For An Easier Grilled Cheese, Skip The Spatula And Use This Kitchen Tool Instead

The odds are that you can probably already recite each of the tips for the crispiest grilled cheese you've ever had, argue in favor of both butter and mayo as a sizzling agent, and have a litany of your own glam grilled cheese glow-ups (we're partial to a Parmesan crust). There is simply no shortage of advice about the nation's favorite toasty nostalgia sandwich. But a lot of the hacks, swaps, and upgrades tend to gloss over one practical step: how to flip the darn thing. And, in spite of conventional practice, you need tongs, not a spatula, to do it right.

Unless you're preparing your grilled cheese sandwiches with a less common open-faced approach from the start, its two sides will not adhere together until each meets the heat. That means that after the first couple of minutes in the pan, when the bottom layer of bread is getting golden and its nearest slice of cheese is beginning to soften, the top half is barely above room temperature and totally untethered from the rest. Flip it with a spatula and your sandwich sides are highly liable to flop, slide, and lose their sandwich symmetry. Grab and turn it with tongs, instead, and you retain crucial cheese grilling control.

Edit the word "flip" from your mental grilled cheese sandwich instructions right now. Flipping is for pancakes, burgers, the occasional omelette, and other foods that have already more or less coalesced. Flipping is not for items with moving parts that can cut loose and fly all over the place. So, instead of sliding a spatula under your sandwich and hoping for the best, grasp it with your tongs from bottom to top, clamp just firmly enough to hold it together, turn, and release.

Once you've got both sides of your grilled cheese sandwich toasting, the cheese will more effectively hold everything together. You can use a spatula more effectively once it's all fully melted, but why dirty another tool? And if you're worried that tongs will dent your beautifully crisped sandwich exterior, we have tested this application multiple times without any aesthetic peril. But you can skip super soft breads in favor of something a little heartier like sourdough if exterior integrity is a consuming concern.