Familiar names are: toastie (UK), grilled cheese sandwich (US), jaffle (Australia), panini (Italy), and croque monsieur (France). The toasted sandwich is not limited to these countries, however. You will find this popular snack, lunch, or dinner in every corner of our planet.
Australians have been eating jaffles for decades. In fact – so have the Brits, we just called them. toasted sandwiches! As soon as we heard the word jaffle, we were hooked. It sums up that retro, melted, toasty.
This is maybe under the influence of Aussie expat visitors and short-term immigrants, because "toastie" is a common slang term in Melbourne, Australia, for a toasted - unsealed - sandwich' made under a grill or sandwich press.
Fancy a panini, Reuben sandwich, quesadilla, croque monsieur or Welsh Rarebit? The grilled cheese sandwich or toastie has many names and comes in many forms around the globe.
Toasties, or toasted sandwiches, are merely an extension of that love, and they are big in the U.K.—particularly when filled with cheese, making it a cheese toastie and quite the same as what many of us would call “grilled cheese”: a hot, gooey cheese sandwich.
Toasties are made by sandwiching the cheese between two slices of bread and then toasting the sandwich in a toaster oven or on a griddle. This creates a crispy, golden brown exterior. Grilled cheese sandwiches are made by buttering the outside of the bread and then grilling the sandwich on a griddle or in a frying pan.
A grilled cheese (sometimes known as a toasted sandwich or cheese toastie) is a hot sandwich typically prepared by heating one or more slices of cheese between slices of bread, with a cooking fat such as butter or mayonnaise on a frying pan, griddle, or sandwich toaster, until the bread browns and the cheese melts.
Many Halloumi-style cheeses are prepared by dairy and goat farmers in Canada and the United States. For legal proprietary reasons, these cheeses are usually called Halloumi-style or grillable cheeses. Sometimes they are called grilling cheese or frying cheese, or queso de freír in Spanish.
In America they call a Toastie a grilled cheese and it is made by frying the sandwich in butter in a frying pan. The default recipe is also made with American cheese between two slices of bread and nothing else. Check out my grilled cheese recipe.
Although the idea of putting bread and cheese together has been around since ancient times, the grilled cheese we know and love was thought to have originated in the United States during the 1920's.
Fritz and sauce is a classic Australian sandwich that's especially beloved by children. It consists of two slices of bread, a bit of tomato sauce, and fritz. Fritz is a type of sausage made of beef, lamb, and pork trimmings, starch, flour, and seasonings.
Most commonly, the main sale item at a sausage sizzle is a pork or beef sausage (often colloquially referred to as a "snag"), cooked on a grill or barbecue and served on a single slice of white sandwich bread, or a hot dog roll in Western Australia.
The name came from its creator Dr Ernest Smithers, from Bondi in NSW, who created and patented the Jaffle Iron in Australia back in the 1950's. He named the device and possibly with a view to it being similar sounding to the Waffle iron as the design between the two devices isn't that different.
Chook comes from British dialect chuck(y) 'a chicken; a fowl' which is a variant of chick. Chook is the common term for the live bird, although chook raffles, held in Australian clubs and pubs, have ready-to-cook chooks as prizes.
Each toastie must be sandwiched between two slices of bread and able to be eaten by hand. The toasted sandwich must also contain cheese (or an acceptable vegan substitute) and pickles from McClure's Pickles range. Everything else is up to the toastie maker's imagination.
The OQLF would rather they call that gooey goodness melted between two slices of bread a “sandwich de fromage fondu,” which roughly translates to “melted cheese sandwich.” While 95% of Quebec City is fluent in French, they find that sandwich de fromage fondu doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Jaffle makers have special grooves to create a pattern on the bread and a clamp that seals the edges and cuts the sandwich down the middle, creating two perfectly sealed and toasted sandwich halves. A toastie however, is a flat toasted sandwich that has open edges and a melted filling in the middle.
Halloumi or haloumi is a cheese made from a mixture of goat's and sheep's milk, and sometimes also cow's milk. Its texture is described as squeaky. It has a high melting point and so can easily be fried or grilled, a property that makes it a popular meat substitute.
You can definitely eat halloumi raw. However, you don't often see uncooked halloumi served in a meal. It's definitely tastier when it's been cooked, as it's just irresistible when it's warm and squidgy - not to mention, you get those lovely crispy bits around the edges.
Halloumi cheese and grilling cheeses are similar in style, but because of legal proprietary reasons, grilling cheeses made in the U.S. or Canada cannot be called halloumi.
An English toasty is a toasted sandwich that is made with bread and cheese. The bread is usually toasted in a toaster or oven, and the cheese is melted on top of the bread. Toastie is made by pressing a toastie. Toasties are made up of plural forms.
A panini is a sandwich made from bread that is not sliced bread and grilled on both sides, usually using some kind of press. This is why a grilled cheese sandwich is not a panini.
Cheese on toast is made by placing sliced or grated cheese on toasted bread and melting it under a grill. It is popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, and in African countries. It is also known as roasted cheese in the West of Scotland.