Why Mayo May In Fact Give You A Better Grilled Cheese
If every home cook kept a filing cabinet full of recipes organized by level of difficulty, you would repeatedly find the humble grilled cheese sandwich listed under the tab labeled "Foods that seem simple to make but require a lot of time, patience, and experience." If you've reached adulthood without making one for yourself, you'd be forgiven for thinking that melting cheese between two slices of bread is as easy as slapping a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together. Au contraire; there's a lot that can go wrong.
Namely, your bread can burn while your cheese only partially melts, leaving you with an unsatisfying bite of conflicting textures and temperatures. Luckily, there are some easy measures you can take to ensure grilled cheese success every time.
One involves swapping out butter for mayonnaise as a spread for your bread. We're certainly not the first to do so, but we see no harm in generously spreading the gospel of mayo as a toasting agent. Here's how it pays off.
Crispy, tangy, and easy to spread
Celebrity chefs across the board have come out as public champions of the mayonnaise grilled cheese, and it's time the rest of us followed suit. There's nothing wrong with using butter to toast your slices in the pan, but mayo is the way to go when you're going for bread that's perfectly browned all over (no one likes a dry edge) and has a "touch of tangy-sweet flavor," as J. Kenji López-Alt puts it.
According to Alison Roman, mayonnaise has a higher smoke point than butter, which means it can get pipping hot without setting off the smoke alarm in your kitchen. Roman also notes that mayo "...possesses the combined browning power of oil and egg yolks."
If you need more reason to believe in the power of mayonnaise beyond its usual applications (spread between slices of deli meat on a cold sandwich, for instance), consider the fact that the Chicago-based restaurant chain Portiillo's uses the ingredient in its chocolate cake to make it extra moist and flavorful.
Choosing your mayo
In 2023, the mayonnaise aisles in American supermarkets appear to contain as many multitudes as the human spirit. Some are regular, some are light, some are made with canola oil, some are made with olive oil, and some are flavored with bacon and tomato. That's all fine, but when choosing mayonnaise for a grilled cheese sandwich, your best bet is to reach for the most standard jar you can find. You'll especially want to steer clear of the low-fat stuff, which has a high water content and, according to America's Test Kitchen, results in a soggy sandwich that doesn't give that crisp, cooked color. If you can find it, Japanese-style Kewpie mayo is one of the best brands for the job.
Of course, if you don't trust the store-bought kind, you can always make your own mayo at home by whipping up an emulsion of olive oil, lemon juice (or vinegar), salt, and an egg. Your grilled cheese sandwich will be all the more delicious for it.