Give Your Grilled Cheese An Instant Upgrade With One Elite Ingredient

A grilled cheese is a timeless sandwich that foodies have been enjoying from their youth well into adulthood. But as it turns out, you've been making your grilled cheese wrong this whole time. Okay, maybe not giant-F-on-your-midterm-paper wrong, but you've definitely been sleeping on making a sticky, delicious, hot honey-infused grilled cheese.

Hot honey takes the delicate, floral, and sweet taste of honey and smacks it with a chili pepper-tinted uppercut that transforms its entire profile. At once sweet and spicy, this balanced condiment was made for flavor fanatics. And although grilled cheese is one of those formative provisions that shape our love for good food, its flavor can be one-dimensional.

A grilled cheese is rich and creamy but often lacks depth, making hot honey a secret weapon for reimagining and diversifying this timeless sandwich. Beyond improving its flavor, hot honey also adds moisture to a crispy grilled cheese, ensuring a dynamic mouthfeel that walks the line between crunchy, creamy, and silky.

The best part of this simple grilled cheese upgrade is that it requires little effort. Simply drizzle hot honey atop a cheesy slice of buttered bread before adding the second slice, flipping it, and grilling to perfection.

Hot honey alone is enough to transform a grilled cheese from ordinary to extraordinary. But if you're feeling inspired by the upgrade, why stop there? Hot honey is a surprisingly adaptable ingredient that marries with many other loaded grilled cheese fixings.

Try adding garden-fresh pickled veggies, the tangy top notes of which temper both the spice and sweetness of the honey while adding another dimension of flavor to the sandwich. Plus, pickled veggies provide the soft, sticky interior of the sandwich with textural contrast for a more dynamic mouthfeel. Experiment with herbs for a subtle, aromatic touch. Basil brings an air of peppery freshness while parsley can add a trim of refreshing brightness.

Don't be afraid to experiment with cheese. A hot honey-kissed pimento grilled cheese is a sharp, sweet, and spicy amalgam of comforting goodness. To bolster the heat of the honey, try using pepper jack but to give the sweet and spicy honey a smoldering essence, turn to smoked cheddar. Dare we suggest assembling a melty brie grilled cheese held together by fig jam and hot honey? 

Once you try a hot honey-infused grilled cheese, you'll never look at a plain one again. And when you wear yourself out on it, use hot honey to upgrade a frozen pizza or to add moisture to a crumbly chicken biscuit.