What do you know about grilled cheese?
Posted by Eric Spicer on
We're not talking about grilled bread with cheese in between it either. This is full on cheese on the grill above charcoal.
For our cheese grilling fun we picked three cheeses that you are likely to find at your local grocery store.
First up is Halloumi. This is is a semi-soft cheese that is brined when it is made. You will probably find it with some herbs and spices in the packing.
Next up is Bread Cheese (spoiler alert this was the fan favorite.) Bread cheese is a traditionally Finnish cheese but ours came from good ol Wisconsin. Bread cheese is baked when it is made and you will see it with a golden brown exterior.
Finally we have some Tropical Frying Cheese. Usually we fry this stuff in a pan, but for today we tossed in on the grill. I've gotta be honest, I don't know what kind of cheese this is, but it is damn good fried.
Just to make the cheese grilling experience even more interesting we are doing half on a stainless steel grate, half on a cast iron half moon griddle.
We heated our egg to 375 and set up the Pro-Zone for direct heat with the half moons in the top position. We let the grates preheat for a few minutes to make sure they were nice and hot. Then we sliced the cheese blocks in half and put them on. Grilling took about 4-5 minutes per side with the lid down. The cheese on the regular stainless steel grate was much easier to flip and developed a nicer crust and flavor. The cheese on the griddle was a bit messy, definitly make sure you are using a well seasoned griddle grate or keep plenty of cooking spray/olive oil on hand!
The results:
As mentioned before the bread cheese was the winner. It has an excellent savory salty flavor and a nice firm crunch on the outside. We'll be repeating this with some topping very soon.
Second was the halloumi. The halloumi had a great texture and mild herb flavor. Slightly squeaky texture was a nice surprise.
Finally there was the frying cheese. This cheese was mild and we ended up throwing some salt on top. It is certainly good and benefited from grilling over frying in our experience.
Now go out there and grill some cheese!