Grilled cheese should be… crunchy. Cheese, I guess. Creamy in the middle. If I'm feeling in a good mood I will put a slice of tomato in it. I'm really into stretch. No crust. It's all about crust. Just a little bit salty. .

Herbs. People use bread that the cheese leaks through… The grilled cheese:a culinary staple of childhood. It's gooey, delicious, and best of all simple.My recipes never ventured too far from two pieces of white bread stuck togetherby some American cheese but that's all you need, right? Well, imagine thepossibilities if you approached this simple sandwich with years of culinaryknowledge and expertise and attempted to make the ultimate grilled cheese? And, ohyeah, you only have one hour and you're going up against three awesome kids. .

I'm Dave I'm the food tech expert. I build equipment for restaurants and bars, andI'm the founder of a food museum. Hi I'm Frank and I'm the cooking expert. Startedout at culinary school, became a line cook, worked my way up throughrestaurants in New York. I figured the best thing I could do is try and bringup the next generation of chefs and teach here at ICE. My name is Carol andI'm the cheese expert. I own a cheese shop. Selling cheese, lifting cheese,cutting cheese, unpacking cheese, eating cheese all day. I like my grilled cheese no crust andjust cheese, I guess. .

I've only had three grilled cheese in my whole entire lifeand two of them my grandma burnt. I'm excited but I'm nervous because like getin there and see all these ingredients, I'm like “whoa.” The only ingredients I've ever usedfor a grilled cheese are bread and cheese. Growing upwe ate tons of grilled cheese, it just happened to be one of those things thatas kids we can make ourselves, without burning the house down.I bake all the time. I usually do apple things? Apple crumble, apple pie, apple strudel, apple puffs. I once made a cake with .

Frosting. My brother is also really goodat making cakes. Hmm I don't know who said that because I'm a horrible baker… You don't actually need to know any science or tech to make a great sandwich, but ifyou know what's going on behind the scenes it can help you get resultsfaster and it can let you do some fun things that you wouldn't be able to dootherwise. The only thing I care about is cheese. I think that just kind ofunderstanding what everyone thinks is a .

Good grilled cheese is a good start. I think a good grilled cheese: crispy on the outside, soft and like stringy almoston the inside, should have some pull to it. I think there should be a mix ofcheeses, not just one, that's just my opinion. I think for me on a grilledcheese that two things are kind of how much cheese, right? Then whether it'sgonna be stretchy or fully melted out. And then kind of the smash level on thebread. Personally I like a high smash level, you know? I mean I push really hard.I think it should be an all-over crust of sear, with butter. Butter is always theanswer. See, I use mayonnaise. oh man I use mayonnaise on fishbut not in grilled cheese. No, mayonnaise .

On the outside of a grilled cheeseinstead of butter is really good. What about mayonnaise and butter? Well maybe we can try both. What about… should we use mayonnaise? No! People like it in grilled cheese! I like a rye, you don't want the rye with the seeds, I mean the kid's not gonna like rye for sure. I would gopersonally I like the more rustic Italian bread.You know I'm all for the straight, white Pullman. .

White Pullman, okay.I'm not against the white Pullman because again if you talk about thatchildhood grilled cheese, it's kind of like okay, white Pullman. White bread I think is the best because — What about that bread? That's white bread! It's whole wheat. I like gruyere a lot, I would like gruyere in a grilled cheesefor myself but I'm not gonna give gruyere .

To a kid. Yeah, there's a little too much funk. A lot too much. But what if you hadlike a little bit of gruyere grated and then a lot more something else. Maybe not funky but sharp I talk a lot about this at the shop when people ask forcheese that's sharp and usually what that means to me is that it's a cheese that'smade specifically to be high acid like cheddar to ship or travel and what thatmeans is it's a cheese that just doesn't melt while the pH is too high. So ifyou're making a grilled cheese and it's a really aged cheddar and it's too highacid it's just not gonna give you the .

Right melt. You got to go for like alittle bit of a lower ph cheese. And then something that is like either too acidicor aged too long the casein structure has been broken up over the long agingsuch that it might melt out but it's not gonna be cohesive at all. Let's see how it tastes. It has a smokiness to it. That's so good. This is our nopile, and this is our yes pile. That's disgusting. Oh my gosh it's so salty. .

