patty, or just spread it straight onto the bread if it's soft enough. Toast up in the pan as usual, and like all great grilled cheeses by the time the exterior is cooked, the interior should be gooey and melty. And when I say gooey, with
this version, I really mean it. If you allow it to cool,
it'll be a little less sloppy but I love the lava like
outpour of cheese that you get from one of these
straight off the griddle. And it got me thinking
how else we might be able to use this technique to our advantage. And the first thing that came to mind was a jalapeno popper grilled cheese. Over here I've got six
ounces of monterey jack and two ounces of mild white cheddar, both excellent melters. But something that is
not an excellent melter is one ounce of cream cheese, which almost kind of
curdles when you heat it up. Anyway to emulsify our mixture we need a little bit of liquid. So this time instead of wine
I'm adding two tablespoons of Mexican beer, letting
that form a smooth paste. And then instead of
shallots, one large jalapeno, roughly chopped added
to the food processor, roughly processed. And there you have it, our
jalapeno popper grilled cheese cheese paste filling,
which I have to admit is even delicious just on its own. This time instead of spreading
it using some gloved hands I'm forming it into a patty, pressing everybody down a little bit, toasting as usual, flippin',
scoopin', and servin'. What I thought was an impossibility. Translating the flavors and textures of a jalapeno popper to
a grilled cheese format. Like I said, this will be less sloppy if you let it wait, but I couldn't wait. And sure I ended up getting doused in burning hot cheese but it was worth it. This one's goin' on my resume right next to proficiency
with Mac, Windows, and Linux. Wow, my resume says I knew Linux? I just straight up lied about that. Next up let's try to put twist on the inside out grilled cheese with what I'm calling a
double decker Welsh rarebit. First, we have to make
the beery cheesy topping by sauteeing one small
finely chopped shallot in two tablespoons of butter, adding one tablespoon
of all purpose flour, and two teaspoons of dry mustard. Whisking into an
uncharacteristically mustardy brew which we're gonna use to thicken a quarter cup of dark brown ale, whisking constantly so
as to not form any lumps. Adding one tablespoon
of wishy washeer sauce, making sure that's completely incorporated before adding 10 ounces of good yellow English cheddar. Whisk thoroughly until
the cheese is fully melted and you're left with a
thick spreadable paste. Which we're gonna cover and keep warm until we're ready to use it. Now you can do this for
almost any grilled cheese, but adding a teaspoon of mustard to about four tablespoons of
butter makes mustard butter. Something that's gonna play real nice with this grilled cheese. I'm spreading our mustard
butter on two slices of hearty sourdough,
placing down and pressing in a cold cast iron pan, arranging a few slices
of young cheddar on top, tearing off any overhangs and
placing them in the middle, no cheese gets left behind. Toast that up as usual, maybe a little shy of where you'd normally want it because this guy is gonna
be headed under the broiler. Once toasted we are evacuating
onto the usual wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet, but we're now topping it with
our Welsh rarebit mixture, which is going to take a very
brief one to three minute stint under a broiler
until bubbling and brown, and ready to be eaten by our mouths. I'm gonna cut this guy in half and garnish with some
optional chopped chives. And there you have it, a truly
inside out grilled cheese, the double decker Welsh rarebit. Rarebit rabbit, I don't
really know how to say it. Stretch it apart, take
some pics for the gram, and this guy's ready to eat with a knife and fork or with your hands if you're feeling bold. I'm sorry, do I have
something in my teeth? No? Okay, thank you. Next and last, things are
getting decadently French. We're gonna start by
caramelizing some onions. You can buy these in the store but they are better made from scratch. However, they are time consuming, about 30 minutes to do it properly. Basically you wanna cook
them over medium low heat in a little bit of oil
until they are a deep, rich brown and have a
soft jam like consistency. I'd be perfectly happy to
just eat this with a spoon but it's gonna be even
better on grilled cheese. For our cheese filling we have seven ounces of comte cheese, which we're gonna cube up and combine in the food processor
with two ounces of brie, and two tablespoons of
dry white wine or sherry. Which we're gonna do the whole process into a paste thing, about 60 seconds. Then this time I'll mix
in about two tablespoons of our beautifully caramelized
and cooled onion jam. Pulse that a couple of times just to chop up and disperse
the onions, and there you go. This time our bread of choice
is going to be brioche, which despite being already very buttery we're gonna generously butter
on both sides with butter. Then just like normal brie
our sandwiches' rich flavor is gonna be well complemented with some nice tart fruit flavors, and I think fig jam is
the jam for the job. Go ahead and spread a few
tablespoons of that on there before topping with a pressed
patty of our cheese product. Toast this guy up as usual and
make sure that you saved room for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, because this guy can handle
being pretty much all three. It is gooey, rich, cheesy,
fruity, funky, fresh. But that being said,
brioche was a little bit too delicate for this form factor. So I think that this guy
could benefit greatly from the croque monsieur treatment. That is we're gonna make
a quick bechamel sauce by melting two tablespoons of butter, adding two tablespoons of flour, and cooking and whisking
for about one minute until the raw flower smell dissipates. And then slowly, and whisking constantly adding about a half a cup of whole milk, making sure to tiny whisk the
mixture into a smooth paste before adding any more
milk to prevent lumpage. Then all we gotta do is
toast up another sandwich. Hang on a second, I'm gonna
try this grilled cheese flipping method I've seen on TikTok. You flip the pan over the sandwich, and oh boy that was a bad
idea to do with cast iron. Why did this need a hack? Was it that hard to flip a sandwich? Anyway, this guy's headed onto a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet getting topped with our
bechamel and broiled. And I didn't think it
was possible to make this grilled cheese any more decadent, but here we are folks, we did it. And this is definitely a grilled cheese that's going to need the
fork and knife treatment. Maybe even eating it off a
plate, like a grownup treatment. But any and all grilled
cheese could always use the Bright Cellars treatment. Thanks again to today's
sponsor, Bright Cellars, a service that selects wine just for you from all around the world and delivers it right to your door. This service is only
for adults 21 and older. The folks at Bright Cellars take pride in educating their club members so each box comes with
a wine education card for each bottle that
outlines tasting notes, suggested pairings, ideal
serving temperature, and origin. And you don't even have
to leave the house, go to a store, and rely on your own wits to pick out a bottle
that suits your taste. Bright Cellars does it all for you. All you have to do is enjoy. In this box I received a
bottle of Humdrum Chardonnay, a rich, full bodied,
fruit forward Chardonnay that I think is gonna go just perfectly with our brie fig jam and
caramelized onion grilled cheese. Bright Cellars is offering you 50% off your first six bottle
box plus a bonus bottle. That's seven bottles in total. Follow the link in the video description to take the quiz and get started. (relaxed music)
We did it Reddit!
We made an episode of BwB boring!
Thank you Mr. Babish, for confirming what a grilled cheese is, and that it's not a melt.
Ahh so close to getting here first. glad I checked new. However, how do we feel about his “cheese paste” work around?
this episode made for u/Fuck_Blue_Shells
Do you butter both sides of the bread, I’ve seen recipes that go both ways ??