Product Review: Toastabags

I'm not sure I ever thought I'd do a post that's a product review, but lo and behold here I am!  Awhile back my friend Jessi told me about a product she had seen called Toastabags -- little bags made out of a special material that you can use to cook a grilled cheese in a toaster.  Of course this made her think of me.  They looked interesting enough, but I wasn't quite ready to order them online.  Fortunately for us all, fate dealt me a lucky hand as I navigated the lesser-occupied pre-storm areas of my local Safeway and found my very own set of Toastabags!

I decided for my first trial run I didn't want to get too crazy, so I went with some old standbys-- grated cheddar on Pepperidge Farm sourdough.  In the spirit of a little fun I did use some butter to stick some Parmesan to the outside of the bread a la our Grilled Caprese sandwich.  So after assembling my sandwich I carefully shimmied it into the bag so as to try and not lose the cheese filling.

Despite what this photo appears to indicate, it was a relatively tight squeeze, but it worked well.  I can safely conclude that you could fit just about any average-sized sandwich bread in here.

Now it was time for the toaster.  I use my toaster pretty rarely (I didn't even have one until I looted a freebie from my friend when she was selling virtually all of her possessions), so I didn't really know what to go for in terms of ideal darkness setting.  Oh well!  Trial and error, right?  So I just set the dial to about the mid-point and stuffed the sandwich into the toaster.  This was DEFINITELY a tight squeeze, so even though most breads will fit in the bag, make sure your toaster will actually accommodate 2 slices of bread plus filling in one slot.

The Toastabag didn't actually go all the way into the toaster, so there was a good little piece peeking out for the duration of the cook time.

I realize that the lever is up in this photo, but I assure you that the sandwich really looked no different whether the lever was up or down.  At a point it was just too fat to fit anymore of the bag into the toaster.

Once the toasting was done I decided to show the top part of the sandwich some love and flipped it over to toast the portion that was formerly exposed during the toasting process.  I didn't allow this side to toast quite as long as the first run-through though, because I didn't want to burn the middle of the sandwich.  A few seconds/minutes later...

 

 

Voila!  Mixed results (one side lightly charred, the other not so much).  The cheese inside was definitely melted and the outside of the bread was toasted, so our primary objectives were achieved, but it wasn't quite the same as your standard grilled cheese.  Even though I had put a little butter on the outside of the sandwich (which apparently isn't even necessary), the bread still felt a little dry-- like... well, toast!  Not to say that's a bad thing, just different.  It gives an overall lighter feel to the sandwich.  That's really the only key taste differential. 

I think the real focal point here is the actual preparation process.  What was that infomercial with the tag line "Set it and forget it!"?  Well, that's basically what you can do here.  Instead of standing at the stove constantly flipping/covering/uncovering/flipping/recovering your sandwich, you just pop it in the toaster and get on with your life (for the next two minutes or so).  It's the lowest maintenance grilled cheese I've done (but then again, I don't have a panini press which I imagine involves a similar order of operations to the Toastabags).  The only clear logistical downside is the inability to fit too much filling/crazy ingredients into the sandwich.  We all know I've done some fatty sandwiches in the past (i.e. The Onion Ring Grilled Cheese, The Brunch Grilled Cheese, and The Pulled Pork and Fried Pickles Grilled Cheese to name a few), and clearly none of those would have been possible in my small-ish toaster.  So you either need to manage your expectations there, or get a big toaster. 

All in all I'd say these are handy in a pinch on those days that you don't quite feel like putting all the effort in to make a grilled cheese, or for bringing with you to make a grilled cheese on the go.  Could I have finally found the key to office grilled cheeses?!  YESS!

Barbeque Sauce Grilled Cheese

This week's sandwich borrows some familiar elements from last week's sandwich, but puts a totally different spin on them.  Behold, the barbeque sauce grilled cheese:

But I'm getting ahead of myself with this sneak preview-- let's rewind and start from the beginning.

Ingredients:
* Pepper Jack
* Cheddar
* Red Onion
* BBQ Sauce of choice
* Pepperidge Farm sourdough
* Butter

If you tune in every week then by now you know that I have a thing for caramelized onions.  Something about being able to enjoy that sweet but tangy onion flavor without worrying about super stinky raw onion breath puts a smile on my face (and a growl in my tummy).  So step one was, of course, to thinly slice my red onion and plop it in a pan with about 2 Tbsp of butter.

