Wisconsin is like that kid in school who marches to the beat of their own drummer and identifies hard with one thing. For that kid in school, it was something like anime, duct tape fashion, or sick karate skills. In Wisconsin’s case, it’s cheese.
No shade to those kids or Wisconsin, though. Everyone has their thing, they just really committed to it. This is why everyone who’s anyone knows that Wisconsin and cheese go together like mac and cheese, or wine and cheese, or cheese and crackers. Sure, there are other food items like beer and bratwurst that Wisconsin is known for that lactose-intolerant Wisconsinites would like to rise to the top of the list, but the fact of the matter is that on a Family Feud board, cheese is gonna answers one through four, at least.
So it’s no surprise that the penultimate sandwich on our alphabetical tour of state sandwiches is the Grilled Cheese. It may not be the most adventurous sandwich on the list, but it is right at the top for “good old standbys.” Because everyone likes grilled cheese. Even people whose bodies reject the very idea of cheese like grilled cheese. Liking grilled cheese and being first pick to be trapped in an elevator with after a grilled cheese meal are two very different things.
Nate and I have made a grilled cheese or two on our laps around the sun, so no research was needed to make this sandwich, though basic, an excellent sandwich. We opted for white bread instead of wheat — no point in trying to pretend to health this thing up — and personalized our cheese filling from a selection of Colby Jack, Swiss, and Pepper Jack cheese slices.
And here’s a neat trick for anyone who makes grilled cheese at home. Set your burner to medium-low, butter two slices of bread, and place them butter side down on the hot skillet. Then pile on your cheeses of choice on one (or both) slices of bread and place a LID on the pan. Then step back and wait. The lid creates a little steam oven for the cheese to get perfectly melty while the bread gets nice and low-heat toasty. After a minute or two, check on the melty/toastiness of your sandwich components. Once your cheese is nice and melty and bread is good and toasty, slap those two slices together and enjoy your melty toasty grilled cheese sandwich.
(Don’t have a lid for your frying pan? These silicone lids work great for pans that are lidless.)
To round out the meal, we made tomato soup to go with our professionally homemade sandwiches, so it was comfort food central up in our place last night. All we needed was inclement weather and it would have been perfect. But, we live in L.A., so it was sunny and beautiful outside. Bleh.
We’re down to one final sandwich and we’ll have completed nearly a year of Sandwich Sundays. I don’t want to talk to a pitcher during a no-hitter, so I’ll wait to wax poetic about it until next week. Suffice it to say for now, what a fun journey this has been.
What sandwich did you wish we did along the way?