For Grilled Cheese Bursting With Saucy, Savory Goodness, Give It The Pizza Treatment

Grilled cheese is famed as much for its status as a classic comfort dish as it is for the versatility that can sometimes make it feel far less familiar. Grilled cheese adaptations can start out simple enough, with maybe a condiment enhancement here or there, but they can also careen toward totally different foodstuff categories. Pizza is similarly situated, sometimes as identifiable as an emoji, and almost unrecognizable on other occasions. So, given their common qualities (not to mention similar building materials), pizza is a natural inspiration point for your next reimagined grilled cheese. And swapping your typical grilled cheese ingredients with mozzarella, marinara, and some of the things you'd otherwise find on a pie is the easiest way to begin combining these two culinary icons.

Making a pizza grilled cheese is more like making a grilled cheese than a pizza. But the most accurate approximation will borrow from a classic pie's ingredients. The mozzarella's clutch. The same low-moisture variety that you'd use to save a pizza from sogginess does the same for a grilled cheese. You'll also want to shred it, as shredded is best for melting. You'll obviously need bread, too, and the plain white kind, or maybe a sourdough if you're feeling frisky, is basic enough to mimic an unobtrusive pizza crust. Slick each slice's interior with a thin layer of marinara, and you've created a pretty convincing pizza grilled cheese once you've piled on the mozzarella and sizzled it on the stovetop. Add a few basil leaves or pieces of pepperoni, and you're basically a sandwich pizzaiolo. And the toppings, or rather, fillings, in this case, needn't stop there.

You know what would be hilarious on a pizza grilled cheese? Pineapple! The precedent for this is twofold, as pineapple on pizza has been inciting ire for generations, and another fruit, the tomato, is already a confirmed grilled cheese classic. Pineapple even has a slightly lower water content than tomato, so there's no need to worry if it will be too juicy for inclusion. Sliced thin, it'll fit right in. Ham or Canadian bacon would be suitable companions. 

You can also certainly stick to more broadly crowd-pleasing combinations. Pre-cooked crumbly sausage with chopped peppers or mushrooms would remain appropriately on the culinary theme. The melted mozzarella will even help these potentially unwieldy bits adhere together. More advanced pizza grilled cheese makers can swap the standard grilled cheese sandwich bread with focaccia, which can mirror a real-deal crust better than anything else. You can even buy or make focaccia with marinara sauce baked right in, eliminating the need to swipe on any extra. It's more advanced because focaccia is thicker than most of the other breads that you'd use for grilled cheese, and it has a less penetrable exterior — both characteristics that can impede the cheese from melting. But you can solve both barriers to entry by slicing the focaccia width-wise to reduce its bulk. You'll then grill the newly revealed softer sides, and enjoy a pizza grilled cheese that might even make you forget the true differences between the two.