- I love sandwiches.
And no one does sandwiches better than my local diner.
I'm gonna try to recreate three of my favorites,
and I'll show you some tips along the way.
For my perfect grilled cheese sandwich,
I'm using Nature's Own Perfectly Crafted White Bread.
So one of my favorite tricks
for making a perfectly golden grilled cheese sandwich,
is mayo actually.
So since we're crisping both sides,
we are actually gonna do mayo
on both sides of the bread as well.
I also love that the mayo gives the sandwich
a slight bit of tang.
And I don't feel like you really miss the butter,
because there's so much creaminess
and flavor coming from the cheese.
Last side.
I have a medium skillet here,
and I'm gonna heat it to a medium low.
Then we can just pop our slices right in.
The bread is looking nice and golden on the underside.
I'm just gonna give these guys a flip.
I'm going to top the toasted side with cheddar.
Two slices of classic cheddar,
can't make a grilled cheese without it, in my opinion.
And then two slice of Swiss, nice and creamy,
adds a different dimension of flavor.
And then we're going to take the toasted side
of our second piece and place it on top of our cheese.
We keep the heat at medium low,
because if it's too hot, then the outside of the bread
will get toasted and the inside cheese won't melt.
And that's the biggest bummer of all time,
when you bite into a grilled cheese
and the cheese is still not melty.
It takes a little more time, but it's worth it in the end.
Our underside is nice and golden.
I'm just gonna give it a flip.
(upbeat music)
I am so excited to eat this.
So, super golden and crisp on both sides,
gooey, super cheesy in the middle,
and we've got that four layers of crunch
I am super psyched about.
This has got everything you want
in a classic grilled cheese.
Golden on both sides, super gooey in the center.
You've got the sharpness from the cheddar,
creaminess from the Swiss, it's just pretty much perfect.
So crazy fact, Nature's Own sells
over seven billion slices of bread a year,
which is enough to wrap around the world over 21 times.
How nuts is that?
Next up is probably my all time favorite sandwich, the BLT.
Unfortunately, tomatoes are only in season
like two months out of the year,
so I have a little hack to transform boring, sad,
not so gorgeous grocery store tomatoes
into delicious, juicy sweet tomatoes.
And that means we are going to oven roast them.
We have here just a regular red tomato,
straight from the grocery store.
Nothing too special.
So we're going to lay it out
on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet,
and then we're just going to season them
with salt and pepper.
I also have some basil leaves.
And we are just gonna tear up a few of them,
and just lay them right on top of the tomatoes.
Just for some added summery flavor.
And lastly, we have a whole third a cup of olive oil.
I know it sounds like a lot,
but we're actually gonna use it later in the recipe,
so that's why we're using so much.
These are going into a 250 degree oven for about two hours.
That'll really give them a time to slowly cook
and it'll bring out all the sugars in the tomatoes
and make them 10 times better than they are raw.
I made a tray in advance this morning,
because I knew I was having a BLT for lunch,
so I'm going to grab those.
As you can see, they are a lot smaller
than the ones we put in.
They lose a lot of their moisture
and these bits of basil might look burned,
but they're actually just like fried and so good.
So keep those, they'll go on the sandwich too.
Next step, extremely important ingredient
in a BLT, the B, bacon.
If you have seen any my previous episodes,
you will know that I like starting my bacon in a cold pan.
That way it gives the bacon's fat a chance to render out.
Instead of getting all crinkly,
it kind of stays a little bit more flat,
which is great for sandwiches.
Something I love to do
when I'm cooking bacon for a sandwich like this
is add a pretty hefty amount of pepper,
just because there's so much fat going on.
Pepper is the perfect way to break through that,
add a little bite,
and we'll do the same thing on the other side,
We just wrapped up our bacon,
and now we're gonna whip up a really easy little aioli
with mayo, chives, and lemon zest.
Since we are cooking the tomatoes,
the sandwich loses a little bit of freshness
that it normally has, so this aioli really is nice
to add a little extra crunch and some green, you know?
