Grilled cheese sandwiches to knock your socks off

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BY W. WAYT GIBBS
Associated Press

When I was a child, I thought like a child, I ate like a child: PB&Js, BLTs and grilled cheese sandwiches made from slices of Velveeta melted to gooey perfection between two slices of skillet-toasted white bread.

But when I became an adult, I put away childish things. I grew out of Velveeta and Wonder bread. Grilled cheese sandwiches, however, are forever – assuming you know how to update them for a more grown-up palate.

Begin by using better bread. In place of the squishy white stuff, try something with more substance: a flavorful sourdough, sweet brioche, or crunchy baguette, for example. Buy a loaf, and slice it yourself into slabs about half an inch think (or halve the baguette lengthwise). The slices should be substantial enough to hold everything together but not so bulky that they overwhelm the flavor of the sandwich.

Next, add some interesting texture or flavors to the filling. Thin slices of sweet apple and spicy jalapenos complement sourdough slices nicely. The brioche makes a delicious and filling breakfast or brunch when stuffed with sliced ham, sauteed mushrooms and a fried egg. A baguette yields a bruschetta-like grilled cheese sandwich when dressed with fresh basil leaves, pesto and tomato confit.

The star in this show, of course, is the cheese. You can use the fanciest, stinkiest, crumbliest cheese your heart desires if you borrow a trick from the food scientists at Kraft. Flip over a box of Velveeta and you’ll find there, listed among the other ingredients, the reason that it slices so easily and melts so uniformly: sodium citrate. This white, crystalline ingredient looks like salt, and in fact it is a salt – a salt of citric acid, which is a natural component of citrus fruits. You can buy sodium citrate at some brewer supply stores or order it readily online.

I keep a big jar of the stuff in my pantry because it is so useful for making cheese sauces for pasta, nachos or fondue. Just dissolve 11 grams of sodium citrate into 1 1/8 cups (265 milliliters) of milk or water over medium heat, bring to a simmer, and gradually whisk or blend in 285 grams of finely grated cheese (3 to 4 cups, depending on the kind of cheese and coarseness of the grater). As the cheese melts, the sodium citrate serves as an emulsifier and prevents the fat from splitting off to form a greasy slick on top.

The recipes below riff on this technique to make a thicker cheese sauce that sets into an even sheet, perfect for cutting into slices and adding to sandwiches. Use whatever kind or blend of cheeses and liquids you want (cold wheat beer works well in place of water). Add the weights of the cheese and liquid, and multiply the total by 0.028 to get the amount of sodium citrate to use.

For example, you can make 500 grams of emulsified cheese (enough for 12 to 14 slices) by blending 14 grams of sodium citrate into 115 milliliters of cold wheat beer, simmering, and blending in 200 grams (3 cups) of grated Gruyere and 180 grams (3 cups) of grated sharp cheddar.

Poured into a warm baking sheet and covered with plastic wrap, the cheese becomes solid after about two hours in the refrigerator. The slices, when individually wrapped in plastic or parchment paper, will keep for up to two months in the freezer. They thaw quickly, so when you get that Sunday afternoon urge for a quick grilled cheese blast from the past, you can recreate a fond memory from childhood in no time.

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If possible, weigh the cheese in the recipes below rather than relying on volume measurements; volumes can vary greatly with the kind of cheese and fineness of grating.

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AGED WHITE CHEDDAR ON SOURDOUGH WITH APPLES

Start to finish: 2 1/2 hours (30 minutes active)

Makes 4 sandwiches

For the cheese slices:

3 teaspoons (14 grams) sodium citrate

1/2 cup (115 milliliters) water

6 cups (380 grams) aged white cheddar cheese, grated

For the sandwich:

Butter

8 slices sourdough bread, about 1/2 inch thick

8 very thin slices apple (Honeycrisp, or your favorite variety)

3 tablespoons (30 grams) thinly sliced jalapenos

Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silicone baking mat, or oil the sheet lightly, and heat it in an oven set to its lower temperature. The larger the baking sheet, the thinner the cheese slices will be.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sodium citrate in the water, then bring to a simmer. Add the grated cheese to the simmering water a handful at a time while whisking or blending with an immersion blender until all of the cheese is completely melted and smooth.

Pour the melted cheese onto the warmed baking sheet. Tip the sheet back and forth to form a single layer of even thickness. Cover the cheese layer with plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator until set, about 2 hours. Slice the cheese into pieces sized to fit your bread slices.

When ready to prepare the sandwiches, heat a large, heavy skillet over medium. Alternatively, heat a sandwich grill or panini press.

Butter the outward-facing sides of each bread slice, assemble the sandwiches, each with a slice of cheese, a slice of apple and a bit of the jalapenos. Add a sandwich to the skillet and panfry until the bread is golden brown and the cheese is melted, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Repeat with remaining sandwiches.

