So, what do cooking a grilled cheese and cooking a steak have in common? If you said “bread,” that’s close, but it’s actually careful heat management.Before you cook, it’s helpful to consider your ideal final product and work backwards from there.Let’s look at the ideal grilled cheese: golden brown and crispy on the outside, ooey-gooey and melted on the inside. To get there, you need to manage your heat in a way that balances the cooking of the outside with the cooking of the inside. A good grilled cheese. (Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times) Are you starting to think about steak? Hold your horses.The more I write about good cooking, the more one single skill seems to stand out: paying attention. The more engaged and mindful you can be with what you’re doing and with your own intuition and desires, the more control (and fun) you’ll have with your cooking. Paying attention. (Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times) This is especially true with managing your heat. It’s not going to manage itself!Let’s zoom in a bit and think about what’s actually going on when we’re cooking. When you make a grilled cheese on the stove top, your heat is coming from below: The heat of the flame transfers into the pan, which transfers into the fat (which helps brown your bread), and over the course of cooking, slowly penetrates into your layer of cheese.Flip the sandwich, and the process repeats: stove, pan, fat, the other slice of bread, cheese.Let’s explore some possible pitfalls of grilled cheese cookery:“Oh crap, my sandwich is burning!” Pay attention. Turn the heat down, maybe move the pan off the stove or give the sandwich a flip. No problem.“Darn, my bread isn’t browning!” Turn the heat up, or perhaps put something slightly heavy on top of the sandwich to weigh it down into the pan. Speaking of …“Oh no, my cheese isn’t melting fast enough!” Why don’t we capture some of that upward heat by putting a small lid or pot on top of the sandwich? This not only creates a moderately steamy environment (by trapping some of the heat before it can dissipate into the air), which helps cook the sandwich from all around, but also helps the bread to make better contact with the pan, encouraging a more thorough and even browning.Then, there’s your fat. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really keep my butter at room temperature, and I don’t like shmearing cold butter on bread. Butter also has a low-smoking point — the milk solids in it can burn quickly if you’re not careful. Not so good. You are reading our Cooking newsletter Sign up to get a taste of Los Angeles — and the world — in your own home and in your inbox every Friday By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads. Luckily, my friend and recipe developer Lex Weibel taught me a trick that solves both problems. Lex uses a mixture of butter and olive oil (which has a higher smoke point) in the pan to discourage the butter from burning. Use a mixture of butter and olive oil to prevent the butter from burning. (Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times) You simply warm your fat, gently squish the bread into it, add your cheese, and build your sandwich in the pan.There are more considerations yet! If you’re using an easy melter, like American, you could cook the sandwich a bit quicker (over higher heat). If you’re using thick slices of bread or cheese, you might want to cook it a little slower (over lower heat), so that the heat has time to melt your cheese before the bread burns.In sum:Think about what you want your final product to look like.Pay attention. Adjust your heat to balance the cooking of the outside and inside of what you’re making.Trust your instincts, and adapt.With all that in mind, I’d like to invite you to try my grilled cheese recipe below. Customize it to your taste and use it as a jumping off point to experiment with your own flavor combinations. Grilled cheese with dill Havarti on ryeThis East Coast deli-inspired grilled cheese would make an awesome base for a patty or tuna melt. I like to eat mine with brown mustard and sliced pickles on the side, both of which help cut through the richness and add exciting bursts of heat and acid.Cooking time: 15 minutes. Serves 1 or 2. Get the recipe. Grilled cheese with dill Havarti on rye bread. Make sure your bread is toasty and browned and your cheese is melty and gooey. (Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times) If you’d like to put your heat management skills into practice on some other grilled cheese sandwiches, here are a few attractive ones from our archive: That’s all for this week. I’ll be back soon to show you how to apply all this to making that steak you’re so intimidated by. Talk soon,Cody
