Grilled Cheese Is 10x More Flavorful When You Make It Greek Style

There are a few ways to make grilled cheese a little more Greek inspired, from tossing kasseri cheese or Kalamata olives into the sandwich to serving it alongside a Greek spin on coleslaw using tzatziki. But another Hellenic dish is overdue for the grilled cheese treatment: spanakopita. It translates to "spinach pie" in English, and it is exactly that — a phyllo pastry pie stuffed with the iron-rich leafy green and feta. Now imagine that filling between slices of crispy bread with a good melting cheese, and you've got the best of both worlds.

The real genius of making a spanakopita grilled cheese is that you can recreate the contrast between the textures you'd usually find in a spanakopita pie. In a good spanakopita, the spinach and cheese filling is soft while the phyllo pastry is incredibly crisp and crunchy. The pastry is also usually brushed with a fat like olive oil before baking to really ramp up the contrasts. So the goal is now to create the crispiest grilled cheese you've ever had by choosing a good quality sourdough bread, spreading some fat like butter or mayo on the outside, and cooking it low and slow until the bread is golden.

Feta is essential, but you can't use it alone — it softens slightly when heated, but it doesn't have the gooeyness you need for a grilled cheese. Add something meltier like mozzarella alongside the crumbled feta to make sure you get a cheese-pull-worthy interior with little salty feta pockets. But before you start piling the filling, you need to keep all that spinach from making your sandwich soggy.

The biggest caveat to bear in mind is that spinach releases a lot of water as it cooks which can leach into the bread and make your sandwich soggy, and we're trying to recreate that lovely soft-and-crispy contrast of textures. In order to bypass this problem, you'll need to precook either fresh or frozen spinach in a pan, then drain or squeeze out the water using paper towels. A little dash of nutmeg can transform sauteed spinach and make it taste that much more authentic, and then everything gets stirred together and dolloped between the bread with a few slices of melty cheese.

Finally, consider what else you can add to it. Dill is a particularly recognizable flavor in this spinach-and-feta filling, but you can also add parsley, scallions, oregano, or squeeze of lemon juice. Just don't cram them all into the same sandwich — a few well-chosen ingredients alongside the spinach and feta is enough to make the connection clear. Get the balance right, and you've taken the crisp, savory pleasures of spanakopita and given it the perfect gooey grilled cheese upgrade.