Grilled Cheese Toastie
Mayonnaise on the outside instead of butter. It browns more evenly, does not burn as easily, and spreads straight from the fridge.
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 10 min
- Resting
- 2 min
- Total
- 17 min
- Serves
- 2
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Cereals containing gluten
- Eggs
- Milk
- Mustard
- Sulphites
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Toastie
Method
Toastie
Grate both cheeses and toss them together. Grated melts evenly; sliced leaves cold seams and pushes out of the sides.
Spread mayonnaise thinly over one face of each slice of bread, right to the edges.
Mayonnaise rather than butter is the one trick here. It is an emulsion of oil and egg, so it browns at a lower temperature and more evenly than butter, which contains water and milk solids that scorch. It also spreads straight from the fridge without tearing the bread.
Turn two slices over and spread the dry faces with mustard, then pile on the cheese, leaving a 1cm border.
Top with the remaining slices, mayonnaise side out.
Put the butter in a cold, heavy frying pan and set it over a low heat. Melt it and lay the sandwiches in.
Low heat, and be patient. The most common toastie failure is a dark brown outside and a cold seam of unmelted cheese in the middle, which is entirely a heat problem.
Cook for 4 to 5 minutes a side, pressing gently with a spatula, until deep golden and the cheese visibly runs at the edges when tilted.
Rest on a board for 2 minutes before cutting. Cut immediately and the molten cheese runs out; two minutes lets it set just enough to stay in.
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What to expect
- Taste
Salt, butter and cheese, with the mustard giving a warmth most people cannot place. The mayonnaise crust tastes faintly of nothing in particular and does its work through texture and colour.
- Aroma
Toasting bread and hot cheese. It is one of the shortest routes there is from an empty kitchen to a kitchen that smells of something.
- Texture
Crisp shell, soft interior, and cheese that stretches rather than sitting in a firm slab.
- Sound
A quiet sizzle for ten minutes, and the crunch of the first cut.
- How the flavour moves
Toasted crust first, then salt and fat, then the mustard at the end.
- Serve it
Hot enough to burn, which is why it rests for two minutes.
- Goes with
Tomato soup, which is a genuine classic rather than a cliché. A sharp pickle or chutney.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Beginner, and the only difficulty is patience.
- Cost
Very low.
- Equipment
A heavy frying pan and a spatula.
- When to make it
Any time.
- Best season
None.
- You know it is done when
Deep even gold across the whole face, and melted cheese visibly running at the edges when the sandwich is tilted.
- And it feels like
The bread should crunch and the cheese should stretch. Any firm cold centre means it needed longer at a lower heat.
- Food safety
Nothing unusual.
- Where it goes wrong
- Too much heat, which is the only real failure mode.
- Sliced cheese instead of grated, which leaves cold seams.
- Cheese right to the edge, which melts out and burns on the pan.
- Thin supermarket bread, which collapses.
- Cutting it immediately, when the cheese runs straight out.
- If it does go wrong
Burnt outside, cold middle: lower the heat and give it longer. Cheese not melting: it needs more time, not more heat. Cheese leaking: too close to the edge. Greasy: too much butter in the pan — the mayonnaise is already providing fat.
- Making it ahead
None.
- Keeping it
None.
- Reheating
No.
- Freezing
No.
- Leftovers
None.
- Scaling it
Two at a time in a large pan. Four crowds it and drops the temperature.
- Substitutions
Any bread with structure — a slice of soft supermarket white will collapse. Comté, Raclette or Red Leicester all work in place of the Gruyère. Butter on the outside instead of mayonnaise works and burns more readily.
- Dietary swaps
Contains gluten, milk, and eggs, mustard and sulphites from the mayonnaise. Butter on the outside instead of mayonnaise removes the eggs and sulphites. Vegetarian, and nut free.
- Shopping for it
A block of Cheddar rather than pre-grated, which is dusted with starch that interferes with melting.
- Keeping the cost down
One of the cheapest hot meals there is. All Cheddar rather than a mix costs less and melts slightly less well.
- Sustainability
Cheese is the only significant part of the footprint — roughly ten litres of milk go into a kilogram of it — and 210g here feeds two, which is a generous amount. A version with 150g total and a spoonful of caramelised onion is just as good. Bread is among the lowest-impact staples, and using the end of a loaf that would otherwise be thrown away is what this sandwich has historically been for.
- Nutrition
Rich and simple. It is bread, cheese and fat.
- Worth it?
Turn the heat down and wait. Everything else about it is already easy.
Where it comes from
- Origin
The United States for this exact form; toasted cheese is much older and broadly European.
- Also called
Grilled cheese in America, cheese toastie in Britain.
- Said out loud
Straightforward.
- What the name means
American 'grilled' here means cooked on a griddle rather than under a grill, which is a transatlantic terminology difference that causes regular confusion.
- History
Toasted cheese has a long documented history in Britain, where Welsh rarebit — melted seasoned cheese on toast — appears from the eighteenth century under an older and less polite name. The closed American sandwich becomes ubiquitous in the 1920s and 30s with the arrival of commercially sliced bread and processed cheese, and it was cheap enough to be a Depression staple.
- Why it matters
Childhood food in both countries, and one of the small number of dishes people have strong opinions about without ever having read a recipe for it.
- When it is eaten
Lunch, late at night, or when there is nothing else.
- The traditional way
Buttered bread cooked on a griddle with cheese between.
- How it changed
Processed cheese made it universal; better cheese and the mayonnaise trick made it good.
- Regional variations
The Welsh rarebit tradition is open-faced and includes beer and mustard in the cheese. The croque monsieur is the French relative with béchamel and ham.
- How this version differs
Mayonnaise on the outside, a two-cheese mix, and a genuinely low heat.
- Sources and credit
None.
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AmericanCourses & dish types
LunchMain ingredients
CheeseDiets
VegetarianTime & effort
15 minutes