Grilled Cheese Throw Down!

Tonight the Girls Team had two very special guests join them for Make It Happen Monday - the Boys Team! My brother is home this week for Spring Break, and for those of you who don't know, this guy makes a MEAN grilled cheese sandwich. So to celebrate having every member of the family home, we invited my brother and dad to join us as we hosted a Grilled Cheese Throw Down in the kitchen. The only rule: use cheese and bread and put a new touch on an old classic! 


Corey will explain the method behind his grilling madness:


A quick disclaimer: I agreed to do this so-called "Grilled Cheese Challenge" strictly so everyone would call me by my well-deserved nickname, "Grilled Cheese Master." I enjoyed it so much, I would request everyone to call me by this name the next time you see me. Thank you. My idea of a grilled cheese sandwich is simple. Two slices of bread. One slice of cheddar cheese. However, tonight I was posed with the challenge of being creative. Since my creative side isn't my strong-suit, I decided to go BOLD.

My creation was a grilled cheese with bacon on an entire loaf of French bread. Yes, an entire loaf.

"What is that? A giant bone? A giant toy? Who are these people around me? Actually, I don't care what it is or who they are. I want that. I WANT THAT!!!" 

-Lola Pomicpic

 The bacon cooking. Really something that I thought would make my dish over-the-top awesome, but was much more of a disappointment because it didn't add the flavor I was looking for.

 Pre-Oven. I wanted to make sure the bacon stuck, so I buried it in cheese. None of these pictures give the size of my sandwich justice. IT WAS A WHOLE LOAF OF BREAD.

 The product before the folding. The cheese didn't so much harden as it did solidify, making it less of a grilled cheese sandwich and more of....cheesey bread? With bacon on it? 

Instead of attacking the entire thing, I cut off a small piece and planned on eating the monstrosity piece by piece. This is the only piece I ate. 

Out of a whole loaf of bread.

Ah. The classic. I will make this for anyone. Anytime. Bring a pan. Maybe some cheese. I'll supply the bread. -CRP

Now let's head outside to the backyard and see what my dad whipped up:

Thanks ladies for letting me participate in your Make It Happen Monday adventure. Tonight we were to make our own variation of a grilled cheese sandwich. I reached deep into my culinary library to come up with my concoction. I wanted to combine my favorite meal of all time with the required cheese and bread ingredient but tofu and beef over rice with cheese and bread sounded gross. So I went with plan "B". The following is my journey into the grilled cheese world.

First, my ingredients. I started with a small slice of salmon that I knew would fit on two sandwiches but not overpower the other ingredients. Avocado and Mozzarella cheese with some juice from a fresh lemon finished off the contents of the meal. Of course, I had bread too, because a sandwich is not a sandwich without bread.

Since the kitchen was going to be crowded with all the other chefs  in there using the other appliances, I decided to use the BBQ as my choice of a cooking tool. I placed the salmon on the grill and covered it with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

While the fish was cooking, I sliced both the avocado and mozzarella cheese into small thin pieces so that they would fit nicely onto the sandwich with the salmon.

I buttered my bread slices and placed the avocado and cheese onto a plate and made my way out to the backyard where it was nice and quiet and not crowded. I placed the bread on the grill followed by a piece of salmon centered in the middle of the bread. I then put two slices of cheese and a generous portion of avocado on top of the fish. I put the second piece of buttered bread on top to complete the sandwich.

After grilling both pieces of bread until the outside was a golden brown, I took them off the grill and plated them. I made two sandwiches so I could share with the other members of the family.

This is the finished product. I thought it tasted pretty good. It was a fun meal to cook.

Let's check in with my mom and see how her food truck inspired sandwich turned out: 

For a long time if someone asked me "Do you want a grilled cheese sandwich?" I would say "What? Fat on bread? No thanks!" That changed when Corey became a grilled cheese prodigy around the age of 10. Watching him perfect his sandwich, helped me to appreciate what went into making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich! 

So for my contribution to this throw down (not a competition), I decided to try and replicate a delicious grilled cheese sandwich that I had enjoyed at a popular local food truck. That sandwich had apples, honey, almonds and cheese. I couldn't remember what cheese they used. I think it was Havarti and Brie? I can't remember but it was good!

Here are the ingredients I decided to go with, whole wheat bread, honey, Gouda cheese, and a granny smith apple. I caramelized some onions and included just a little bit of chopped walnuts.

Here I am slicing the apples really thin :)

I just put a little bit of honey on the inside of the bread. Then I layered the onions, cheese, apples, cheese, and sprinkled the walnuts on before adding the top slice of bread. This took a bit longer than I anticipated, so my bread turned out darker than I would have liked. I was a little disappointed. I know from watching the master, that the trick is to get your pan nice and hot, and then turn down the heat right before you put the bread on the grill! 

My plated sandwich. 

Even though the bread was darker than I like, this sandwich was delicious! I would definitely make it again. 

And lastly, my spin on grilled cheese:

For my grilled cheese sandwich, I melted pepper jack cheese with bacon and avocado on sourdough bread. Not too risky, but different nonetheless! 

Sourdough bread, avocado, pepper jack cheese and bacon.

Plate of ingredients waiting for the pan to heat up.

Grilling! Eventually, when my sandwich was too big to flip, I placed a plate on top while I was grilling to weight it down and flatten the sandwich...

Plated pepper jack grilled cheese by Casey!

And finally, it was time to eat! We cut each sandwich into quarters so everyone could sample each other's creations. Tater tots rounded out the classic meal :) It was fun to see what everyone came up with in creating their sandwich. They were all so different and all delicious!

Thanks to the Boys Team for joining us this week with creativity and enthusiasm! It was fun to invite all members of the family to Make It Happen with us this week :)