A grilled cheese sandwich is a simple thing of beauty that you can probably cobble together with whatever’s in your fridge right now. The humblest ingredients often produce the most satisfying outcome: sliced singles engineered to melt, unassuming sandwich bread, and a slathering of any fat can reach culinary highs when given the grilled cheese treatment.
And then there’s fancy grilled cheese with upgraded cheeses, artisanal bread and any number of inclusions — fruit, jam or honey, to name three — making for sandwiches that are both comforting and appropriate to serve to company.
One thing has been holding you back, though, when it comes to grilled cheese glory, and it’s not whether you use mayonnaise or butter on the outside of the bread. (Truly, a win-win situation either way.) It’s the skillet itself.
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? Circumstances where the pan is too hot, and the bread starts to burn before the cheese fully melts? Devastating.
There must be a better way. And…there is. 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.
What about 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 for an air fryer 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 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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