Macheesmo

I can’t believe that I almost forgot about National Grilled Cheese Month! Would you guys trust me ever again if I failed to post a grilled cheese for the entire month?

I hate to admit it, but I was kind of at a loss as to what to make.

Then I got a wonderful email from a reader (Hi Yasmin!) about The Grilled Cheese Academy (WARNING: Has sound). The site features 30 ridiculously delicious looking grilled cheese sandwiches. I couldn’t even pick one so I just went over to Random.org and picked one randomly.

The one I picked? #1. The Sergeant Pepper (Has Sound). I suggest clicking that link so you can see how delicious this sandwich looks. I should’ve known not to trust something that looks that delicious.

You want to see what the sandwich looks like when a real human makes it?!

This sandwich was an absolute disaster. Whoever came up with this had to be high on something (and maybe that’s what warranted The Beatles reference?). The sandwich has bread, two kinds of cheese, sauteed cauliflower, and fried onions.

When I forced Betsy to eat hers she took a big bite (she’s a trooper) and said, “This is just weird.” And that’s pretty much right. It wasn’t exactly bad. It was just really weird.

I think this was one of those cases where, in my opinion, the meal would have been a lot better with its pieces. So definitely make the onion strings, and saute some cauliflower if you choose, and by all means make a grilled cheese with two different kinds of cheese.

But do not. Under any circumstances. Put them all together.

The Onion Strings. I don’t really care to share this whole recipe with you all except I will tell you about the good part which was the onion strings.

Spicy Onion Strings

by Nick

Serves:

Serves 4

Prep Time:

15 mins

Total Time:

30 mins

Print Recipe

Rate This Recipe

Just a moment please...

Helpful Equipment:

Did you make this?

Snap a photo and tag @macheesmo so I can see your work.

Ingredients

2 large yellow onions

1 Cup all-purpose flour

1 Cup rice flour

1/4 Cup cornstarch

2 Cups seltzer water (if I made this again, I would use beer)

1 Tablespoon kosher salt

1 Tablespoon black pepper

1 Teaspoon (or more) cayenne pepper

1-2 quarts oil for cooking

Instructions

1) Slice onions thinly with a mandoline.

2) Mix batter ingredients together in a large bowl.

3) Heat up frying station and heat oil to 350 degrees.

4) Toss onions with spicy batter and then dip straight in the fryer. Cook for 3-4 minutes until they are very crispy. Work in batches as you fry.

5) Eat immediately!

You can definitely use a sharp knife to try to cut your onions as thin as possible (which I did for my deep fry party last year) or you can pick up a reasonably cheap mandoline and have it do all the work for you.

The only thing I will say about this device if you’ve never used one is that it’s pretty dangerous. It’s basically a huge razor set in plastic that you can slide things over very quickly. It comes with a guard which you will be tempted to throw away. Under no circumstances would I recommend using this thing without the guard.

I once saw a dude slice off all of the tips of his fingers in one swipe by not using the guard. So use the guard if you’re going to use one of these creatures.

The good news is that if you can master it, it’ll make short work of a lot of onions.

The Batter

Once you get your onions sliced you just need to mix up a quick batter for the onions rings. The only thing I’d change about this recipe I think is I’d use a light beer instead of seltzer water if I made it again. Other than that it was pretty tasty.

Just whisk together all the batter ingredients and toss in all your onions. You’re looking for lightly coated onions here. They are pretty thin so you don’t want a lot of cakey breading.

Frying the Onions

Heat 4 or 5 inches of oil in a pot to about 350 degrees. I recommend using a neutral oil like Canola oil and also using a Deep fry thermometer so you can control the temperature.

Do these in batches so they don’t all clump together (although they kind of will no matter what) and they should take about 3 to 4 minutes to be cooked. Move them straight to a paper towel to drain. These will be super-crispy and delicious.

The Nightmare Part

I just want to quickly show you how ridiculous this sandwich was. For starters, I sauteed some cauliflower in butter which was fine and it tasted great just like this.

But then the recipe instructed me to put pepper jack cheese and the cauliflower on some bread. So far so good.

The next step is when it kind of just got crazy. I piled on the fried onions and then another layer of cheese, this time cheddar.

I cooked it just like a normal grilled cheese, but it was a messy disaster in the pan. It was kind of a disaster on the plate also.

Just for the sake of being thorough, I’ll grade this monstrosity like I have the other sandwiches in the grilled cheese trials.

Cheesiness: 8. There was a lot of cheese in this sandwich actually. In fact, the sandwich would’ve been better with just the cheese.
Bread: 6. There was so much stuff in this sandwich that the bread couldn’t really hold up to it. And I make some sturdy bread people.
Fillings: 2. I have no words for the strangeness of flavors that these fillings created.
Overall: 4. I can imagine a worse grilled cheese. It was at least cheesy, but this is a pretty prime example of over-thinking a good thing.

In summary, make the onion strings and pass on the sandwich.

As a bonus challenge, if anyone can reproduce the sandwich exactly as it looks on the Grilled Cheese Academy with real food (I have my suspicions about their version…) and send me a photo of it, you would win my un-dying respect.