Grilled Cheese Sandwich & Tomato Soup (I can't believe this trick worked) | Weeknighting

Hey, what's up? This recipe for grilled cheese and tomato soup is pretty weird because it's both the best tasting version, in my opinion, and it's also very low labor. Some of the moves that I used to get there are kind of untraditional and honestly, I'm surprised that they worked at all. But the results speak for themselves and they are quite dope. This is Weeknighting. To get started, I'm going to preheat my oven to 450F, 232C, and then grab a large baking dish or Dutch oven. Into that goes two cans of very good tasting whole peeled tomatoes. All canned tomatoes aren't created equal, as you guys probably know. I'm going with Bianco DiNapoli here because they taste delicious, and on the label it just says tomatoes, basil, and salt. That's what I'm looking for. Next in is one medium red onion that I've given a quick chop. My favorite method for cutting onions quickly is to slice them five to six times from the south to the north pole like this, then turn them 90 degrees and chop them across again like this. This way is a little bit more rustico, but it is less fussy and faster than the traditional three-step chef-y way you see most of the time. Behind the onions goes 30 to 40 grams or about eight cloves of garlic. I've given that a rustic slice here. As you can see, nothing special. It's going to be pureed, so it doesn't really need to be pretty. Next, I'm going to add in a very generous long squiz of olive oil. That's 50 to 60 grams in total, I'd say. Then 15 grams of salt and 15 grams of sugar. That is not looking like soup, Brian. I agree. Stick with me. Next in is 750 grams or milliliters of chicken stock, 40 grams of tomato paste, and then one chipotle chili in adobo. That's optional if you don't like a touch of smoky flavor with your tomato. Next, I'm going to stir everything in this sludge of raw vegetables and tomato product up to combine, and there we go. Let's make it into soup. Now, I'm going to load this into my very hot oven and roast it for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Baked soup seems pretty crazy, you guys, and it's certainly not in any culinary textbook, but it is pretty much hands-free. Prep time is only about four minutes, and the flavor is unbelievable for a few different reasons, but we'll get back to that. For now, we're going to take care of the little bit of prep that we need for the sandwich part of this combo. Into my food processor goes 125 grams of butter, 75 grams of mayonnaise. I'll mention that there's a heated debate over whether or not one should fry their grilled cheese sandwich in butter or mayo, and I say, why not both? The oil and the mayo helps give even browning, and the butter brings flavor. I'll also add in 15 grams of Dijon mustard. That little touch of spicy acidity is going to bring a nice edge to the sandwich. Now, the lid goes on, and I'm going to spin this up until I have a homogenous paste, basically. If your butter was cold, you'll have to stop a few times to scrape it down, but after 30 to 40 seconds, the mayo, mustard, and butter have become one, and now I've got the ultimate spread to fry my cheese sandwich. It kind of looks like frosting, actually. Savory frosting. Now, I'll set that aside and check in on my soup bake in the oven. It's been in the oven for 30 minutes at this point, and it's nice and bubbly all over, a little bit roasty, and it's looking good. I'm going to give it a stir to make sure the onions and garlic are getting evenly cooked throughout. The edges of this bake tend to be a little bit hotter than the middle. I'll roast this for another 30-ish minutes. Next up is the bread. For that, I've got my basic white panned loaf that you've seen in the BLT and tuna salad videos. The process for this bread is outlined in full detail in the BLT video, so I'll link to that below, and I recommend giving it a try if you haven't already. If you're wondering what type of bread to use instead of this one if you don't want to make bread, I would say get something that's relatively hearty that has a little bit of sweetness to it. Don't use actual squishy white bread like this. It's a little bit too vapid and just doesn't have great texture. I baked this loaf yesterday and let it sit wrapped overnight on my counter. That makes it a little bit firmer and easier to slice thin. I'm going about a half inch here, and I know you're thinking, hey Bri, those are some laser-focused thin slices of bread right there. I've had a lot of practice. When I was a baker at Union Loafers, we sliced all of our bread by hand and actually fully dulled two to three of these serrated knives per week. Once this loaf has been cut into nearly perfect superhuman thin slices like this, I'm going to set it aside and grab my soup. This thing's been roasted in the oven for about an hour now, and it's looking very delicious. The dry heat brought some caramelization to the top, the liquid has reduced, and everything has gotten nicely tender. By the way, you could do this exact same recipe just in a pot on the stove instead of in the oven, but you would lose a tad of complexity of flavor, and you would have to stir it more often than just once. To puree this, I'm going to grab my blender, a sauce pot, a fine mesh strainer, and a ladle. That ladle's going to help push the soup through the fine mesh. When I'm pureeing hot things like soup, I really only fill the blender jar about 50 to 60% of the way. Hot liquids can get pretty rowdy in the blender and blow off the top, so it's best to just play it safe. I'm going to spin this on the blender's highest setting for 30 seconds or so to really break this down as much as possible. An immersion blender just doesn't do a good enough job here, so I'm using the real deal. Into the fine mesh it goes, and then I'm going to push it through with the ladle. This step might seem a little bit