17 Comfort Foods For Deep Winter

GRILLED CHEESE—09/06/05–This is the Grilled Cheese and PEAMEAL on challah with side salad at Aunties and Uncles, 74 Lippincott St., September 6, 2005. (Photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

7. Grilled cheese

If french toast was somehow not simple enough and mac and cheese involved an arduous trip to the grocery store, then may I suggest a grilled cheese? More likely than not, you’ve at least got some bread, cheese, and some sort of fat for frying. Add in less than ten minutes of prep and cooking time, and you’re good to go.

Now, as for history, the combination of bread and cheese has been around for millennia. It honestly feels a little silly trying to pin a date on the grilled cheese sandwich. Once I’ve said that, though, you might be interested to know that our modern American version arrived sometime in the 1920s.That’s when relatively inexpensive sliced bread and cheese became available to most Americans. The “cheese dream”, an open-faced version of the grilled cheese, became especially popular during the Great Depression.

In more modern times, the grilled cheese has still been going strong. If you know the right places in your city, you can even pop into a restaurant for a gussied-up version of the classic. Or, you know, you could just make it yourself.

Recipe: This is another one where a recipe seems almost offensive to you. I don’t presume that you need a step-by-step guide to grilled cheese, dear reader. However, if you’d like some ideas for making the classic sandwich extra fancy, look through this list of 50 Grilled Cheeses (Food Network).

Healthier variation: Try whole-grain bread. You could also try cooking it in a panini press (or an ad-hoc version) with far less butter or oil.