There are quite a few ways that one can indulge themselves with sandwiches, but society has overlooked perhaps the greatest sandwich known to mankind: the grilled cheese. According to Wikipedia (a teacher’s most trusted source!) a grilled cheese is “a hot sandwich typically prepared by heating one or more slices of cheese between slices of bread, with a cooking fat such as butter, on a frying pan, griddle, or sandwich toaster, until the bread browns and the cheese melts.” Now, that seems like a fairly standard set of rules. Despite this though, there are a surprising number of ways to make grilled cheese sandwiches, each with its own unique taste and quality. This leaves a grilled cheese enjoyer such as myself to ask one question: what is the best way to make one? In this soon-to-be legendary article, we shall determine how to craft the definitive grilled cheese. 

A few questions that come to mind when creating this sandwich: How many slices of cheese is ideal? Is butter or mayonnaise the better cooking fat to apply to the bread before pan frying? What type of bread is the most optimal for a grilled cheese? All these questions and more shall be answered in this unmitigated guide to America’s sandwich.

But before I could begin, I had to stock up my inventory. I went down to King Soopers and grabbed as many varieties of cheese slices and bread loaves as I could. Ingredients in hand, I realized that I had to create a fair metric to judge the objective quality of the sandwich. This would make my ranking far less vulnerable to subjectivity, and ultimately lead to better, more conclusive findings in my research. After much mathematical calibration and problem-solving, I eventually came up with this equation to determine the quality of a grilled cheese sandwich: 

lnx=(ln(Texture+Flavor+Meltiness+Cheese Meltiness+Consistency)/5)*4.969/1.6

I split the judgment into five categories, each of which would then be assigned a numerical value. These categories were: texture, consistency, flavor, cheese meltiness, and overall meltiness. I took those numbers, added them into a logarithmic scale, and was able to create a consistent system ranging from 0 to 5 cheese points. Then, I would assign extra values based on the ease of cooking and preparation, the amount of difficulty I had keeping the bread’s crispness consistent, and finally its compatibility with tomato soup, a classic addition to any grilled cheese meal. After these points were all tallied, I would give the sandwich a final score, which would look something like this:

Score of sandwich — Cooking Level — Bread Consistency

After all was said and done, this was a fairly over-the-top scoring system. Alas, it would have to suffice, as the grilled cheese was ready to be created.

To begin my research I would test this new scoring system with the grilled cheese that I typically make for school lunches: brown rice bread and one slice of cheddar cheese, with butter as the cooking fat. Here are the results:

Score: 3.61–1–4

All in all, this scored fairly average on the scale. The bread and cheese remain consistent in this sandwich, and overall the meltiness of the cheese is solid. The flavoring overall could be better, but it’s solid for a day-to-day sandwich, scoring a somewhat respectable 3 in flavoring. Scoring a 1 on the cooking level scale, this is probably the easiest on the list to create. The bread is nice and crispy, but this also means it could be easy to mess up and burn, as I nearly did during this experiment. As a result, the crispy bread scored at a high 4. Overall, a solid start to my research. 

The further results of this experimentation will be posted in bi-weekly segments on the Publications’ Instagram. Further research will hopefully reveal the answers to my questions, and ultimately lead you to find grilled cheese perfection. Keep cheesin’, readers.