extra, and it is, but the texture here is going to be silky smooth and a lot more pro, so it's definitely worth doing the extra dish. Now I'll spin up the second batch, pour it out, strain it, then move it over to the stove and keep it over low heat while I make my sandwich. Before I do that, though, I always like to come back and check the overall thickness of this stuff once I've pureed it, and it looks kind of gloppy, so I'm going to add in a splash of chicken stock, let's call it 75 grams. That's going to thin it out to a thickness that I would actually call soup instead of baby food. Now is also when I dial in the salt level. I think this needs a touch more salt to be as delicious as possible. I'm going to give it one more taste, and we're there, dude. Tastes f***ing dope. By the way, this soup is dairy-free, not on purpose, just because of preference, I guess. The added fat of cream steps on any clean tomato flavor, in my opinion, and throws the soup out of balance. Remember that ridiculous amount of olive oil that we used earlier? That's the fat that's emulsified into the soup now, and that's going to bring the body and balance. It's just lighter and more subtle than cream. Now it's time to make the sandwich, so for that, I'm going to preheat my 10-inch nonstick pan made by the sponsor of this video, Misen. As you guys know, I do a lot of cooking with nonstick pans. The problem, though, is that the ones that I have been using are pretty much junk. I realized that fact when Misen asked me to try their 10-inch nonstick saute pan. Misen's pan uses way thicker aluminum walls, meaning that it transfers heat to the food a lot more effectively, and the quality of the nonstick coating is a lot better. This pan uses three-layer DuPont Platinum coating. That's the most abrasion-resistant one available, I'm told, and it's designed to last super long and be oven-safe up to 450F, which is huge for me because you guys know that I'm always using my nonsticks on the stovetop over high heat. This pan actually has 10 inches of usable cook space as well. Other brands have a lot of curvature that gets in the way of cooking, and then all of a sudden, you've only got 8 inches to deal with. In the Misen pan, you can easily fit two salmons or two pounds of ground beef, no sweat. To dramatically improve your nonstick situation, try Misen and use the link in my description and code BRIANLAGERSTROM at checkout for 20% off your first order. Again, use my link in the description and use code BRIANLAGERSTROM to get 20% off your first order. That's a lot of percent. Thank you so much, Misen. To build this cheese sandwich, I'm going to lay down two slices of the loaf that I basically sculpted into perfectly thin slices earlier, then I'm going to liberally spread the mayo butter mustard mixture all over both sides. I really try and go edge to edge with this stuff. Please, don't miss any corners. Next I'll lay down the most important cheese in this grilled cheese. That's American cheese. Is it controversial? Probably. Is it barely food? Definitely. But it's meltiness is unmatched and I can't think of a grilled C without it. Next is two real cheeses, the first of which is Gruyere, and I apologize to everybody in Switzerland for calling this a French cheese in my French onion soup video. I've got a funky cheese, in this case a classic French Gruyere. The way I got this stuff sandwich ready was to use a vegetable peeler and cut along the smaller side like this. There we go. I'm going to lay down a solid layer of that Gru and now I'm going to lay down a slice of Provolone. This is here mainly for the cheese pull effect. The flavor is great, but it's mild. The Gruyere does most of the heavy lifting on flavor. Lastly, one more slice of pure American here to bookend this thing because you got to keep it gooey, guys. Four layers of cheese, two of which are American. Feel free to switch up the middle layers as you see fit. Now I'm going to load this into my 10 inch nonstick pan. Again, that was preheated over medium low and right away I'm going to use my spatula to press this sandwich into the pan for about 30 seconds or so. It's almost like cooking fish skin side down. The first few seconds are critical to make sure things are getting evenly cooked and the food is touching the pan and getting good color. After two minutes on the first side, I'm going to come back and check the bottom. It's looking pretty golden and crisp, so I'm going to flip it over and cook on side two for roughly two more minutes. You could definitely cook two of these sammies in a 10 inch pan at once, by the way. I just find it easier to film and cook only one at a time. After about four minutes in total, this little BB grilled cheese is looking great and melty, so it's ready to come out of the pan. Look, we don't need to overcomplicate this one. It's just melted cheese on toast, but it's simple, it's classic, and it definitely has a touch more maturity. That combo of highbrow and lowbrow cheeses and that right spread of fats on the bread gives us something that's pretty special, I think, and way better than any grilled cheese that I've had before. But let's not forget about the peanut butter to this jelly, though, you guys. This tomato soup is velvety and creamy without being heavy at all. It's got just the right amount of tomato acidity and a touch of robust smokiness, thanks to that one chipotle and adobo. To finish, I'll top it with some chives, a heavy drizzle of nice olive oil, a bunch of Parmesan cheese, and then a ton of black pepper. This soup has a totally insane cooking method and breaks every rule, but damn, you guys, it's frickin' lit. Can I say lit? Let me know in the comments if 34-year-old men can still say lit. Anyways, I hope you can take my word for it that this setup is totally delicious and not very much work at all for how pro it actually tastes. I really hope you give it a try soon. Let's eat this thing!