A grilled cheese sandwich can be as simple as simple gets, made with just cheese and bread. It can also be fancied up with premium cheeses, artisanal bread and cured meats, depending on your mood.
The stovetop has long been the preferred method for making a crunchy, melty grilled cheese, but I’d like to make a case for air fryer grilled cheeses. These countertop convection ovens aren’t known for sandwiches, but I think that should change.
In fact, I’d argue that the skillet method has obvious flaws, not least of which is a greasy, crusty pan to clean up after.
And who among us has not been betrayed by the pan that gives grilled cheese its meaning? Either because you flipped too soon and ended up with something less than a perfectly golden, crunchy exterior, or you flipped too enthusiastically, only to have your carefully composed grilled cheese come undone?
So I endeavoured to find a better way to make grilled cheese and it tunred out to be sitting on my counter the whole time. Once you give a grilled cheese sandwich a spin in your air fryer, you will never look back.
Why to make an air fryer grilled cheese
An air fryer is basically a small convection oven with nonstick surfaces, circulating hot air around whatever you put in its basket. Unlike your saute pan or skillet, it cooks from all directions at once and typically in less time. Unlike your oven, it is compact and efficient, heats up quickly, and may not even require pre-heating.
Your toaster oven could never: while toasted cheese is a possibility, (and reheated toaster oven pizza is a revelation,) grilled cheese is not. Your toaster oven is not designed to support fat on the underside of whatever you’re cooking, and you’ll end up with a mess too complicated to clean.
For your grilled cheese, the air fryer is working on both of the bread surfaces and the cheese all at once, resulting in a quicker melt, which adheres the cheese to the bread slices together making for a much easier flip. (Flipping is still recommended, but with far less drama.)
The air circulation provides deep crunchiness, not only to the surfaces that received the butter or mayo treatment but to the entire crust. Any inclusions beyond cheese in the interior of the sandwich are also transforming due to the ambient heat. Simply placing a lid on your saute pan or skillet can’t achieve the same results, as the components will become steamed and potentially soggy.
How to make an air fryer grilled cheese
- Assemble a grilled cheese as you would otherwise
- Sliced bread
- Sliced or shredded cheese (I like American cheese for a basic grilled cheese and a combo of gruyere and cheddar for an upgrade.)
- Butter or mayonnaise for the outside of the bread slices (dealer’s choice)
For a basic grilled cheese, you can assemble the sandwich in the basket of your air fryer: bread with buttered side down, followed by sliced or shredded cheese, then topped with the final slice with buttered side up.
Set the heat to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and cook for 3 to 6 minutes on each side, flipping halfway through. The already melted cheese will keep your sandwich nicely together during the flip. You can get a lightly golden grilled cheese in less time, but I recommend hanging on for 5 to 6 minutes for a deeply crunchy sandwich.
Another perk of the air fryer is that you can more easily peek to see where you’re at without adversely affecting the outcome.
The air fryer excels at making a fancy grilled cheese?
This is where the air fryer really shines in the grilled cheese realm. Every element of an upgraded grilled cheese adds a degree of difficulty when trying to cook in a skillet, much of which is mitigated in the safe confines of an air fryer. Thicker bread. Thicker cheese, like hunks of camembert or brie.
And think of all the great grilled cheese ingredients that can be slippery: apple slices, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, pickles, etc. Any grilled cheese with more than two components can be challenging to flip gracefully in a skillet, even for trained cooks.
To prove a point, I assembled a fancy grilled cheese with camembert, prosciutto, and apple slices. (Plus mayonnaise on the exterior, because I was being fancy, and mayo gives your sandwich a little extra tang.) Because of its height, I assembled it fully outside of the air fryer and then carefully placed it in the drawer.
After 6 minutes of air fryer cooking, the flip was seamless, and the sophisticated outcome belies the fact that you spent all of one minute assembling the masterpiece. The exterior of the ham even got a little bonus crisping. So the air fryer invites you to go to town with whatever you can dream up for your grilled cheese: cured or cooked ground meats, grilled veggies, various sauces and relishes — you name it. An epic grilled cheese variation is limited only by the confines of your imagination.
Do I need to preheat an air fryer for grilled cheese?
A grilled cheese is a quick-cooking sandwich no matter how you do it, so you don’t want to add on minutes of additional time for something that only takes minutes to accomplish. That said, while preheating your air fryer may be a waste of time for certain preparations, I think putting it on for just a minute to heat up the nonstick surface that the sandwich sits on is worthwhile to get that golden crust working right away.
Are there drawbacks to making air fryer grilled cheese?
Depending on your model and size of air fryer, and the shape of bread you choose, it can be tricky to make more than two sandwiches at once, so it might not be the most family-friendly method for making grilled cheese. But for a solo meal or date night, your air fryer is the grilled cheese hack you didn’t know you needed.
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