Copycat Starbucks Grilled Cheese Recipe

The sandwiches on the Starbucks lunch menu include a crispy grilled cheese on sourdough, a popular choice for a quick lunch out. This sandwich takes grilled cheese to a new level by using more flavorful and substantial sourdough bread, three different cheeses, and flavored compound butter. Sure, it's convenient to dash into one of Starbucks' numerous locations for a meal, but with the right ingredients and minimal effort, you can have the same crispy, melty, and rich sandwich ready to enjoy at home in minutes.

Recipe developer Michelle Bottalico has created a recipe for a copycat Starbucks' grilled cheese sandwich you can make for a fraction of the cost of the store-bought version. Your kitchen will smell wonderful while you cook this buttery, fragrant, and cheesy treat, and you can't beat the freshness and crispiness of a sandwich you move directly from skillet to plate.

Just like the original, this version uses sourdough bread, mozzarella, white cheddar cheese, and garlic Parmesan compound butter, which calls for garlic powder and grated Parmesan to be mixed into softened butter for an even richer spread. The flavored butter allows the bread to toast in the pan to extra crispy perfection, and the mix of garlic and different kinds of cheeses provides a complex flavor that plain grilled cheese just doesn't reach. 

For this recipe, you'll first need softened butter, garlic powder, and grated Parmesan cheese. One of the easiest ways to soften butter is to simply let it sit out on the counter for 30-60 minutes. Don't skip this step, or it won't be soft enough to mix with the garlic and Parmesan. You'll also need sourdough bread slices, mozzarella cheese slices, and white cheddar cheese slices.

Place the softened butter, garlic, and Parmesan in a small bowl and mix well with a fork until evenly combined.

Spread the garlic butter on one side of each slice of bread.

Heat a skillet on medium low.

Place one slice of bread buttered-side-down in the skillet.

Arrange 2 slices each of mozzarella and cheddar on the slice of bread.

Top with another slice of bread, buttered side up.

Cook for 3-4 minutes per side, pressing the sandwich gently with a spatula to help the cheese adhere, until the cheese is completely melted and the bread is crispy and browned. Repeat steps 4-7 to make the second sandwich.

Slice in half and serve immediately.

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Ideally, grilled cheese will have a crispy, browned exterior with hot, perfectly melted cheese inside. It can be all too easy to burn the bread or fail to melt the cheese completely (or both!), but we have some tips to keep in mind to create an irresistible grilled cheese sandwich. One of the most important things you can do is to cover the pan with a lid while cooking the sandwich. This ensures that the bread touching the pan's surface doesn't cook faster than the interior of the sandwich, which would leave you with burnt bread or unmelted cheese.

Even if you're hungry and too impatient to wait for a sandwich to cook, don't be tempted to crank up the heat to cook your sandwich faster, which will also lead to the undesired scenario described above. We recommend cooking it on medium-low to give the cheese time to melt before the bread burns. If you feel like the inside and outside aren't cooking at an even rate, adjust the temperature to compensate, flip the sandwich more often, and keep a close eye on it until it's back on track and ready to enjoy.

We love using the air fryer to make toast, so it's not such a leap to use it to make grilled cheese. The biggest difference when making it in an air fryer rather than a skillet is that you'll need to cook the sandwich open-faced in the air fryer. First, preheat the air fryer to 375 or 400 F. Then, lay both slices of bread butter-side-down on the air fryer rack or in the basket. Divide the cheese into two parts and arrange half of the cheese on each piece of bread. Now, air fry for about 3 minutes or until the cheese looks melted. This gives the cheese a head start so the inside can catch up with the outside. The whole sandwich will be more evenly cooked in the air fryer this way. After that, carefully close the sandwich and cook it for 3-4 more minutes per side until the outside is as browned and crispy as you like it.

If you don't have an air fryer, you can also make grilled cheese in a sandwich press, like the kind used to make panini. The pressure of the closed press mimics the weight of a spatula pressed down on the sandwich when making it in a skillet. You won't have to flip the sandwich since both the upper and lower plates heat up.

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