Your traditional grilled cheese is composed of American cheese sandwiched between two pieces of toasted buttered bread. The beautiful thing with a classic such as grilled cheese is you can make it your own. You’ll see many creative variations of grilled cheese this weekend, including my gluten free kale grilled cheese.

A few weeks ago I was inspired by bold green kale I found while in the grocery store. It’s safe to say that I may be on a bit of culinary kale marathon, and I wanted to come up with a way to incorporate it into a grilled cheese sandwich. Garlic is a great compliment to kale, cheese, and bread, so I came up with a recipe that joins the three together.

I have a few tips to make a great grilled cheese. Whenever placing greens in a grilled sandwich, I like to precook the greens with some olive oil to wilt them and make them easier to handle. Another big decision point is whether to use sliced or grated cheese. I lean towards using grated cheese because it’s easier to melt than a large slice of cheese, and I also love the little browned pieces of cheese that fall out while cooking. One other grilled cheese tip is to loosely cover the sandwich with aluminum foil while it is cooking. This helps the cheese melt faster without burning the bread.

Ingredients

1 lb kale
1 tbsp olive oil
¼ tsp pepper
3 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
½ tsp garlic powder
8 slices of gluten free bread
8 oz grated smoked Cheddar cheese

Instructions

1.Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat.
2.Add the kale, salt, and pepper. Toss in the oil and cook for 5 minutes.
3.Remove the kale from the heat and set aside.
4.Using a fork, blend the butter and garlic powder together.
5.Spread one side of each bread slice with the garlic butter.
6.Put the sandwiches together by topping one bread slice, buttered side down, with cheese and kale (make sure the cheese and kale is evenly distributed between the 4 sandwiches). Place once 7.buttered-side up bread slice over the cheese to make 4 sandwiches.
8.Heat a griddle over medium heat.
9.Place the sandwiches on the griddle and loosely cover with aluminum foil. Cook for 3 minutes.
10.Remove the foil and flip the sandwiches. Cook for another 3 minutes or until the sandwiches are golden brown.
11.Remove the sandwiches from the pan, slice and serve.