So I'm gonna just move
our roasted tomatoes to a separate plate,
so we can utilize all that delicious olive oil.
And we are going to use it to toast our bread.
For this sandwich,
I am using Nature's Own Perfectly Crafted Multigrain.
I love using a multigrain for this sandwich.
It's just a nice sturdy piece of bread
that can hold up to all of our ingredients.
I'm gonna preheat this pan to a medium heat.
So we are going to dip our bread
in that delicious tomato basil oil, both sides,
and then just pop it right in our preheated pan.
I'm gonna just transfer our bread to a plate.
We are going to add our quick aioli, tomatoes.
Now we're adding our bacon, nice and peppery.
And then last but not least, our lettuce.
So we've got our nice, toasted, multigrain,
lemon chive aioli, roasted tomatoes,
black pepper bacon and lettuce.
Doesn't get much better than that.
Roasting the tomatoes really helped to elevate the sandwich.
The multigrain really soaked up
all that delicious flavor from the infused oil.
It's a winner.
All right, last but not least, we're making a patty melt
starting with caramelizing onions.
Caramelized onions obviously take a while to make,
so we're gonna start with those first.
About a tablespoon of olive oil, and I'm gonna heat it
on medium low.
And, adding our onions.
I'm gonna salt these right away,
because salt will help draw out some of the moisture
and we really want these with their sweetness amplified.
So we wanna get out as much water as we can
right off the bat.
Here we have just regular ground beef,
and we are gonna add a few different flavorings.
We are going to add some garlic powder,
a little bit of Worcestershire sauce for umami.
To me, a patty melt is kind of a combination
of a grilled cheese and a hamburger.
And it's already pretty messy and melty as is,
so I like adding the mustard and ketchup
into the actual patty,
so as not to make too much of a mess.
And it's nice to have that flavor just in the background.
And then just salt and pepper, and just give it a stir
just to get everything incorporated.
You don't have to go too crazy.
We're just gonna form it into a really, really thin patty,
because we want it to extend all the way
to the edge of the bread.
All right, I'm gonna preheat this skillet to a medium heat,
and I'm just gonna make a nice, large, rectangle patty.
I'm just gonna let this get nice and golden,
and caramelized on the bottom,
and then we'll flip it and get the other side caramelized,
and it'll be good.
We are golden on both sides,
so I'm just gonna take the patty out
and drain it on a paper towel, like so.
And then I'm going to give our onions a stir,
they're looking close to being ready.
I'm gonna add a little bit of red wine vinegar.
This'll just add a little tang to the onions,
and we can get up any of those burnt onion pieces
that have all the good flavor in them.
These should be ready in like six or seven more minutes.
We have all of our elements ready to go,
so it's time to build the sandwich.
I have this beautiful brioche style bread.
Which I really love,
because it's got a little bit of sweetness,
which plays so well with all the savory stuffings
we've got going on.
I like using Nature's Own Bread,
because I know it's scratch to shelf in about 48 hours,
so it's gotta be fresh.
So we are using the same trick
that we used for our grilled cheese,
and we're using mayo to toast the outside of the bread.
We are going to set our skillet on medium heat.
And now we can start just building in the skillet again.
So I'm going to start with a couple slices of Swiss,
very classic patty melt cheese,
and we're gonna pop our patty on.
Our caramelized onions are nice, and tender, and golden,
so they can go straight on top of the patty.
And then, even more cheese goes on top,
another couple slices of Swiss.
We are just gonna put mayo on the other side of our slice,
so when we flip it, it gets a nice golden crust as well.
So we're just gonna cook this on sort of a medium low heat,
until our bread is nice and toasted and the cheese is melty,
and then we can dig in.
All right, we're a nice and golden on the bottom, whew.
So our cheese is melty, our bread is toasty on both sides,
and we can take it out.
Ooh, look at that cheese.
Last sandwich of the day, there's a lot going on.
Super melty Swiss, lots of caramelized onions,
I think I might like this better than a hamburger, honestly.
It's so good.
So those are my three favorite diner sandwiches,
but let me know in the comments below what your favorite is?
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