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! |
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! |
