Grilled cheese is the ultimate comfort food. It can be made with almost anything in your kitchen (vegetables, fruit, herbs) as long as cheese and bread are involved.
Plus, a well-made grilled cheese can keep a person on a budget fed like a king — which is great when most grocery prices are still so high.
On a mission to find the best grilled cheese out there, I tried recipes from celebrity chefs Roy Choi, Ree Drummond, and Ina Garten.
Here’s how it went.
Choi’s grilled cheese had the shortest ingredient list.
I’ve seen Choi’s recipe circulate online in the past, so I was excited to try it. It was also the quickest and easiest of the three.
I procured a loaf of sourdough bread, unsalted butter, yellow cheddar, white cheddar, and Gruyère.
I’d also need a block of Parmesan and a cheese grater to finish things off.
Building the sandwich was simple.
I buttered one side of two pieces of sourdough bread and flipped them so the non-buttered side was facing up.
Then I added three slices of yellow cheddar, three slices of white cheddar, 1 ounce of grated Gruyère, and 1 ounce of grated Parmesan.
Once it was built, all I had to do was transfer the grilled cheese to my pan and wait for it to get toasty on both sides.
The finished sandwich was so cheesy and not at all stringy.
I could taste each layer of cheese in this sandwich, and they were all incredibly flavorful in their own right.
Whether due to the selection of cheeses or the lack of other ingredients, this sandwich was the least stringy of the three.
This definitely made it a little cleaner to eat, but I thought it lacked a little bit of the quintessential charm of a cheese pull.
Garten adds protein to her recipe.
Garten’s ultimate grilled-cheese recipe called for thick-cut bacon, mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip), Dijon mustard, Parmesan, kosher salt, black pepper, Gruyére (or Comte), extra-sharp cheddar, and sourdough bread.
It also called for salted butter, but I substituted it with unsalted because that’s what I keep in my house.
I started by whipping up a sauce to spread across the bread.
To make Garten’s sauce, I mixed mustard, mayonnaise, Parmesan, pepper, and salt in a bowl. Then I took two pieces of sourdough and spread butter on one side and the sauce mixture on the other.
I placed the prepped bread sauce-side-up on my plate.
Before building the sandwich, I cooked the bacon according to the instructions on the package.
With my bread prepped and my bacon cooked, I got to building my sandwich.
I started by adding three slices of cooked bacon to the sauce side of one piece of bread. Then, I layered 1 ounce of extra-sharp cheddar and 1 ounce of Gruyère on the other slice.
The closed sandwich went into the pan to get toasty and melty.
Garten’s sandwich had stringy cheese and a smoky flavor.
Garten’s grilled cheese was the stringiest of the three. The cheese oozed out of the sides, and the ingredients melded together perfectly.
There was a pleasing, savory, smoky kick from the bacon and the Gruyère, and every few bites, I got a kick of salt. I don’t think I needed the salted butter at all.
Drummond’s grilled cheese called for extra produce.
Drummond’s recipe is definitely cheese-heavy, but it’s also colorful.
It called for poblano or Anaheim chiles, white vinegar, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, red onion, tomatoes, provolone, cheddar, and butter.
To make things easier for me, I decided to swap the red onion for a yellow one.
I usually prefer sourdough for grilled cheese, but Drummond’s recipe called for softer rye.
Toasting the pepper gave it a great texture.
I popped one chile pepper into a pan on the stove and cooked it until the skin blackened.
The recipe recommended toasting the peppers over an open flame, but I have an electric stove, so the pan worked fine.
I soaked my sliced onions in some vinegar to mellow out the flavor.
To reduce any overbearing onion taste and bring out a little sweetness, I cut the onion into thin slices and submerged them in a small bowl of white vinegar.
Drummond’s sauce was similar to Garten’s.
Drummond’s sauce was made with equal parts Dijon mustard and mayonnaise. I quickly blended it up in a bowl before prepping my bread.
There were more layers in this sandwich.
I slathered sauce across two pieces of rye bread and added butter to the other sides.
With the sauce side up, I added two slices of provolone, two thin slices of tomato, two slices of cheddar cheese, and the onions.
Before cutting up and adding the chiles, I removed the blackened skin and seeds.
Because the rye bread was softer than the sourdough, I cooked the sandwich over a lower heat. I wanted to sufficiently melt and bind the cheese without burning the bread.
The texture was the star of Drummond’s sandwich.
The onions added a crisp snap, but thanks to the vinegar bath, they weren’t overbearing. The standout flavor was actually the mustard in the sauce.
It’s certainly a different take on grilled cheese, but I’m definitely going to keep this recipe around.
You can’t go wrong with a basic recipe, and Choi nailed it.
All three of these recipes were so tasty. But I was most impressed by Choi’s perfect blend of cheesy flavors. It’s my new staple grilled-cheese recipe.
I’m still memorizing Drummond’s recipe to impress my friends at a barbecue or cute night in. It’s a sneaky way to eat more produce and was lighter overall.
The rye also surprised me and opened my mind to other bread possibilities.
Garten’s recipe wasn’t bad by any means — in fact, I think it had the best melt. But I don’t think I’ll reach for it that often when I want a grilled cheese.
Click to check out the other celebrity-chef recipes we’ve put head-to-head so far.
The post I tried grilled-cheese recipes from Ina Garten, Ree Drummond, and Roy Choi. The best one didn’t have fancy add-ins appeared first on Business Insider.
