Cheese toasties make for a wonderfully satisfying lunch, and despite what the name might suggest, you don't actually need a toastie maker to enjoy one at home. From air frying to pan-frying, there are plenty of ways to rustle up these much-loved sandwiches in your own kitchen.
Although I do enjoy the occasional cheese toastie, it's something I rarely bother making at home — that is, until recently, when I set out to discover which method truly reigns supreme. Rather than alter the recipe each time, I kept things consistent with sourdough bread and sliced mozzarella and cheddar, which seemed the fairest approach for a proper taste test.
I put three methods to the test: the air fryer, the oven, and pan-frying.
Oven-baked cheese toastie
The first method I tried was the classic oven approach. I simply placed the cheese between the bread and baked it for 15-20 minutes, turning it over halfway through.
While it tasted just as delicious as any cheese toastie, it wasn't quite crispy enough for my liking, as you can likely see from the photo of the finished sandwich. Even after returning it to the oven for a further five minutes, it still fell short, and by that point, hunger got the better of me and I decided it was sufficiently toasted enough.
The advantage of this method, however, is that you can simply pop it in the oven and leave it to its own devices, only needing to check on it around the halfway mark, which takes no more than a minute. Overall, while it may not produce the finest cheese toastie imaginable, the oven method is remarkably straightforward, and the outcome is more than satisfactory.
Air-fried cheese toastie
Another approach that ought to be simple is the air fryer; however, one issue did arise — the air fryer proved too small to accommodate the entire sandwich in one go, meaning each half had to be cooked separately.
With a larger air fryer, this would undoubtedly have been a speedier option than the oven. As it stood, though, it ended up taking roughly the same amount of time, with each half requiring around eight minutes. Nevertheless, the result was somewhat superior to the oven method and noticeably crispier, even if only marginally so.
Pan-fried cheese toastie
This was without doubt the preferred method of the three, achieving precisely the right level of crispiness. The one improvement worth noting would be for the cheese to have melted a touch more, though this could well have been down to the quality of the cheese rather than the cooking method itself.
While undeniably delicious, this approach demands a little more attention and is not something you can leave unattended while getting on with other tasks. So, although not the method of choice on a busy weekday, when the weekend arrives and a cheese toastie craving strikes, it's certainly worth taking the time to make it this way again.
