- Hi guys. It's Alvin.
And I love grilled cheese.
I think it's an amazing comfort food,
and we actually made a 20 pound grilled cheese
on our Tasty show, "Making it Big" which was pretty fun.
My friend Annie, who's the producer of this video,
sent me over eleven grilled cheese hacks
to try and make a grilled cheese
and they look really fun,
so I'm excited to try them out.
My ideal grilled cheese is
two slices of bread,
at least two kinds of cheese,
toasted in butter until both sides are evenly golden brown.
And the inside is nice, gooey and melty.
You can't really go wrong with that.
Pretty good.
Okay, so the first hack is to use a baker-style,
thicker kind of loaf cut of bread.
I think this will give the grilled cheese a nice texture
and make it better to eat and have it be more interesting.
I like this kind of bread.
Second hack is to toast the inside of the bread before
actually toasting the outside as you would, normally.
I think the goal here is to get a nice, crispy texture.
I'm actually really excited to try this
because I want that extra crispy crunch at the end.
I guess we won't know until the whole sandwich is done.
Okay, the next hack it to rub a clove of garlic
on the bread after it's cooked.
I'm excited about this one too because it means
I don't have to chop up garlic to make my grilled cheese
have a garlic flavor, which is really nice.
And I feel like it's just gonna be more of a nice,
garlic flavor, rather than just chunks.
It smells great.
So the next hack is to use multiple cheeses
to provide a wide range of texture, flavor, meltiness,
all that good stuff.
On the internet, I read that three to five is great,
so obviously I chose five.
Okay, so here are the five cheeses.
There's cheddar, which is your classic yellow.
Cheddar's just a nice cheese to have.
This is gruyere,
which I think is actually one of the best
cheeses in grilled cheese, 'cause even thought it's
super strong, and maybe funky before it's cooked,
I think after it's cooked it's sweet and mellow
and really good, which is nice.
Parmesan cause parmesan is
just really good in general.
I got some provolone for a different, more mild flavor
and it adds that meltiness and chewiness.
And muenster.
This cheese, which has the signature tiger stripe outline.
It's also really melty and really good.
So, the next hack is to shred the cheese into shreds
rather than just cutting them into slices or blocks.
I have a cheese grater here.
It's not a full one, but hopefully it's gonna work.
I think the idea here is to make the cheese more uniform
when it melts so you don't have pockets
of unmelted cheese and pockets of over-cooked cheese,
So, that makes total sense.
The next hack is to spread mayo instead of butter
onto the bread before cooking.
I actually heard a lot about this one.
I've never tried it in real life.
So, I'm really excited to try it.
I'm not sure how it's going to taste.
In theory it makes sense 'cause mayo has eggs and oil
and that all could caramelize nicely, but
I'll have to try it before I see if it's
better than butter.
Okay, I think it's time to assemble the sandwich.
So, I want to start with the shredded so it can
fill in these holes and not spill everywhere.
Actually, the shredding is a really good idea
because I think with a bread like this
it really does
stay in there more because of all the big holes
we just talked about.
So, it's almost like the two hacks are working
in conjunction.
(ding)
The next hack is to actually cook the grilled cheese
separately in two different pans.
I'm not sure this is gonna be worth the trouble
because you have to get another pan dirty,
and when you put them together there's a chance
it could spill, but apparently it helps the cheese
melt faster.
I'm gonna try and see if this is actually worth the trouble.
Yeah, apparently the grilled cheese isn't done
until the cheese starts oozing, and well,
oh yeah!
It's definitely oozing.
So, this is the grilled cheese.
It kind of has all the hacks.
The mayo crust, the bread, the multiple cheeses,
the shredded.
I'm excited to eat this 'cause I just want to know
which ones were actually worth it.
Oh ho ho.
Oh it's really good.
Ooh!
The bread is nice 'cause it's nice and chewy
kind of like I thought.
It absorbs all that cheese into the holes which is great.
So the pre-toasting hack,
I don't think it made a difference just 'cause
I couldn't tell the inside was toasted.
It's not like it was extra crunchy.
The garlic hack was kind of fun, and it makes sense
in theory, but honestly, I didn't really taste it
at the end, so, probably not worth it.
I like the multiple cheese hack.
I think it makes a lot of sense.
I think if you have a lot of cheeses it's a lot of flavor.
You don't miss the mayo, which is nice.
I couldn't tell it was a mayo crust.
I don't know why the two pans thing is a thing.
Pretty good, pretty good, pretty good grilled cheese.
There's other couple of grilled cheese hacks
that I want to try that are really cool.
So, I want to show you guys what they are.
Okay, so I have two sandwiches that I just made
exactly like the other one.
This one we're actually gonna cook with brown butter
in the pan which sounds really good.
This one we're actually gonna try a technique I saw online
from Chef John from Food Wishes.
He actually uses actual cheese on the outside,
and it cooks in the pan, and it gives it a really
nice crust.
I'm really excited for that.
I really like brown butter.
I used it in a lot of baked goods like cookies and stuff,
but I think it's just an amazing thing, overall.
So you get so much flavor from browning butter.
Big boy, go in.
Making sure the bread can get all that great stuff
that we just worked really hard to make.
(slow music)
It probably exists online, but I like the idea of it,
is to actually put some honey on the bread
as it caramelizes, so that when it's almost done,
honey can almost act as another
thin layer of caramelized sugar that gives it extra crunch.
All right guys, this is it.
Oh my God, look at this.
This beautiful honey-brown butter glazed grilled cheese.
Oh!
It's so good!
Holy moly!
The honey and the brown butter, absolute game changer.
It's sweet, it's crusty, it's great.
There's so much flavor.
It balances with the cheese so well.
I mean, I like putting honey and brown butter in things,
but grilled cheese...
It might sound weird to put something sweet, but the
crust and the flavor it gives with the cheese,
it's amazing!
Oh my God, it's so good.
Okay, so the last hack is to cook sandwich,
but instead of using butter or stuff in the pan,
we're gonna use actual cheese.
I think the idea is to get this cheese to brown up
and then stick to this
as a crust, so it's almost like an
inside-out grilled cheese.
But, if Chef John from Food Wishes did it, and it works,
I trust him because he is the OG master, so we'll
see how it goes.
Okay, if I mess this up it will probably be 'cause
it's my technique, but I'll do my best to try to
get to where the hack is supposed to be.
(slow music)
(beep)
Okay, this is the third one.
The inside-out grilled cheese, I guess.
It looks really greasy.
Yeah, I think there's just so much cheese that,
maybe I just put too much in the middle or too much
overall, but let's see how it tastes.
It's really sharp and strong
'cause of all the salt.
If you love that, then I think this is the perfect
sandwich for you.
Me, a little too salty, a little too greasy.
My roommate love cheese, so
I'm gonna give this to her.
But, I don't think I can take more than a couple
bites of this one.
So, those were the eleven hacks of my grilled cheese.
My favorite three:
The first one's gotta be the sourdough bread or
any sort of thick-cut bread.
A lot of texture, a lot of flavor.
I think it's way better than the store-bought,
sandwich, white bread.
But, there's nothing wrong with that as well.
My second favorite hack is definitely multiple cheeses.
I think it's great to have a lot,
but obviously you can make it with one or two.
It will still be awesome.
And the third one, I really gotta give it to the honey one.
That one was so cool.
I love sweet and savory, and I love glazing a lot of things
in honey, so having that extra shine, extra crust,
that glistening, crackly sort of texture that isn't just
bread, it's really good.
Hopefully, you guys enjoyed making your grilled cheeses.
And, I'm gonna go exercise a lot now.
Peace.
(slow music)