Make Your Grilled Cheese Swiss-Style For Next Level Melting

Just about any cheese is a solid choice for a grilled cheese sandwich, but ones that melt into creamy, silky stickiness are always the best when you want a great texture. That's what makes raclette one of the tastiest underrated cheeses, since its entire purpose is to melt into a gooey delight that works on just about everything.

Raclette is a high-fat, relatively high-moisture cheese from Switzerland that's particularly well-suited for melting. Traditionally, the cut sides of cheese wheels are heated near a flame or other heat source, with the gooey result scraped over a variety of vegetables and cured meats. But even in a pan and insulated by bread, it achieves the perfect, velvety texture most people look for in a grilled cheese sandwich. This is especially true if you grate it first, a simple trick for a meltier grilled cheese that also covers the bread far more evenly. Even if some drips onto the pan, it's capable of toasting into caramelized perfection rather than just quickly burning.

If you want to try it out in your next sandwich, consider seeking out traditional Swiss raclette. While some dairies outside Switzerland can recreate the moisture and fat content that make raclette melt well, other factors, including acidity, can influence its texture and melting properties. While it's not the most important factor in determining meltability, it's an often slept-on variable that can vary depending on the cheesemaking process.

A solid raclette cheese isn't flavorless, but it typically tastes quite simple. It's a "cheese's cheese," focusing on creaminess, dairy fat, and a bit of aging to create something that can be quite versatile. If you want to upgrade your grilled cheese even further, take some inspiration from classic raclette dinner ingredients, like cured meats and vegetables.

As a country with strong German cultural influences, Switzerland has a long history with pickles. The tangy vegetable is perfect on grilled cheese, especially sandwiches made with a decadently high-fat dairy product like raclette. The acidity is crucial to cutting through the heaviness for a brighter flavor, and you can use just about any type of pickle, from okra to cucumbers to cauliflower. Still, if you don't want to bulk up your meal too much, a smear of strong, spicy Swiss mustard can achieve the same effect while adding a bit of kick.

If you want to change up the texture of your grilled cheese, you can add some crunch with a thin layer of rösti, a sort of Swiss potato pancake/hash brown hybrid. Raclette is also a standard accompaniment to this potato dish, so the two go together quite well. Switzerland has quite a bit of German, French, and Italian heritage, so there's no shortage of cured meats to pair with raclette. Pork products like coppa, prosciutto, and Landjäger are especially good options, adding plenty of salt to bring out the flavors of your other ingredients.