I alternated stirring a bit and cooking covered for a bit and in about 10 minutes we were all set.

That was pretty much all of the advance prep we needed!  Well, aside from grating half of each brick of cheese.  I love quick and easy prep work because it means I'd actually be likely to make this sandwich again on an average week night.  Anyway, on to sandwich assembly.  First I put about 1 Tbsp of barbeque sauce on each of two slices of bread.

Looks sort of like jelly, am I right?  Next came a few handfuls of cheese.  I had pre-mixed the cheddar and pepper jack together so I got a nice even application of both cheeses over the entirety of the sandwich.

Next up were the caramelized onions:

Followed by the remaining cheese:

From there it was the usual sandwiching the pieces together, buttering the outside of the bread, and grilling (covered) until browned nice and evenly on each side.  In a few short minutes-- voila!

Seeing that perfectly charred Pepperidge Farm bread just never gets old for me!

Taste Review:

We could smell the onions and cheese before taking a bite, which I think is a somewhat natural side effect of cooked onions on the sandwich.  The purple onions combined with the BBQ sauce gave the sandwich a dark overall appearance that was pretty unique (save for a similar look to the not well liked Dutch Grilled Cheese).  The BBQ sauce was the main player in my first bite-- probably because that's the only ingredient I had applied all the way to the very edge of the bread.  The first thing we both observed about the sandwich was how creamy it was.  The BBQ sauce, soft onions, and melted cheese make for a very creamy and smooth sandwich.  But it's not as if it's so creamy it's soft-- the onions and bread give a subtle crunch that helps to counterbalance the gooier elements of the sandwich.

Surprisingly we didn't taste a lot of spice from the pepper jack cheese.  Usually for someone like me (who is extra sensitive to spicy food) even a little bit of spice does not go unnoticed, but in this case sweetness of the BBQ sauce and onions really overrode the spice.  So in reality, the BBQ sauce was the dominant flavor-- the onions didn't have a distinct taste, they just gave a subtle sweetness to enhance the sandwich.  So if you make this sandwich, be sure you choose a BBQ sauce that you LOVE because it will dictate the flavor of the rest of the sandwich.

FINAL RESULTS:

 

Sandwich:	Barbeque Sauce Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	3.5
Aroma:	2.5
Appearance:	Uniquely dark filling.
Taste:	B

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!

We found the sandwich above average, but not by a wide margin.  It was good, and I'd make it again, but it wouldn't be my first (or second or third) choice.

IPA and Cheddar Welsh Rarebit

Last week I got a comment asking whether I'd ever tried a Welsh Rarebit-style grilled cheese.  Given that, until last week, I didn't actually know what a Welsh Rarebit was, the obvious answer was no; but once I found out what this English pub dish entailed I was surprised I hadn't come across it sooner!  This sandwich (also called Welsh Rabbit) basically involves some sort of melted cheese mixture (usually cheddar with a variety of additives) poured over bread and broiled.  So really, it's quite similar to last week's sandwich that incorporated a sort of Swiss fondue mixture.  Being the fondue freak that I am, I was obviously very excited to give this type of sandwich a go. 

The article that my friend linked to in his comment indicated that there are any number of possible combinations that can be used to make this sandwich.  Given that there is a gourmet beer and wine store just down the street from me the possibilities were limitless!  Unfortunately, by the time we were ready to start cooking Sous Chef was already so hungry that he requested that we just use beer that we already had handy.  And no, I didn't take this chance to further diminish my unwanted stash of Miller Lite (going on 7 months residence in my fridge at this point).  We had one Sam Adams IPA left from a variety pack we bought awhile back, so using this as a base ingredient for our sandwich we brainstormed possible additives and complementary flavors.  Here's what we came up with:

Ingredients:
* Dijon Mustard
* Worcestershire Sauce
* Tabasco Sauce
* Flour (not pictured)
* Butter (also not pictured-- oopse)
* Sharp Cheddar
* Yellow Onion
* Bratwurst
* Pepperidge Farm Sourdough
* Sam Adams Latitude IPA

So let's dive right in.  I knew that I would want a sweet flavor to contrast the sharp cheddar and bitter IPA, so I opted for one of my all time faves-- caramelized onion.  I thinly sliced the onion and tossed it in the skillet with a few pats of butter.  Once the onions were pretty well coated with butter I covered them with the skillet's lid and let them cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they looked nice and caramelized!

