Chili And Grilled Cheese Is The Comfort Food Mash-Up You Didn't Know You Needed

There are very few comfort foods as iconic as grilled cheese. Its simplicity combined with its amazingly salty and savory flavor makes it easy to see why it's beloved by kids and adults alike. Perhaps the greatest thing about grilled cheese is that you can always expand on it by adding extra ingredients and coming up with fun flavor variations to create your own ultimate crispy grilled cheese sandwich.

If you're looking for a grilled cheese upgrade that puts the emphasis on comfort food, look no further than chili. These two comfort foods already pair well together as separate items, creating a perfect blend of delectable saltiness and spiciness. However, if you layer a scoop of homemade chili into your grilled cheese, you can create a grilled cheese that is the perfect contrast of creamy and spicy.

Overall, adding chili is a great way to give your grilled cheese more flavor. Not only does adding chili to grilled cheese give the sandwich a spicy upgrade, but it also makes the sandwich into a larger, much more filling meal. You can even customize the chili to suit your personal preferences, tweaking it until you have the perfect recipe.

When combining chili with grilled cheese, you can use store-bought chili or make it yourself at home. The beauty of homemade chili is that everyone makes it a little differently. For starters, you can pick and choose what kind of meat to add to your chili. Ground beef is the more traditional route but you can also use chicken or even deer meat. You don't even necessarily have to include meat at all; if you'd prefer, you can make vegetarian chili instead.

Next, there are the peppers, which will provide the bulk of the spiciness in your sandwich. Chopped chili peppers are the most common choice but you can always use other spicy peppers in your chili, like charred jalapeño peppers or poblano peppers. There's a whole scale of peppers from mild to hot that you can choose from which will ultimately change how spicy your grilled cheese will become.

Last but not least, consider the cheese you use in your sandwich. Sliced cheeses like Colby-Jack or sharp cheddar are great convenient options, as they are easy to layer into the sandwich. You can also add shredded cheeses like a Mexican cheese blend into the chili itself for some extra creaminess throughout the sandwich. If you're feeling fancy, you can make a homemade pimento cheese blend that you can spread onto the sandwich instead of using slices, which makes for an overall creamier result.