Easy Recipe: Grilled Cheese Sandwich

One of the first recipes people learn to make is a grilled cheese sandwich. The beauty of this dish is that it is very easy to make but can be adapted and enhanced in virtually unlimited ways. So today, the basic recipe will be explained, along with a few interesting variations.

First of all, you obviously need cheese. The type of cheese is basically your own choice. Pick whichever cheese you like most! Usually, however, it is one of these kinds of cheese: American cheese, light cheese, or Swiss and Gouda cheese. Or if you like it spicy, use pepper jack cheese.

Then you need bread. As for the type of bread, the basic recipe uses toast or simple sandwich bread. But if you like it, it also works with darker bread. You may also use other flavors of bread, such as rye bread.

On to the interesting part. What do you put on a grilled cheese sandwich besides cheese? The usual ingredients are tomatoes and ham, but you can use whatever you like. Some ideas are herbs and spices to make the sandwich taste a little different than usual. You can also fry an egg and either put it on top of the sandwich, or as some foodies like it, put the fried eggs in between two grilled cheese sandwiches (warning: this won't be good for your waistline if you do this too often!)

Once you decided on what you want to have on your grilled cheese sandwich, you can get started. One of the reasons grilled cheese sandwiches are so popular is because all you need to make them is a typical pan. Nothing more. No preheating the oven, just a normal pan.

Now as for the actual grilled cheese recipe: Take two slices of the bread of your choice, butter one side of each slice, then place one slice with the butter face down and the other slice with the butter face up. It is important if you make grilled cheese that you put a lot of butter on each side of the sandwich. Then put the sliced cheese and ham and tomatoes, and whatever you like, in between the two slices. Put all of it in your pan and turn over after one or two minutes. You would want them to have a golden brown look in the end. After maybe three or four minutes at most, the sandwich should be ready, and you can serve it, and enjoy it!

Variations: You can put almost anything on your grilled cheese sandwich, but some fascinating options are:

-        use a different kind of butter (herb butter or garlic butter)

-        spice it up: use onions, chili/curry powder, oregano, olive oil, and garlic

-        mushrooms

-        meat. Yes, you can even use meat for your grilled cheese sandwich. You can use bacon, chicken, turkey or whichever meat you like!