A good grilled cheese sandwich hits all the right notes fairly easily. Check two boxes—crispy, buttery bread and melty cheese—and you’re guaranteed a dopamine hit that’s deeply satisfying. But a next-level grilled cheese? That can be transformative. And luckily, it can be stupidly simple too.
Taking your grilled cheese up a notch can be as easy as adding herbs, upgrading your cheese blend, or folding in a juicy protein like The Sausage Project’s better-for-you chicken sausages. Add a little extra effort and suddenly your childhood favorite starts feeling like a gourmet experience, minus, you know, any sort of culinary skill.
With the right ingredients, a few smart techniques, and a little moxie, upping your grilled cheese game is shockingly simple. For a few tips on nailing it every time, we tapped writer and cheese educator Lee Musho to help you choose the right combos, techniques, and unexpected flourishes to perfect tomato soup’s favorite sandwich.
The Best Cheeses for Grilled Cheese
Some cheeses melt beautifully. Others turn into a globby, oily mess. That’s particularly true in the world of cheddar.
“When you 'cheddar' cheese—it is actually a verb to cheddar—what you're doing is cutting the curds really small, layering them on top of each other, and pressing them down. When it heats up, those blocks become unstable, and you basically need to find a way to stabilize it,” Musho says.
While cheddar definitely works, Musho recommends branching out with cheeses like Gruyère, Emmentaler, or Comté.
“What happens with Alpine-style cheeses is they will actually cook the curd in this big copper pot before forming the cheese. Because that curd has already been cooked, it makes it a fantastic melter; it really can just ooze and melt and be really beautiful,” she says. “Oftentimes, that's why you need to add an Alpine-style cheese into a blend of cheeses in order to get that perfect melt.
“If you're going to make a grilled cheese with cheddar,” she continues, “I would recommend also adding in maybe a little Gruyère or a little Comté, because that way you'll actually be able to get some of those melting properties from the Alpine while still having that flavor of the cheddar.”
Musho also recommends blending cheeses to find the perfect balance, especially meltier options like manchego and provolone.
The Best Bread for Grilled Cheese
A great grilled cheese is all about texture—you want a nice crunch on the crust, but also a bit of give so it doesn’t feel overly dense. White bread can do the trick, but Musho recommends going for something with more character.
“I prefer a grilled cheese made from a peasant bread, a sourdough, or a bread that just has more bite to it than white bread does,” she says. “To each their own, but I really love having that chewy crunch, and white bread often just doesn't do that. It's a less satisfying bite when the bread just comes away easily, so I recommend using a thicker, more chewy bread.”
The Best Butter and Oils for Grilled Cheese
Traditionally, grilled cheese begins by slathering bread with butter. Some folks prefer a lower-fat approach like olive oil. More controversially, some people insist on ditching butter altogether and grilling their sandwich with a coat of mayonnaise on the exterior, a method that definitely works for a golden crust, but also definitely leaves the sandwich tasting like mayo. It’s dealer’s choice, but when choosing your fat be sure you actually like the flavor it imparts, because it gets into every nook and cranny of your bread.
How to Cook the Perfect Grilled Cheese
Slow and low is a term mostly associated with BBQs and deeper-cut Beastie Boys bangers, but it’s also a good rule for making a quality grilled cheese. Toss it in the pan too aggressively and the balance falls apart: You’ll get burned bread on the outside, cold cheese on the inside. So start it low and allow your ingredients to get to know each other.
“You cannot make a great grilled cheese in five minutes,” Musho cautions. “You have to really let it take its time and let the cheese melt. You don't want to have grilled cheese that's brown or burnt on the outside, while the cheese inside isn't even melted.”
How to Prep Chicken Sausage for Grilled Cheese
Our chicken sausages are designed to go anywhere a rotisserie chicken does. And wouldn’t you know it, roasted chicken is fantastic with grilled cheese.
But don’t just go jamming whole links between slices of bread: not only will it look weird, it’ll cook unevenly. Coins work, but can become dislodged when you bite down. That’s why Musho recommends doing something a little more unconventional: cutting sausages into long, uniform strips, similar in thickness to bacon. That way, the flavor shows up in every bite and the protein cooks evenly throughout the sandwich.
The Best Chicken Sausage Grilled Cheese Ideas
With those tips in mind, we asked Musho to craft her perfect grilled cheese with each of our flavors, combining the right bread and cheese to bring out the best in our juicy links. Then she leveled each one up with a simple flourish. Follow these simple steps and you’ll never look at a basic grilled cheese the same way again.
Classic Roasted Chicken Sausage Grilled Cheese
- Bread: Sourdough
- Sausage: Classic Roasted Chicken Sausage cut into strips, then pan fried or air fried
- Cheese: Gruyère or Comté
- Additions: Caramelized onions, honey mustard
Method: Musho leaned into Alpine flavors with her Classic Roasted Chicken Sausage grilled cheese, which she imagined as the ideal sandwich for eating deep in the mountains. Using Gruyère and Comté brings buttery, nutty notes and some serious French onion soup vibes, especially when you layer caramelized onions into the fillings. The last flourish is a hit of honey mustard, which cuts through the richness with a welcome tang.
Melty Cheddar Chicken Sausage Grilled Cheese
- Bread: Texas Toast
- Sausage: Melty Cheddar Chicken Sausage cut into strips and pan fried or air fried
- Cheese: High Plains Cheddar, Cabot Alpine Cheddar, or another high-quality cheddar
- Additions: A creamy sour cream & chive dip spiked with bacon bits
Method: This thicc, juicy grilled cheese is close to the version most people picture when they think of the sandwich, but Musho reimagined this classic through an unexpected lens: that of a loaded baked potato. This version lets the natural cheese in our Melty Cheddar Chicken Sausage play alongside high-quality Alpine cheddar, all sandwiched between thick and buttery Texas toast.
The secret weapon, though, is what's on the side. Grilled cheese has long been married to soup when it comes to dunking, but Musho recommends ditching it altogether in favor of a sour cream dip spiked with chives and bacon bits, giving the sandwich a baked potato vibe without requiring you to eat a baked potato with your hands (no judgment here, obviously).
Italian Herb Chicken Sausage Grilled Cheese
Bread: Ciabatta
Sausage: Italian Herb Chicken Sausage cut into strips and pan fried or air fried
Cheese: Provolone, young Manchego
Additions: Herb butter to cook the grilled cheese in
Italian Herb Chicken Sausage brings some serious flavor thanks to its spice blend and imported Calabrian chile chunks. Musho recommends doubling down and cooking this grilled cheese “like a steak.” No, that doesn’t mean dry aging it (it’ll get stale). It means adding garlic, rosemary, thyme, and other herbs to your pan along with butter at the beginning of the process, then cooking the assembled grilled cheese—loaded with smoky provolone or flavorful young manchego—right in all that flavorful goodness.
The Perfect Grilled Cheese Is the One You Love
At the end of the day, the perfect grilled cheese is the one that makes you happiest, and half the fun is experimenting with flavors that bring you joy. Love cacio e pepe? You can absolutely turn that into a grilled cheese. Obsessed with melty brie? Take a little inspiration from your favorite holiday appetizer. Experimentation is what makes cooking fun—and it’s also how Elvis wound up devouring fried peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, which, come to think of it, might work surprisingly well with crispy sausage strips.
With the tips above, you’re well on your way to building the grilled cheese of your dreams. Start with great cheese, sturdy bread, and a whole lot of sausage, and suddenly lunch looks a whole lot more exciting.