You know before you even bite into a grilled cheese whether it’s going to be a great one or not. In a really good one, the cheese slowly oozes from the cut edges. The bread’s exterior is an even golden brown that’s lightly permeated with butter, but not overly greasy. Pick it up and you can feel the crust is crisp and supports the generous portion of melted cheese inside, yet it flexes ever so slightly. It’s salty, gooey, buttery, and comforting in all the right ways, but most importantly it retains that perfect crispness, because there are few things worse than a soggy griddled sandwich.
I take grilled cheese, pressed panini, tuna melts, and all griddled sandwiches pretty seriously. I take my time, as Kenji suggests in his grilled cheese recipe, to griddle both sides of the bread. I cook the sandwich slowly so that the cheese melts in proper synchronicity with the bread toasting, reaching their desired states together. I do this because good things are worth waiting for.
But there’s no point going to all that trouble just to have my methodically, flawlessly executed sandwich turn into a soggy, slumpy mess when I go for that first bite.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
That’s what happens if you put a hot grilled cheese—or any griddled sandwich—directly on a plate right after cooking. Condensation builds up underneath the sandwich, undoing all that careful crisping and you end up with a sandwich that might look crunchy on top, but it’s moist, limp and sad when you pick it up. It’s a grilled cheese–ruining experience.
To avoid this, you need to let it rest in an elevated position for a few minutes before slicing into it. By setting the just-cooked grilled cheese on a wire rack or some other setup that allows air to circulate around the entire sandwich, steam can escape without sogging out the bottom side. I even had an old roommate who would elevate her grilled cheese by placing two chopsticks underneath it.
And for anyone who is worried about the sandwich cooling too much during this raised-up rest, don’t. Not only does this extra step avoid a steamy underside, it also gives the cheese a chance to cool down just enough, firming ever so slightly so that it doesn’t ooze out of the sandwich too quickly once you do cut and bite into it.
It’s a small extra step, but a necessary one for a grilled cheese to reach its rightful heights.
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