But partway through the process we also added in the sausage (casings removed) so it would cook and pick up some of the onion's flavor.

While that was cooking I got to work on creating a basic roux by combining 1 Tbsp flour with 1 Tbsp butter.  Then, per the article's suggestion, I added 1 tsp Dijon mustard and 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce. 

Next came about 1/2 cup of beer and a few splashes of Tobasco.

Once that was decently blended I started to gradually stir in the grated cheese.  I used the whole brick of cheddar, which I believe is 8 ounces.

This part always makes me nervous because at first it looks like the mixture will be super watery and not fit for spreading on a sandwich, but the good news is that as you cook it a lot of the moisture cooks off and you're left with a perfect cheese sauce (even fit for nachos)!

Yum!  I opted to repeat last week's step of pre-grilling the bread so we would have a nice toasty feel going into the broiling (wasn't sure how much toasting a broiler would actually do).  So that just involved buttering both sides of the bread and grilling each side.  I left Sous Chef in charge of this and he lost focus partway through, so some slices got a little extra char.  Oh well.

Next up came the sausage and caramelized onions.  I'm not as big of a sausage fan as Colin is (and no, I'm not making an inappropriate joke), so I decided to just do cheese and onions on my variation.

So we added our respective fillings and then topped with plenty of cheese sauce!  And I mean plenty-- I only stopped because Colin literally pulled the sandwiches away from me and we still had cheese sauce left (which I opted to snack on with some bread bits in true fondue fashion).

Now they were ready for the broiler!  I was intrigued to see how orange the cheese looked despite the fact that we used white cheddar cheese.  I guess the mustard and beer are really doing their part to add some color.

I'd like to take this opportunity to confess my fear of the broiler.  Something about the fact that I can literally see a flame in my oven is scary to me.  My fear is legitimate as last week I lit a batch of s'more brownies on fire.  Yes, on fire.  Oopse!  Guess that will teach me to not use the top rack when broiling (or at least not when broiling something relatively flammable).  Anywho, I digress because this explains my slight failing over the next step.  The article I read didn't say how long to broil the sandwich, and I get scared of the broiler when used for any more than like 2 mins, so I wussed out and probably only left them in there for about 1:30 total.

Help!  My oven is on fire!

Obviously a longer broil would yield very different results, but here's what I ended up with:

OK, so it's definitely more cooked, but I'm not sure this is quite the effect I was going for.  I was envisioning those little bubbles that you get on pizza cheese that are sort of charred, but are extra delicious.  Oh well, the cheese was starting to run off of the bread and I didn't want to deal with the broiler any longer than necessary.

Once I topped the sandwich with the other piece of bread, this is what I got!

Taste Review:

Because we had pre-melted the cheese and pre-grilled the bread there was a decent aroma filling the apartment, but no direct aroma from the sandwich.  I tried a bite of Colin's version (with sausage) first.  The sausage is peppery and is the primary taste when you have a bite of that sandwich.  I preferred my version which was just cheese and onions.  The caramelized onions were really sweet, so they were a great contrast to the sharpness of the cheese mixture.  I could also taste a slight spicy kick thanks to the Dijon and hot sauce, but if you're a spicy food fan you'd need to add significantly larger quantities to feel fully satisfied there.  My bread isn't crispy enough, but that's because my version had the slightly less toasted pieces of bread and, obviously, neither sandwich had stayed in the broiler for too long.

Now let's talk about the cheese.  It was super strong, probably due to the fact that we used such powerful flavors in concocting the mixture.  We can't pinpoint which flavor makes it so sharp, but my money is on the IPA.  I think the bitterness of an IPA mixed with sharp cheddar makes for a perfect storm of sharpness.  This was that sort of sharpness you can feel in the back of your mouth that makes you super thirsty for whatever reason.  For that reason, the caramelized onions were a great choice because they were very sweet and could try to stand up to the sharpness of the rest of the sandwich, but I could've used more onions to really balance the flavors out.  And even though the cheese had started out super runny it began to re-congeal a bit as I ate.  Neither a pro nor a con, just an observation.

Sandwich:	IPA and Cheddar Welsh Rarebit
Gooey-ness:	4.5
Aroma:	2.5
Appearance:	Surprisingly orange for using white cheese.
Taste:	B

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!

