3 rules (and extra tips) to make the best sandwich of your life
Toasties are the ultimate comfort food. But how do you make them the best? The culinary foodies of FavorFlav (and our most fun colleagues) share their best tips.
You can top your toastie as crazy as you want. We have gathered our 10 top favorites in a list for you. But what is fun topping if you don't know the basics of a well-made toastie? Then your toastie moment will fall apart, and you want to avoid that at all costs. Keep the following three rules in mind and you'll become a real ti-ta-toastie wizard.
Spread your toastie with butter and mayo
There has been a long-standing debate about the outside of the toastie. Should we spread it with butter or mayo? The answer: both. Thorough research by toastie fans shows that the combination of butter and mayo gives the best result. Mayonnaise doesn't make the toastie very flavorful, but it does make it crispy, while a layer of butter on the outside is very flavorful but not particularly crispy. And flavor and crunch are definitely something you want for your toastie, right?
Apply the ‘lid method’ to your toastie
If you like toasties a bit, you undoubtedly agree with this statement: toasties taste better when you grill them in the pan. That toastie maker collecting dust in your kitchen cabinet can be thrown away. But how do you use the pan at its best? By applying the ‘lid method’. Here's how it works: first, spread your bread with butter and mayo, as you learned above. Then place one of the slices of bread in the pan. When the bottom is golden brown, flip the slice over and top it with cheese. Then immediately place a lid on the pan. This way, the cheese can melt in a few minutes. Then remove the lid from the pan and add the second slice of bread to the slice already in the pan. Press down gently and flip the toastie right away. Grill for a few more minutes until the other side of the toastie is golden brown as well. It takes a bit of practice, but after this, you won't want to do it any other way.
Cut the toastie into a triangle
No, you don't do this just because it makes you look like a professional toastie maker; the triangular shape is also functional. If you cut it diagonally instead of horizontally, you have much more access to the cheese. The distance between the corners is much longer than the distance from top to bottom. Anyway, you just have more cheese that you can pull out of the bread.
A little more about the cheese…
In principle, you can take the cheese you like best, but there are a few limits to that. I don't think it has ever occurred to you to make a toastie with Parmesan cheese, but that kind of cheese is not a good idea. Simply because it doesn't melt well. As a result, the cheese stays dry and that's not tasty. The less anti-caking agent used in the cheese, the better the cheese melts, and the better your choice of cheese is. Gruyère and manchego are our favorites because they melt so well and have a nice nutty flavor.
Tip for an extra ingredient
Do you want to give your toastie something extra? Then place pitted and halved dates between the bread and cheese. This gives your toastie something sweet, sticky, and soft. Super delicious in combination with the savory cheese.
