Grilled Cheese for a Crowd

I like to collect tips. Not the money kind (though I won't say no to that!), but little tidbits of smartness to make a persons life easier. I have a whole pinterest board filled with them. Sadly, a lot are recycled from one person to the next (but that's obviously because it's a good tip!) so you tend to see the same ones over and over.

When I come across a little short cut or something I haven't seen before that will simplify my life, I get pretty excited.

A few weeks ago we went to Mady's cousin's house for a playdate. We had decided on grilled cheese for lunch and I was a little confused with Jaclyn pulled out a cooling rack.

Here's the problem with grilled cheese. If you're feeding more than one person, you either have to have a bunch of pans going at the same time (hello more dishes!) or you have to do small batches and people can't eat together or they have to eat cold sandwiches.

So I never considered grilled cheese a good option for any sort of crowd. Until I saw what Jaclyn did.

She buttered the bread as per usual, filled it with cheese and then instead of cooking them on the stove, she cooked them in oven. All lined up on a cooling rack (so they don't fall through the oven rack). She broiled them and turned them over once one side was cooked. Brilliant! Nice crispy bread, melted cheese and, in our case, 6 sandwiches all done at once.

I tried it today and really there's not much you can mess up. The only suggestion would be to make sure you don't have your rack too high so that your bread doesn't burn before your cheese melts. You can fit a couple of cooking racks in if you need to do more.

I even think it's faster to it this way than the normal way (unless you just do one in the toaster a la Jamie Oliver)

So smart! Thanks Jaclyn for forever changing the way I make grilled (uh, broiled?) cheese!