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GOAT CHEESE ON BAGUETTE WITH TOMATO CONFIT AND BASIL

Start to finish: 2 1/2 hours (30 minutes active)

Makes 4 sandwiches

For the cheese slices:

2 1/2 tablespoons (38 milliliters) water

2 1/4 teaspoons (11 grams) sodium citrate

3 cups (380 grams) goat cheese, rind removed and crumbled (Bucheron or your favorite semi-aged goat cheese)

For the sandwich:

16-inch baguette

Butter, as needed

1/4 cup (80 grams) pesto

1/2 cup (120 grams) tomato confit in oil (or sun-dried tomatoes in oil)

8 to 12 leaves fresh basil

Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silicone baking mat, or oil the sheet lightly, and heat it in an oven set to its lower temperature. The larger the baking sheet, the thinner the cheese slices will be.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, dissolve the sodium citrate in the water, then bring to a simmer. Add the cheese to the simmering water a handful at a time while whisking or blending with an immersion blender until all of the cheese is completely melted and smooth.

Pour the melted cheese onto the warmed baking sheet. Tip the sheet back and forth to form a single layer of even thickness. Cover the cheese layer with plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator until set, about 2 hours. Slice the cheese into pieces sized to fit your bread slices.

When ready to prepare the sandwich, heat a large, heavy skillet over medium. Alternatively, heat a sandwich grill or panini press.

Cut the baguette into 4 segments, each about 4 inches long, then slice each segment in half lengthwise. Lightly butter the crust of each baguette slice, then assemble the sandwiches, using a bit of pesto, a slice of cheese, a bit of sun-dried tomatoes and 2 to 3 basil leaves per sandwich. Panfry each sandwich until the crust is toasted and the cheese is melted, 2 to 3 minutes on a side.

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Photo credit: Chris Hoover/ Modernist Cuisine, LLC

Science helps craft the perfect mac and cheese

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BY SCOTT HEIMENDINGER
Associated Press

Imagine your favorite cheese: perhaps an aged, sharp cheddar, or maybe a blue Gorgonzola or a gentle Monterey Jack. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to use those really good cheeses you love on nachos or as a sauce on macaroni or steamed vegetables?

But if you have ever tried melting high-quality cheeses, you’ve experienced the problem: the cheese separates into a greasy oil slick that no amount of stirring will restore.

One traditional workaround is to make a Mornay sauce, which combines the cheese with a cooked mixture of flour, butter and milk. But a Mornay sauce can end up tasting as much of cooked flour as it does of cheese. The starch in the flour actually masks some of the flavors in the cheese, so the sauce loses its vibrancy.

A clever Canadian-born cheesemaker in Chicago discovered a much better solution around 1912. His name may ring a bell — James L. Kraft.

Kraft found that adding a small amount of sodium phosphate to the cheese as it melted kept it from turning into a clumpy mess of cheese solids swimming in a pool of oil. Kraft patented his invention and used it to make canned, shelf-stable cheese. He sold millions of pounds of the stuff to the American military during World War I. The technique ultimately led to the creation of Velveeta and a whole universe of processed cheese products.

You can apply the very same chemistry, however, to achieve much higher culinary purposes. The chefs in our research kitchen have made mac and cheese with an intense goat gouda and cheddar sauce, for example, and build gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches using cheese slices that melt like the processed stuff, but are made from feta or Stilton.

In place of sodium phosphate, we use sodium citrate, which is easier to find in grocery stores or online. Like sodium phosphate, sodium citrate is an emulsifying salt that helps tie together the two immiscible components of cheese: oil and water.

In solid form, cheese is a stable emulsion. The tiny droplets of dairy fat are suspended in water and held in place by a net of interlinked proteins. When cheese melts, however, that net breaks apart, and the oil and water tend to go their separate ways. Sodium citrate can form attachments to both fat and water molecules, so it holds everything together. The end result is a perfectly smooth, homogeneous sauce. The sauce even can be cut into processed cheese-like slices once it cools.

When making cheese sauce, we add 4 grams of sodium citrate for every 100 grams of finely grated cheese and 93 grams of water or milk. To make cheese slices, we reduce the amount of water to about 30 grams (cold wheat beer works very well, too), pour the melted mixture into a sheet pan, and let it solidify in the refrigerator for about two hours before cutting it into pieces, which then can be wrapped in plastic and frozen.

Because this method of stabilizing melted cheese bypasses all of the flour, butter and milk used in Mornay sauce, the resulting cheese sauce is much richer; a little goes a long way. But the sauce keeps well in the refrigerator and reheats nicely in the microwave, so save any extra and use it to top vegetables, nachos or pasta.

For our Mac and Cheese recipe, click here.

Photo credit: Melissa Lehuta / Modernist Cuisine, LLC