Parmesan-Crusted Grilled Cheese with Jalapeños

I felt like I was back in arts & crafts class when I was making this Parmesan-crusted grilled cheese recipe. It was lots of fun to assemble, came together quickly and worked very well – all the steps went just as written and the result was delicious.

The softened butter spread easily across the four slices of bread. My jalapeño was on the medium-large side and yielded a perfect 20 thinly sliced rings to evenly distribute across the 4 slices of bread. The technique of pressing the buttered/jalapeño’ed bread slices into the grated Parmesan is simple and genius.

I found it really helped to give the Parmesan in the baking dish a quick mix-and-scatter with my fingers after pressing each slice to loosen it up from any butter that adhered to the cheese before dipping the next slice. I did use a firm spatula to press the sandwiches down a bit into the skillet so that the cheese inside melted evenly and stuck to the bread as it melted to hold everything together.

I needed about 4 minutes per side to get to the golden brown I was looking for – I did find it necessary to slightly increase the flame under the burner as I watched the cooking progress on the first side. The resulting sandwiches were golden brown, uber-cheesy, and the bite of the jalapeño once griddled was nicely tamed.