Golden brown, pan-fried Kimchi Grilled Cheese is on the menu! Melty cheese with a caramelized kimchi and bacon filling sit between two thick slices of sourdough bread. Yum, friends. YUM!
Ingredients For This Grilled Cheese
The beauty of grilled cheese is definitely the whole “only takes bread/butter/cheese” thing, but when you want to glam up a sammy, we’ll need just a few other things, but not many. Still pretty dang simple!
- sourdough
- American (so melty!) and gruyere cheeses
- butter (or mayo if you go that route with your grilled cheese-ing)
- kimchi
- bacon
- brown sugar
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Let’s Make The Best Kimchi Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Kimchi on its own will be a little watery, so the key here is to sauté it first with the bacon and a little brown sugar so it gets kind of caramelized and becomes sort of jammy. That’s right, JAMMY. The spicy flavors of the kimchi mixed with the smoky bacon and the speckle of sweet from the brown sugar? So good. So perfect for sandwich filling.
Here’s how we do it:
- Cook the bacon until it is crisp. Add the kimchi and brown sugar and let it pan fry, undisturbed, for a few minutes to help dry it out and become caramelized. Transfer that to a bowl.
- Get your sandwich stacks ready. Bread, gruyere, kimchi mixture, American cheese, bread. Butter (or mayo!) both sides to prepare for crisping.
- Heat that same pan over medium low. Lower and slower is better here for optimal cheese meltiness and golden brown perfection!
- Get ready to fall in love.
Let’s Discuss The Cheese
Okay, cheese stuff. As you know, always an important topic. Now, before you dismiss it, we really do think American cheese is essential here for its highly distinguished melt factor. It’s just classic grilled cheese 101, and we really don’t want to mess with it. Gruyere also melts really well and for us, it was just another flavor we love. We also have done cheddar on this and it was great, too.
Honestly, we feel like you probably can’t go wrong, but we really really recommend keeping the American, regardless of what other kind of cheese you use, just so you get some of that dreamy silky meltiness.
Ingredients
Pan-Fried Kimchi:
- 2 cups kimchi, chopped (personal preference – you can leave it unchopped too)
- 6 slices bacon, chopped
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- black pepper to taste
Grilled Cheese:
- 8 pieces of sliced sourdough bread
- 8 slices of American cheese
- 8 slices of Gruyere cheese
- 8 tablespoons (or 1 stick) butter or mayo
Instructions
- Cook the bacon in a large pan over medium high heat until crisped and fat is rendered. Add the kimchi to the pan with the brown sugar. Pan fry for a few minutes, leaving it undisturbed for a few minutes at a time so it dries out and gets a little bit caramelized. Season with black pepper. Transfer to a bowl and wipe the pan clean.
- Layer your sandwiches: a slice of sourdough, two slices gruyere cheese, kimchi mixture, two slices American cheese, and a second slice of sourdough. Spread butter or mayo over the top and bottom of the sandwich.
- Heat the same skillet to medium heat; add the sandwich and cook for a few minutes on each side until golden brown. Cut and serve. Magic.