Beer Bread Grilled Cheese

Colin and I often dream of opening our very own grilled cheese and craft beer restaurant, so it was only a matter of time before we started trying to figure out a way to merge these two items into one tasty treat.  Upon finding a recipe for a beer bread grilled cheese, I knew we were in business!  The recipe looked a little tricky given that I've never made bread before, but in reality it was pretty simple (and afforded me the opportunity to further diminish our 6 month old Miller Lite stash)! 

First up was making the bread itself.  Ingredients were pretty straightforward:

* 3 cups flour
* 1 can beer
* 4.5 Tbsp baking powder
* 1/3 cup sugar
* 1.5 tsp salt

I was surprised by how easy this was-- mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and gradually add the beer until you've got dough, then shape that dough into a greased loaf pan. 

I realized all too late that I don't actually have a loaf pan, so I improvised using my square pan in my 9 x 13 pan to make a more loaf sized nook.  Surprisingly this actually worked! 

I popped the bread in a 350 degree oven and, after 45 minutes, was pleased to find a real live loaf of bread!  I think you can actually cook the bread anywhere from 35-45 minutes, but I wanted to err on the side of more well done.

I let the bread cool for a bit while I went to work on the rest of the sandwich.  Ingredients as follows:

* White onion
* Olive oil
* Cheddar
* Havarti
* Dijon Mustard
* Oregano

First up I prepped the onions.  I thinly sliced my onion half (although in retrospect a whole onion would have been better) and put them in a pan along with some olive oil and let them cook until they were starting to wilt. 

At that point I sprinkled in some oregano and turned the heat down to medium low/low and allowed the onions to cook (covered) for 10 more minutes.  Voila!  Caramelized onions! (Oopse, forgot to get a photo of this)

The only real remaining bit of prep work was grating up the cheese.  We chose Havarti and cheddar because we like those cheeses, but I'm sure any cheese of your choosing would be tasty as well!

Next came what proved to be the hardest part-- slicing the beer bread.  The bread was so chunky that it was hard to slice it thinly without chunks falling off, so I ended up with some pretty thick slices.  Oh well, having tasted the bread I could vouch for its quality so wasn't concerned at the prospect of having to eat more.

Once I managed to get 8 thick-ish slices laid out I added the caramelized onions, followed by the Havarti and cheddar (I did cheddar on one slice and then Havarti on top of the onions). 

No specific quantities here-- maybe like 3 ounces of Havarti and 2 ounces of cheddar spread per 2 sandwiches?  Not being a huge fan of Dijon mustard, I left it to Colin to add some to his sandwich, whereas mine were complete with just the cheese and onions.  Because the bread was so thick it was certainly a challenge to flip the sandwiches (the two spatula attack was a must).  For one of my sandwiches the bread started to crumble partway through the cooking process, so I had to remove it from the pan before I felt it was time.  Oh well.  Eventually they were all ready to roll!

Taste Review:

We didn't really get a strong aroma from the sandwich, which is strange given that the bread was freshly baked.  The sandwich lived up to its appearance where density was concerned!  The bread combined with a solid bit of cheese meant that the sandwich was super dense-- there was absolutely no filler.  The bread is savory at first, but actually has a sweet flavor to it and reminded us of a biscuit. 

The onions were nice and sweet in a way that enhanced the sweetness of the bread, but didn't make it too sweet.  We actually concluded that a sandwich overflowing with onions would be even better-- their sweetness plus sharp cheese plus dense bread would be a recipe for success.  Colin says that the Dijon adds just the right amount of spice, but that he wouldn't add any more.

The more we ate the more we realized that the bread really is a force to be reckoned with here.  You need a lot of cheese and onions to balance out the heartiness of the bread and I even wondered if this would be better as an open faced sandwich, so you could lessen the bread while upping the filling.  I found that by the end I was pulling chunks of bread off to try to get a better bread to cheese ratio.  Another way to solve this problem would be to slice the bread more thinly, but I'm not sure I could do that (not to say there aren't expert bread slicers out there who could).  So in general the sandwich has a lot of potential, but it wasn't quite the right balance of ingredients yet.  But as it stands now, this was definitely the most unique sandwich we've tried in recent memory.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Beer Bread Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	3
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Looks very chunky and unique.
Taste:	B

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!