Your BLT Is So Much Better When You Transform It Into A Grilled Cheese

With their powers combined, bacon, lettuce, and tomato form one amazing sandwich. With a laundry list of ways to elevate your BLT, you can take this classic sandwich well beyond the basics to build a better BLT. The biggest improvement that you can make with this winning trio of ingredients stuffed between slices of your favorite bread, however, is as simple as mashing it up with yet another tried and true sandwich: the grilled cheese. The best sandwich is a fusion of two sandwiches, a sandwich squared, if you will. Crunchy bacon, juicy tomato, and crisp lettuce mixed with gooey melted cheese between two slices of carefully fried bread is your first step into a larger world of culinary delight.

Giving your BLT sandwich the grilled cheese treatment is so effective because you're using ingredients that all play well together. What's more? Grilling the bread rather than toasting it helps everything inside stay cohesively mixed together. You have a wealth of options to choose from in terms of the type of bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and bread you wish to use along with any other toppings, sauces, and accouterments you desire. The sky's the limit when it comes to this fun and tasty mashup of sandwich giants.

There are several factors to consider for this fusion of sandwiches. For bread, if you aren't making grilled cheese with sourdough, you might want to consider using it for its rich flavor and structural integrity, which is even more important given the expanded ingredients here. When it comes to the best cheeses for your grilled cheese sandwich, you'll want to choose something that melts easily and will also pair well with the bacon, lettuce, and tomato. A nice, sharp cheddar is always a win but if you want to get fancy with a little brie or Gruyére, either would make a great accompaniment to a crisp helping of smoky bacon. 

Knowing that bacon grease is an excellent fat in which to fry your grilled cheese sandwich, it will be even more delicious when you add slices of thick-cut bacon to the filling so the smoky flavors are both inside and out. Try sundried tomatoes (which you can find on Amazon) for an extra rich flavor in your sandwich or any other standard slicing tomato. As for lettuce, you should consider cooking it to vary the texture of your sandwich. Otherwise, a few leaves of your favorite sturdy lettuce would be just fine. 

It's important to melt the cheese on your bread open-faced first before removing it from the pan and adding in the rest of your ingredients. Make sure the cheese is properly gooey so that everything sticks inside the bread nicely.