Kimchi Grilled Cheese with Smoked Salmon
Stop what you’re doing and make this. ASAP. Kimchi grilled cheese is already a masterpiece, but we upgraded it with some smoked salmon! The salty smoked salmon works well with the sour and spicy kimchi. We love using older, well-fermented kimchi (mukeunji (묵은지)) because it has a deeper and more assertive acidity that is perfect for this sandwich. Make sure to use sturdy slices of bread built to handle all the toppings! Also, always toast both sides of the bread to ensure maximum crunch and slow down any potential sogginess that could occur if you don’t squeeze your kimchi dry. Use whatever cheese you want, but we recommend some mixture of real cheese (we used cheddar) and processed cheese product because it’s not a grilled cheese without it. This sandwich has crunch, acidity, probiotics, spice, salt, and gooey cheese. What else could you want? Another one.
Technique
Preheat your pan. Slather one side of each piece of bread with mayo and fry it off until you reach the level of browning you want. We prefer it underburnt for max crunch. Set those aside.
Take one piece of bread, apply mayo to the unfried side, and place that side down in the pan. Top with cheese or processed cheese product, kimchi, Smoked Salmon (any of our varieties work great), and the other piece of cheese. Next, slather mayo on the other piece of bread, apply that fried side down/mayo side up. Once the bottom slice meets your preferred level of caramelization, give it a flip, and fry off the other side.
Cut and devour. Make another one.
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