Maybe like Gouda or something like that.Am I saying Gouda wrong? No no I would never say “how-duh”. Because you're not pretentious. Wow that's good, it's in the yes pile. Now let's try this! That's American cheese, we are not using that. I don't mind if some cheese leaks out and caramelizeson the pan. Those crispy bits of cheese makes it something even more spectacular.So you don't want a completely homogeneous melt like you would off oflike a processed cheese? So you don't want to bring like, for instance,emulsifying salts and kind of .

Make our own block cheese. No no no, we don't need any of that. No sodium citrate on that one. We definitely should addthe smoked mozzarella, that's number one. Cut the tomatoes, like dice them throwthem in, take a little bit of our herbs and spices. Yeah we should use the herbswe got. I heard the kids talking earlier I got a little inside information thatthey wanted to put tomatoes and they went to the garden to pick some herbs. I'm not a purist but I don't think I don't like tomatoes in my grilled cheese.Tomatoes a moisture management problem. if you roast the tomatoes and dry them alittle bit and then put them in so that .

They don't water out your sandwich, great.I don't think they're gonna do that. I don't think herb is gonna add anything the cheese can't handle. Hey, what should I do with the herbs? Just… mush them up? Yeah just like ripthem. You want me to grate something? Let's grate that. And then we'll do a slice of the other two. Can we add half of the cheddar into there? The mixture? I think this is looking good. We also didn't talk about temperature, I feel people don't usetemperature control, they use too high a temperature, and then the bread getstoo brown before you melt. Just melt it a little and then I think you're right we should press .

Down a little.That's fontina comte? Or all three? All three. That's a triple threat, that is atriple threat grilled cheese sandwich. I'm a little worried that there's not enough cheese. Can I put this back on now? No no not yet notyet not yet. Oh. This combination of cheese is saltyenough to not require salt in the bread? Remember now ,the mayonnaise has a littlesalt and a little vinegar. is there butter that we need to Is there butter? We need to put a little bit of butter on, and then what you're gonna do flip it over with the butter. .

Should we put some of the comteon the outside? Oh interesting. I also think it's a little flat. Doesn't it need a little salt or something? I don't think it's ready yet. No we need to put it on top, but trust me it'll be ready. So salt and pepper
on the inside… Yeah a little bit, I don't want to freak them out. So are we good, are we decided? I'm good if you're good. I'm good I love it. Now that our team'scheesy creations are complete, it's time to see how they taste. Our esteemedjudges include – a professional .

Restaurateur, a young grilled cheese fan,and a very tall guy who we may have promised free grilled cheese to inexchange for staying late to shoot this video. So we have a grilled cheese on ryebread, with fontina and cheddar in the middle, Comte on top which is caramelized.There's a little bit of mayonnaise, black pepper, and some cornichon to kind ofcut the fattiness of the sandwich. Flavor's good, I'm not sure I'm gettingthe flavor of all three cheeses her. I wouldn't mind if the cornichons wereactually in the sandwich, but pretty good sandwich. I don't really taste much black pepper but this is honestly really good. Crispy onthe outside, gooey on the inside, a little smoky. .

Today what's inside, you have smokedmozzarella and cheddar cheese. There's a little bit of tomato as well as amixture of herbs that we have harvested from the garden over there, thank you ICE.Everything on there is edible including that pepper stuffed with our mixture.Our raw mixture. so I like how they didn't put justcheese and they added some other stuff. I think I want more cheese on this. The hit oftomato inside was a good move and over and above I think it's pretty tasty. I'm gonna have to go with the expert grilled cheese. Purely texture. It was cooked better. Crispy on the outside, gooey on the .

Inside, enough cheese. The expert cheesewas cooked better. I thought it lacked some acidity. I'm gonna have to give itto the to the Challenger. The thing I like about the first one was it's gooeywhich is what I liked about it. The thing that I liked about this one, the detail is amazing. But what I also liked is that they added some more stuff tothe sandwich like they didn't just put cheese they added like some tomatoes… I'm gonna give it to them. Great job guys, congrats. I want a rematch. .