Why You Better Rest Your Grilled Cheese Before Cutting It In Half

Most semi-experienced home cooks know that certain foods benefit from resting. For example, letting your freshly grilled or oven-cooked steak relax for a moment keeps precious meat juices from running out all over your cutting board. Lasagna and pies are similar — cutting into and eating them straight from the oven results in messes, not to mention burned taste buds. But grilled cheese sandwiches? As it turns out, letting your hot, toasted cheese sit undisturbed for a couple of minutes makes for a sandwich that is easier to cut in half without the warm cheese spilling outside of the bread.

As soon as your sandwich comes off the griddle or out of the toaster oven, the cheese is hot and slick. Cutting into it right away squishes the cheese outside of the crusts. But, when you let the sandwich sit, the cheese firms up ever so slightly, without becoming cold. The result is a picture-perfect sandwich with warm, gooey cheese that stays put, inside the bread. You want to hang onto all that sharp cheddar (AKA, the best cheese for a grilled cheese and tomato soup combo), so you can get to dipping your sandwich in your soup, eating it on its own, or pairing it with a perfectly salty pile of french fries.

The thing with resting your grilled cheese is that you can't do it the same way you would a steak; that is to say, on a plate or cutting board. Yes, your sandwich will firm up, but the bread that is touching the plate will become soft and soggy, ruining the crunchy exterior you gained by nailing the perfect pan temperature for gooey grilled cheese. The heat of the pan plus the moisture from the bread and whatever fat you used for cooking (butter, mayo, or oil) will create steam that can't escape when it's placed on a solid surface. Suddenly, you'll have great cheese texture ... but a wet piece of bread. Ick.

Instead, place your grilled cheese on a surface that allows air to circulate around the entire sandwich. A cooling rack is ideal, but you can improvise if you don't have one. Try resting your sandwich on a stovetop grate, or a couple crumpled-up pieces of aluminum foil. You can even place your sandwich inside your cold oven (right on the rack), on top of cookie cutters, or on two chopsticks placed a few inches apart (or more, to fit your bread). No chopsticks? Use a couple of spoon handles or whatever you have; So long as the bread is not lying flush against a solid surface, you should get perfectly gooey, toasty results.