These are French onion grilled cheese sandwiches,
and we're going to serve it with a lovely salad
with a Dijon vinaigrette to go along with it.
I start out with three softball-size
or four medium onions for four sandwiches,
basically one onion per sandwich, why?
Because onions cook way, way down.
Boop.
Salt, of course, immediately will start drawing
the liquids out of the onions.
If the onions begin to brown at the edges,
turn the pan down even lower.
This is gonna take a good 35, 40 minutes to get
it to the proper color and consistency.
So, I've grated up, oh,
about three-quarters of a pound of Gruyere, mm.
We're going to take creme fraiche
and we're going to add a little Dijon mustard,
a splash of Worcestershire sauce,
boop,
a little salt and pepper,
and some chopped fresh herbs.
I like a combination of thyme and parsley,
and that'll be the special sauce on our sandwich.
We're well on our way,
I've got some onions working in the back.
When we come back, we'll make a sandwich,
get it on the griddle, and I'll show you how
to make our Dijon dressing, right after this.
(audience applauds)
Okay.
When you're making grilled cheese sandwiches
or a patty melt,
one of the, kind of the trickiest things
to master about it is proper butter distribution.
Some people also use mayo to brown their grilled cheeses.
What I like to do is take softened butter
and very, very, very thinly spread it evenly over the bread,
and then build the sandwich with
the buttered sides out.
So, we've got our French onions.
Take your bay leaf out when they're done.
See how much they've cooked down?
And they're covered in a little bit
of beef consomme and sherry or white wine.
Delicious, sugary flavor to them
'cause we let the onions really develop.
Oh, we gotta do cheese on both sides,
our Gruyere cheese.
Okay, now we're going to take our special sauce,
remember, our creme fraiche, Dijon mustard,
herbs, and a little bit of Worcestershire.
Slather that on the top of our sandwich,
and then put everybody on,
ooh, on the hot griddle all together.
We're going to make our salad dressing.
When you're making salad dressing,
start with grated onion or grated shallot,
or finely chopped or minced.
Put that in the bottom of your salad bowl and add acid.
In this case, I added lemon juice
and some white wine or white balsamic vinegar.
And then, we're going to add salt
and let this set for 10 minutes
before you build the rest of your dressing.
Then, we're going to add in natural sugar
with a little honey or agave
to sweeten our dressing slightly.
I love a nice tarragon-Dijon dressing,
so I'm gonna throw in some fresh tarragon,
and then a fat spoonful of good Dijon.
When we come back, we'll put all of our greens
in our salad
(audience applauds) and I'll show you
those sandwiches, right after this.
So, these are beautiful watermelon radishes
I'm running my knife through,
and for the salad, we did a sweet
and savory Dijon vinaigrette with a little hint
of honey running through it,
and some nice, fresh tarragon,
and then a little pop of spicy radish.
Toss that around.
Thinly sliced cornichon.
But, nobody cares about that sweet,
beautiful salad because all they really want
is to feel better about eating this.
(audience applauding)
These are our French onion grilled cheese sandwiches
with our creme fraiche Dijon sauce.
Hoh, hoh, hoh.
What? (audience applauding)