Grilled cheese is already one of the best snacks around but, believe it or not, there’s a way to make it even better: add cheese (and other toppings) to the outside, not just the inside, of the sandwich. Cancel your appointments for the day and make this grilled cheese instead.
When I saw Popsugar’s suggestion to add even more cheese on top of your sandwich, I was skeptical. Sure, more cheese is almost always a good idea, but would it really make the sandwich that much better? (Spoiler alert: yes.) But they also topped their grilled cheese with sliced mushrooms, which seemed to melt right into the bread, making me even more curious and eager to try this method with other toppings.
To properly melt the cheese into the bread, Popsugar used an electric countertop grill, and luckily, I had one, too. If you don’t, you could use a panini press or just a nonstick skillet on the stovetop.
Start by buttering two slices of bread, the same way you would with a normal sandwich. Add a drop of butter and cheese to the grill itself, and let it melt. Shredded cheese works best, because a regular old slice might just stick to the grill (although I haven’t tried it). From there, place a slice of buttered bread on top of the melted cheese. This allows the cheese to melt into the outer part of the sandwich. Add cheese on top of the bread slice, then top it with your second slice of bread, butter side up. Finally, sprinkle even more cheese on the top layer of bread, then close your grill and let it cook. The cheese melts right into the bread and you get that crunchy, slightly burnt cheese flavor on the outside with the typical gooey, grilled cheese flavor on the inside.
Mushrooms looked like an awesome topping for this, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I used thin tomato slices instead (not very photogenic, but still very tasty). There are so many other possibilities, too: garlic, pepperoni, bacon bits. Just put them on top of your sandwich before you add the cheese, then grill away. Best of all, this is relatively easy to make. If you can handle grilled cheese, you can probably handle grilled cheese 2.0.