The quest for cheese on toast...

The quest for cheese on toast is an honourable one. Golden, bubbly, melted, and hot - sometimes, when life isn't quite the way you want it to be, only cheese on toast will do. 

Cheese on toast, it’s one of the great comfort foods and so easy to cook - in theory. We live in a world where we can have any entertainment we choose at the press of a button, but cheese on toast? If only cheese on toast were that simple.

It seems that I'm not properly equipped to make a decent slice of cheese on toast. Oh, I know how to make it – lightly toast and butter the bread, cover in cheese, sprinkle with pepper, grill until bubbling, splash with Worcestershire sauce, eat. But I haven’t quite got the right cheese on toast making equipment it seems.

It’s all the fault of our cooker. When we bought the bloody thing we were taken in by the seven ring gas hob (including wok burner), two ovens (one fan assisted) and integral glass hob cover. We convinced ourselves that the under hob grill would be okay despite it not being at eye level, anyway eye level gills are unsightly we agreed. But of course it wasn’t okay at all.

Oh, the grill works after a fashion. But it’s a lot of faffing attaching and unattaching the grill handle, so that it can be used and stored, and it’s completely impossible to see the cheese on toast whilst it’s cooking. On the few occasions I’ve used the grill to make some COT (as I call it) I’ve either burnt the toast or undercooked the cheese. I’ve never quite got it right.

It’s such a kafuffle to use that I’ve tried making cheese on toast in the oven, the microwave, toaster bags, grilled sandwich makers, I even found myself late last night trying to melt the cheese with a chef’s blowtorch. No matter what I try nothing matches the gloriously bubbly, soft in the centre, crisp at the outside, cheese on toast that I remember cooking on the old, chipped enamel, eye level grill of my childhood. Pull out the grill, light the gas, plonk on the toast and cheese, slide it under, and watch and wait for the bubbles to rise. Mmmmmm – I can smell its deliciousness even now.

It’s so frustrating especially when Scientists at the British Royal Society of Chemistry have revealed the scientific formula for creating the perfect grilled cheese on toast.

According to the BRSOC the perfect slice can be made by melting 50 grams of two millimetres thick, sliced, hard cheese, such as cheddar, on a slice of white bread, 10 millimetres thick, under the pre-heated grill. The cheese on toast should sit at a distance of exactly 18 centimetres from the heat source above and needs to cook for four minutes and nine seconds to achieve the perfect consistency and taste. Cheese on toast science, whatever next? Maybe Helmet Blunderitall will make a cheese on toast foam.

I prefer to grate my cheese, but even so my mouth waters just thinking about it. Our under hob grill won’t allow the correct clearance and it’s electric, not gas powered naked flame, and I never could get on with electric grills. I really want great cheese on toast though. Perhaps I should adjust the formula a little, persevere and master the mysteries of our electric under hob grill. After all they do say that practice makes perfect and surely cheese on toast is worth fighting for.

Either that or I’m going to have to replace the cooker.