A grilled cheese bar is one of my favorite ways to entertain guests or even just serve dinner. They get to build their own sandwiches the way that they like them! I usually add a side of tomato soup too.

Grilled Cheese Bar

1. Pick your bread
2. Choose your cheese
3. Pick your sauce
4. Select your toppings
5. Butter the bread
6. Cook on the griddle until cheese is melted and bread is golden brown

Before we get all cheesy, I wanted to thank you for stopping by! My name is Kaycee Hobbs and my husband, and I are the proud parents of seven beautiful children who love to eat. These types of “bar” meals are perfect for our family because wherever we are, we have a party! Or should I say, we are the party!

I mentioned above that this is my number one choice when we are having guests join us for dinner. I love to give everyone a chance to build a sandwich of their dreams with all of their favorite toppings. This goes for my family too. I love to give them choices because guess what? They all like different things!

Bread

The foundation of a good grilled cheese is the bread. There are so many different options like:

• Whole Wheat
• White
• French
• Sourdough
• Sweet Hawaiian
• Rye
• Multi-Grain
• Texas Toast
• Italian

The list can go on forever because there are so many wonderful choices. Our favorite is the Sweet Hawaiian bread because we love the combination of sweet and savory. When it toasts it brings out the sweetness in the bread which brings it to a whole new level.

Cheese

This part can make or break the sandwich! I like to offer a selection of cheese because everyone likes to put more than one type of cheese on their sandwich. The sky is the limit but here are some of the options we enjoy:

• American
• Swiss
• Pepper Jack
• Cheddar
• Colby Jack
• Mozzarella
• Brie

The kids like to pair their favorite cheese with American cheese for the ultimate melt factor. They enjoy pairing Swiss cheese or pepper jack with american. The best part about this is that you can mix and match to get whatever taste and melty texture you would like.

Sauce

To sauce or not to sauce that is the question! Some people like to add sauce to their grilled cheese while others like to keep it plain. I can go either way and that’s saying something because I am a sauce kind of girl. However, when you add the cheese and toppings and toast it all up, sometimes it doesn’t need anything else.

My husband, Rick has always been a fan of mustard and I think it tastes surprisingly good too. I like to offer a couple of different sauces so here are a few ideas:

• Mustard
• Spicy Mustard
• Hot Sauce
• Mayonnaise
• Chipotle Mayonnaise

Toppings

Okay, so this list could be pretty large so buckle you seat belt, let’s go! Toppings can be anything! You could go through the refrigerator and see what leftovers you have. There is only one rule: If you think it would be good on a sandwich, put it out there!

You would be surprised and what inspires others to make the best grilled cheese ever! So, here we go!

Butter

Now, there are a couple of way you can do this:

• Spread the butter
• Brush the butter

Spread the butter

You could move this to step number two and have your guests spread the butter on their bread before they start adding all the insides of the sandwich. This does work but can tend to be a little messy as they try to juggle not getting butter everywhere.

Or you could have them butter it right before it goes on the griddle but that is sometimes hard to do without dropping all the toppings out.

Brush the Butter

This is my favorite one because it is the easiest with the least amount of mess. When our family started to grow, I learned how to navigate these types of things with the least amount of mess possible, so this is how we do it. The tools you will need is a bowl and a basting brush.

1. Melt a stick of butter in a bowl in the microwave.
2. Lay the sandwich on a plate.
3. Brush the butter on the top side of the sandwich.
4. Place the sandwich gently on the griddle buttered side down.
5. Brush butter on the other side of the sandwich while it is on the griddle.

EXTRA TIP: Add garlic salt to the melted butter!

Griddle

This meal was the perfect opportunity to use our new toy, the Camp Chef Pro 90X. We recently purchased our new camp stove and 16 X 24-inch Fry Griddle so we could make a large amount of food at the same time.

We share all our secrets about why we chose this model, in this post. Check it out and watch our unboxing YouTube video.

4 Reasons Why We Chose Camp Chef Over Blackstone

Rick started the griddle on the Camp Chef PRO90X Stove and once it was warmed up, he put the oil on it. Your griddle temperature should be around 275 degrees because the grilled cheese would burn on the outside and not melt all the cheese on the inside.

Since we have cooked this meal, we invested in an Infrared Thermometer so that we can see how hot our griddle actually is. We highly recommend you get one of these because it makes life so much easier!

Rick added vegetable oil to the griddle while it was heating up. He used a squeeze bottle to dispense the oil and spread it around with a spatula. He placed the sandwiches on the griddle buttered side down and basted the other side of the sandwich with more butter. He checked them often to make sure they were not getting too toasty.

The tricky part for the cook in this whole thing is keeping track of each person’s sandwich. We had all our kiddos fix their sandwiches from youngest to oldest because this helped Rick keep track of everyone’s sandwich.

Tomato Soup

We like to add tomato soup to our menu because it seems to go together so well. This is my recipe:

• 4 Cups Chicken Broth
• 29 oz. can Tomato Sauce
• Garlic Salt
• Salt
• Dash of Red Pepper
• 1/2 Tablespoon of Sugar
• 1 Cup of Milk

I make my own chicken broth using chicken bouillon seasoning. I add it to the pan along with a big old can of tomato sauce. Mix well.

I add enough garlic salt to cover the top of the soup. Don’t add too much, you can always add more but you can’t take it out.

I add a small amount of salt to the mixture. We use Kosher salt in our cooking because it tends to go farther. We have to make large amounts of food and we have found this type of salt season things up quickly.

Next, we add ground chipotle pepper to the soup. You don’t want to add too much because it can make it a little spicy, but a small amount does the trick. We use the ground chipotle pepper as our red pepper, but you could use any of the following spices instead:

• Red Pepper
• Cayenne Pepper

The last seasoning I add is sugar because this just cuts down on the acidity of the tomatoes. You can always increase it a little bit if you need too. Then add the milk to the soup.

I let everything come to a gentle simmer. Just a word of advice, don’t get the soup mixture too warm otherwise the milk will separate. This is what happened to me on the YouTube video. I should have taken my own advice. The milk and the mixture should stay about the same temperature or the milk will curdle and separate.

Check out our YouTube Video here!

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