All my best tips and ideas for how to make the most amazing grilled cheese sandwich from a GenX gal who has been making grilled cheeses for about 50 years now!
1980s Recipes Disclaimer
So first off, if you are coming here for one of those “fancy” recipes that have things like ingredient lists, measurements and a print button, you best just move along!
I am a 1980s cook… meaning that I learned to make food in order to survive my latchkey child upbringing! There was no June Cleaver home to make me a nice little snack, I had to scavenge in the avocado green fridge to find ANYTHING that I could turn into food!
Now that we have that out of the way, let's get to cooking!
Grilled Cheese Sandwich Ingredients
In my 1980s world, there were only 3 ingredients… Kraft singles processed cheese, Wonder white bread and Land O Lakes Butter.
If that seems strangely specific, wait until you read some of my other recipes… for SURE my Mom was a product of the TV industrial complex that said only brand name products were good enough for your family!
Now that I am grown I understand that white flour, chemically processed bread is not ACTUALLY as good for you as the bougie seven grain, hand-milled and ground, fancy pants bread my hubs buys at Sprouts now!
Here are the ingredients we will be using today:
- Cheddar slices with a delicate paper between them as a substitute for Kraft singles
- Dave Killer Bread which is (I kid you not) thin sliced, organic, sprouted whole grain bread
- Publix salted butter (room temperature… you don't want to be trying to spread a stick of butter on your dinner if you don't have it sitting out for a couple of hours!)
- Organic creamy Tomato Soup (what is up with my old man and all the fancy food?)
Preparing The Bread
This is the most important step in the grilled cheese process… slathering it with butter.
Now it not the time to be skimpy! We are going to be using almost the full stick of butter on 5 sandwiches if that helps you understand the level of butter you should be looking to achieve!
You are going to want to spread the butter equally on each slice of bread and get out to those edges so your grilled cheeses will be toasty brown all over!
Assembling In The Pan
I have found that using an old fashioned cast iron skillet on gas heat is the best way to cook your grilled cheese sandwiches. If you don't have that a non-stick pan on electric will be fine… I was able to cook grilled cheese as a 10 year old on a (say it with me) Avocado Green electric stove just fine!
Tetris those sandwiches in there! Yes, it will be hard to flip them the first time, but the sandwiches from this first batch are the best ones so take advantage of that!
Put the bottom butter side down, add two slices of cheese and then put the top on top, butter side up.
As you can see, my teen boy is NOT down with the fancy bread, or the fancy cheese so he gets whole wheat and Kraft singles, the way the good Lord meant grilled cheese to be!
At this point the pan is still cold, moving on to the actual “cooking” phase…
Cooking The Grilled Cheese
Here is where you are going to have to be a little bit creative because I have no idea what temperature you should cook at!
I set the heat to 4… that seems to be able to heat up the cast iron skillet without burning the bread to smithereens!
The key to melting the butter and the cheese is a lid… none of our lids are actually big enough to cover all the sandwiches so I just let that one sandwich get a little smooshed…. it is fine!
Cooking Time
Who the hell knows? I just let it sit there and cook for a while, lifting them up periodically to see if they are golden brown or not yet.
When they are crispy brown on the bottom use a spatula to flip the whole thing over… use your fingers to make sure it doesn't fall apart during the turn!
Using the lid and letting the bread brown will give time for the cheese melt to happen naturally.
Finished Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
And here is the final product! The picture is all snazzy because my hubs is a photographer, but he is stingy with that so we only get the final pretty pictures, you have to live with my lame pictures for the rest of the post!
Grilled Cheese Sandwich FAQs
Okay, that is the basics but I am sure you have more questions! Here are some answers…
Is it illegal to have grilled cheese without tomato soup?
I am not sure what entity decided years ago that you HAVE to have tomato soup with grilled cheese (NOT chicken noodle, not a nice bisque, but plain old watery tomatoes.
I am assuming that it was collusion between Cambells and Kraft, but who knows … ten minutes later… I LIED, it was actually the military industrial complex that paired tomato soup with grilled cheese!
I don't think you can actually be arrested for having a soup other than tomato with your grilled cheese, but is that the thing you want to go to the big house for?
Is that amount of butter healthy?
Hmmmm I am not a nutritionalist but I would think, nope! If you are going to make daily grilled cheese a part of your life I would check with your cardiologist first!
That said, if you are going to have an occasional grilled cheese sandwich it probably won't kill you right off the bat!
Is Heinz ketchup a legitimate accompaniment to grilled cheese?
Because I was just a young lass when I started eating grilled cheese, alone in kitchen with just a bratty little brother for company, I did not know that ketchup on toast was even a thing.
I am not ketchup eater in real life so I am a huge nope on this one, but if you do use ketchup please choose Heinz to make my Mom happy in her afterlife!
Is this grilled cheese sandwich actually good?
Well, my Dad who is 84 years old will only eat my grilled cheeses… he tried some weird kind of “butter the inside bread” thing a few years ago that was just weird, but in general he just waits around until I am available to make him lunch if he wants a grilled cheese sandwich.
You call yourself a food blogger, why are there drips on the bowl?
If you have gotten all the way down here just to bitch about why I am not concerned about drips on my melamine plastic bowl, I am not sure I can help!
Also, you think I am a food blogger… awwww that's nice!
1980s Great Grilled Cheese Sandwich Recipe Wrapup
I hope this little trip down memory lane was fun for you! I had a blast writing this up and remembering all the times that I had to make dinner for me and my kid brother because there were no adults in sight!
I know, they had jobs and it was socially acceptable to leave kids home alone for hours at a time then… just seems a bit weird in retrospect now!
Let me know if you have any requests for other lame-ass 1980s comfort food recipes to help recreate your childhood memories!
