Let’s be honest, we all think we know how to make a grilled cheese. Slap some cheese between two slices of bread, butter it up and toss it in a pan. It’s a classic, right? Well, it turns out we’ve been doing it the hard way. The first time I made a grilled cheese in an air fryer, I realized my skillet has been lying to me for years.
I’m just going to say it: the air fryer makes a better grilled cheese. It’s faster, less messy, and frankly, the results are just superior. If you’ve been clinging to your skillet out of tradition, it’s time to see the light.
If you don’t own an air fryer, I recommend Ninja’s glass-bowl model. It’s the best we’ve tested and makes a mean grilled cheese. Making an air fryer grilled cheese is fast and easy and leaves almost no mess. Here’s why your next grilled cheese should start and end in the air fryer.
Your toaster oven could never do this. While toasted cheese is a possibility (and reheated toaster oven pizza is a revelation), grilled cheese is not. Your toaster oven is not designed to support fat on the underside of whatever you’re cooking and you’ll end up with a mess too complicated to clean.
- Assemble a grilled cheese as you would otherwise
- Sliced bread
- Sliced or shredded cheese (I like American cheese for a basic grilled cheese and a combo of gruyere and cheddar for an upgrade.)
- Butter or mayonnaise for the outside of the bread slices (dealer’s choice)
For a basic grilled cheese, you can assemble the sandwich in the basket of your air fryer: bread with buttered side down, followed by sliced or shredded cheese, then topped with the final slice with buttered side up.
Set the heat to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and cook for 3 to 6 minutes on each side, flipping halfway through. The already melted cheese will keep your sandwich nicely together during the flip. You can get a lightly golden grilled cheese in less time but I recommend hanging on for 5 to 6 minutes for a deeply crunchy sandwich.
Another perk of the air fryer is that you can more easily peek to see where you are without adversely affecting the outcome.
The air fryer is even better for a stacked grilled cheese
This is where the air fryer really shines in the grilled cheese realm. Every element of an upgraded grilled cheese adds a degree of difficulty when trying to cook in a skillet, much of which is mitigated in the safe confines of an air fryer. Thicker bread. Thicker cheese, like hunks of camembert or brie.
And think of all the great grilled cheese ingredients that can be slippery: apple slices, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, pickles, etc. Any grilled cheese with more than two components can be challenging to flip gracefully in a skillet, even for trained cooks.
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