Recently the fine folks at Whole Foods sent me a gift card to buy the grilling cheeses they featured in at their September Grilling Event: Emmi Roth Le Gruyère Reserve, Mt. Vikos Halloumi, Fond O’ Foods Berliner Der Käse, Meule de Savoie and Jarlsberg.
This week I used two of them to create a simple grilled cheese (as many of you know, I am in Georgia assisting my parents as my dad mends from several surgeries) that would wow you, my faithful readers, and not be too “fancy” for my parents, particularly dad whose taste buds have taken a beating of late.
I’ll be using the remaining three cheeses once I return home. Reviews of the two I used, Berliner and Raw Milk Meule de Savoie will follow in the next few days.
With the grilled cheese, it would appear I succeeded on the “home front”; my parents claimed to love it… wowing you is as yet undecided…
Here’s what I did:
As with all cooking, using quality ingredients is more than half the secret to success:
Ingredients:
1 Sweet Onion, sliced thin and caramelized
6 Slices Thick Bacon, fried crisp
Whole Wheat Bread – 2 slices per sandwich
Cabot Creamery Unsalted Butter, softened (the only Butter my mom will use – yes!!) – for onions and grilling
8 ounces Fond O’ Foods Berliner Der Kase, shredded
8 ounces Meule de Savoie, shredded
Miss Anne’s (my mom) Homemade Fig and Strawberry Preserves
Blue Haven Sourwood Honey (review coming…)
Preparation:
Fry bacon in saute pan until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Discard most of the grease but reserve some for cooking the onions. (Everything tastes better with bacon…)
Caramelize your onions. I keep it simple. I melted a couple teaspoons of Cabot Butter and combined with the leftover bacon grease in same pan and heated to a medium heat. I added the onion slices and tossed in the melted butter and bacon grease (everything tastes better with bacon…) to coat evenly and let the heat start the cooking. Once softened, I added some Blue Haven Sourwood Honey and cooked the onion until nice and brown, just short of crispy. I find this usually takes about 15-20 minutes. Remove from saute pan; this can get tricky because once cooled, the onions can become hard from the sugar.
Butter the outside of your bread.
Once the onions are finished, place half of your bread, buttered-side down, in the saute pan (or use griddle as I did that is oiled with a little of the bacon grease… because everything tastes better with bacon…).
Build your sammy. This too can be tricky… how much cheese is too little and how much is too much (not that you can ever really have too much cheese but you get my drift…)???
I like to start and end with cheese. Using the Berliner and the Meule mixed together, I covered the bread amply and then added the onions followed with slices of the bacon and topped it all with more cheese. Place your other bread on top with the buttered-side showing. (I know you know that but it makes me feel better stating the obvious…)
Grill on medium heat until the bottom starts browning; flip and grill again untill golden brown and the cheese is all melted and, if you’re lucky, oozing out the sides.
Cut in half and serve. I served with the Blue Haven Sourwood Honey and Miss Anne’s Homemade Fig and Strawberry Preserves.
This recipe makes 2 respectable, oozy sammies.
Clean-up after yourself…
And just in case you need a 10 Step, as opposed to a 12 Step, tutorial on how to exactly make a perfect grilled cheese sammy, click here.
The Man Swooned… but that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows The Man…
FTC Full Disclosure – The retailer or producer sent me their product(s), without any obligation on my part, hoping I would review the product/cheese. For more information, please see my About Me page.
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