Skip The Butter: Use Beef Tallow For A Crispier, More Flavorful Grilled Cheese

While plenty of folks are content to debate whether traditional butter or just slightly more rebellious mayo is the best way to cook grilled cheese, yet another fat has entered the chat: beef tallow. Yes, the once-ubiquitous ingredient began barreling down the food trend road in recent years and happens to work wonders with the classic comfort sandwich. Like the more common butter and mayo, beef tallow, too, functions as a cooking oil to sizzle to toasty perfection. And you might even find that its merits exceed the old standards.

A lot of butter devotees tout the flavor it brings to a grilled cheese, while still acknowledging that its relatively low smoke point makes it more vulnerable to burning. Mayo's higher smoke point staves off the singe a little longer, providing more time for that precious dairy to melt to gooey perfection, but many hate the taste. Beef tallow has a higher smoke point than either,  maximizing the melting of even more stubborn cheeses. Although beef tallow's deliciousness is, of course, subjective, it has yet to earn mayo's divisive reputation. The tallow's unadulterated fat and thus absence of water mean that there isn't any pesky H2O threatening to steam, rather than crisp the bread, virtually guaranteeing the satisfying crunch you crave when setting out to grill a cheese to begin with. And you can use beef tallow pretty similarly to how you'd apply its more common competitors.

To be clear, beef tallow transforms what many people consider to be a vegetarian item with the swipe of a knife. So check with the dietary practices of anyone you might be cooking for in advance. Plenty of palates will also find beef tallow to be pretty neutral, particularly when paired with strong or salty cheeses, but others will detect its meatier origins. This will be subtle, but it's still something to consider if you're mulling any extra savory fillings. Beef tallow doesn't have the sweetness you get with butter, so this might be a good opportunity to try the jam or other sweet filling you've been eyeing for your grilled cheese.

White sandwich bread is often considered the best bread for grilled cheese, and sliced American is its quintessential partner, but beef tallow should perform just as well with your own preferred pairings. A thin swipe of the tallow on the outside of each bread slice should be plenty; just enough to create a thin, slick layer of what will likely be no more than about a half tablespoon a piece, depending on your carb's surface area. A few minutes on each side over medium-low heat in a stovetop pan, and you'll have the melty, texturally dynamic sandwich of grilled-cheese dreams with a little something different worth returning to again and again.