The Lunch Lady-Style Hack Leads To The Perfect Grilled Cheese

Grilled cheese is a perennial favorite for weeknight family dinner — it pleases picky eaters; uses simple, cheap ingredients; and is ripe for riffing, like adding hot honey to your sandwich. If there is a single complaint to be made about grilled cheese, it's that crafting multiple takes a long time. When you cook grilled cheese on a frying pan, you might be lucky to fit two at a time, depending on which type of bread you use. What if you found out that there was not only an incredibly easy way to batch-cook multiple grilled cheese sandwiches at once, but that it turned out perfect specimens every single time? Well, get your oven preheating.

We're obsessed with a social media hack for preparing sheet pan grilled cheese in the oven, though the technique has its roots in school lunchrooms. It uses no more ingredients than the standard cooking method, it involves minimal hands-on cooking time, and it allows you to make multiple sandwiches in one fell swoop, leaving you free to perfect your tomato soup, or whatever else you are serving on the side! 

All you need to assemble your bountiful grilled cheese sandwich spread is your bread of choice, your preferred cheese(s), any fillings you want, and a good amount of melted butter. (Note that this is probably not the time to try out the coconut oil swap for crispy grilled cheese — good ol' butter is the ideal fat for this method.)

Brush a sheet pan liberally with melted butter; cover your pan in parchment paper first for easier cleanup. Then, assemble your sandwiches: Put a slice of bread down on the buttery sheet pan, load it up, and top it with another slice. Don't make the rookie grilled cheese mistake of skimping on the cheese or other ingredients! A hidden benefit of this technique is that it's effortless to customize each individual sandwich to folks' liking with different cheeses, spreads, or toppings. Apply a generous coat of melted butter to each top slice of bread, and you are almost good to go.

Pop your sheet pan into a preheated 400-degree oven for seven to 10 minutes, flipping your sandwiches halfway through the cooking time. This step is critical, as you want both sides of the sandwich to brown evenly. Voilà: You have several grilled cheese sandwiches, all hot and ready for group consumption at the same time. Once you try this method of batch-cooking grilled cheese, we're confident you'll never go back to your old ways again.