Grilled Cheese

Method

1. grate4 min
   coarse holes, cheeses mixed together
   cheddar + American cheese grated and tossed together. Grating is the whole difference between a sandwich that melts through and one with a solid slab in the middle: more surface area means faster, more even melting, and the two cheeses do different jobs — American carries emulsifying salts that keep the melt smooth, cheddar carries the flavour
2. season3 min
   butter softened to spreadable, applied to the outer faces only
   butter spread to the very edges of the outside faces (+ mustard smeared on the inner faces). Cold butter tears soft bread and lands in clumps that brown unevenly; if it is not soft, use mayonnaise instead, which spreads on cold bread and browns nearly as well. Edge to edge matters — an unbuttered corner stays pale and chewy
3. saute5 min
   medium-LOW, sandwich assembled in the pan, lid on for the first 3 minutes
   sandwich cooked slowly, covered at first (+ tomato, + onion). The lid traps steam and drives heat into the middle, which is what melts the cheese before the outside is done. This is the step people get wrong: on high heat the bread is dark in ninety seconds and the cheese is still cold, and there is no way back from that because the outside cannot take any more time
4. toast3 min
   lid off, turned once, pressed lightly, until deep golden both sides
   turned and finished uncovered until the second face is browned and the cheese visibly runs at the edges. Lid off now so the crust dries and crisps rather than steaming. Press gently with a spatula — enough to keep contact, not enough to squeeze the cheese out
5. rest2 min
   on a rack, 1-2 minutes, then cut on the diagonal
   briefly on a rack, never a plate. Molten cheese runs straight out of a sandwich cut immediately, and two minutes lets it set enough to stay put. A rack keeps steam from softening the underside — the same crust you just spent five minutes building goes limp in under a minute on a flat plate