Luxury Grilled Cheese + Onion Jam

You, reading this—I believe you deserve a great sandwich. A luxurious sandwich. Now, a luxurious sandwich takes time and patience, something that is often in short supply. But now we’ve all got more time on our hands than we’d like, and so I say to you, my sandwich friend, indulge yourself. Cook yourself a grilled cheese with three cheeses and a homemade onion jam.

The sandwich begins with a confettura, or onion jam. This is a surprisingly easy thing to make, and people will think you’re some sort of Kitchen Pope if you give them a jar of it as a gift. They will ask you to bless their cars and babies.

I like this recipe from Serious Eats, which I’ve modified slightly.

Ingredients:

3 lbs onions (whatever variety you want; I use yellow)

½ cup olive oil

6-8 sprigs fresh thyme or, idk, teaspoon of dried thyme

3 bay leaves

¾ cup honey

½ cup balsamic vinegar

¼ cup rice vinegar

¼ cup red wine vinegar

(A note on the vinegars: I think these are flexible, but I like the above blend for its balance of sweetness, color, and acidity. Balsamic, honey, and thyme play really well together, but can be too sweet/overpowering by itself, so the rice and red wine balance it. White wine vinegar would work great, and you could even try a nutty Chinkiang vinegar, but I’d probably avoid straight-up white vinegar, which would be too intense)

3 teaspoon kosher salt

Pepper to taste

1.     Trim, peel, and cut the onions in half root to stem, then into thin strips. Side note: this is a great way to practice your knife skills, if that sort of thing interests you! Because there will be so many onions. Way too many, you’ll think.

2.     Pour the olive oil into a 5-6qt Dutch oven set over medium low

3.     Dump in your massive cache of onions with your herbs (thyme and bay leaf) and half (1.5 teaspoons) your salt. Stir so all the onions get some oil on them. Grind in some pepper. Cover. You want the onions to simmer, but not brown. It’s the vinegar, not the caramelization, that will give this jam its deep umber color.

4.     Remove the lid after 20 or so minutes. Your onions should be soft and sticky, but still translucent. (Also it’s ok if they took on a little color!) Now add your vinegar and honey. It will be SOUPY. Raise the heat until you get a low-but-steady simmer, then try and keep it there.

5.     Cook another 20 minutes, until the liquid has reduced by half. When it has, pluck out the thyme stems (if you used them) and bay leaves.

6.     For the next 15 minutes or so, you will need to pay close attention to your onion jam. There’s a lot of sugar in there, and sugar loves to caramelize and then burn. Just drag a spatula or spoon through it, paying attention to the corners, and you’ll be fine.

7.     Eventually, your mixture will stop feeling like liquid and will turn an almost languid texture. When your spatula leaves a trail behind it, turn off the heat and let it cool for 30 minutes to an hour.

8.     As it cools, test it for flavor—it might need a bit of salt and pepper.

9.     Once your onion jam is cooled, you can jar it. I’ve found that 3 lbs of onions makes about two pints of jam.

You could definitely can your jars in a hot water bath and the jam would last, I don’t know, a long-ass time. Me, though, I ladle the jam into mason jars and put a screw top on them. They last a month or more in the fridge, but I’m always scraping the jar clean after a couple weeks.

This onion jam is great on meat, on roasted veggies, as an addition to a cheese plate. It’s sweet, slightly sour, a bit herby. It’s almost like French onion soup, but spreadable. It really shines, though, with goat cheese, which brings me to my Luxury Grilled Cheese.

What you’ll need:

Bread

Butter

Some sharp or medium cheddar (for color and flavor)

Some young white cheese (for stretchiness and even melting; I use pepper jack)

Some goat cheese

A tablespoon per sandwich of your onion jam

1.     Heat skillet to medium low. While it’s heating, butter your bread. I used to be one of those people who thought mayo worked just as well as butter. I was wrong and I am sorry.

2.     First slice of bread goes down. To this, add a layer of young white cheese, which will melt faster.

3.     On top of this, add shredded sharp cheddar and then onion jam

4.     Then add crumbled goat cheese. The log stuff (TJs has decent stuff at a great price point) is so much better than the pre-crumbled stuff, which tastes weird and never melts right. Anyway, the onion jam and goat cheese will act as a glue between the cheeses, which will need some time to fully melt, and the top layer of bread.

5.     Add the top slice of buttered bread.

6.     Check on your bottom bread, and be prepared to flip your sandwich if it’s getting too brown.

7.     This is a tall and somewhat ungainly as grilled cheeses go, and to flip it without losing any precious cheese you will need to get your hands a little buttery. It’s just the easiest way to do this, and it’s a very small price to pay.

8.     First, flatten the sandwich slightly with your spatula.

9.     Then stabilize the top bread layer with one hand, scoop it up with your spatula, and then—very gently—flip the sandwich and lay it back into the pan. Don't try and short-order cook this and flip it aggressively—it will fly apart. Be gentle. 

10.  After that first flip, everything should melt and run together, and it will be very easy to flip. I usually flip my grilled cheese sandwiches several times. Just peel up the corner and check on how melty everything is, and flip if one side is starting to brown too much. 

Remember to be patient. Since there's so much stuff in there, it's going to take much longer to cook than your average grilled cheese. Trust me, the end product is worth it. The sharp cheddar adds a deep savory flavor, the young white cheese a stretchiness you want, the onion jam an herby note of acid, and the goat cheese this rich, creamy texture and more full-bodied tang. 

I hope you give it a try, because you deserve it.