My absolute favorite low-effort lunch: an air fryer-prepared grilled cheese sandwich.
The last few years have been brutal and chaotic, which means that some days I don’t have the motivation to feed myself properly. Often, that means grazing on various snacks in my kitchen, but when I’m feeling particularly glum, I turn to my absolute favorite no-effort lunch: a grilled cheese sandwich prepared in my air fryer.
The air fryer, which is essentially a mini convection oven, has been one of the most popular kitchen gadgets in the last decade, and for good reason: they’re ridiculously versatile, capable of heating up frozen food or leftovers as deftly as they are roasting vegetables, and work faster than traditional oven or stovetop preparation. As a result, they’re ideal for days when you’re too tired to think about all the things left on your to-do list, let alone dragging out a bunch of pots and pans to cook lunch.
To make a sandwich, smear two slices of bread with softened (or melted) butter — I keep a dish with a softened stick of butter on my counter at all times for situations like this — and sandwich a slice of cheese between the non-buttered sides. Place the sandwich in the air fryer for 5 minutes at 350°F, flipping once halfway through if desired. If you don’t flip your sandwich, the side that wasn’t kissed by the heating element won’t be as golden-brown, but it will still be perfectly crunchy and buttery.
Although making a grilled cheese sandwich in a skillet isn’t difficult, doing so in an air fryer is objectively easier on almost all levels. The procedure is similar, but making one in a pan necessitates standing over the stove to ensure that it doesn’t burn or cook unevenly. You’ll also need to wash a skillet and a spatula at the end, assuming you had both clean and ready to go to begin with. The air fryer eliminates the majority of the dishes required to make a grilled cheese sandwich, which is a great benefit for anyone who is feeling under the weather.
The texture of an air fryer grilled cheese sandwich is slightly different — the bread dries out slightly more than it does with the traditional skillet method — but it’s also a little crunchier, which pairs well with the melty richness of the cheese and butter. Tossing in a few slices of deli ham or a cooked piece of bacon is an excellent way to turn your simple sandwich into a lunch that’s actually pretty hearty if you need a little protein in your sandwich and can manage the extra effort. You can also zhuzh it up with different spreads (my favorites are Dijon mustard and Sriracha mayo), but none of that is required. An air is insufficient on its own.
And whether an air fryer grilled cheese is better than one prepared in a skillet is a moot point. This isn’t a meal for when you feel like making a really killer sandwich; it’s for when your options are making a grilled cheese at home, ordering the same terrible delivery pizza for the third time in a row, or eating nothing at all because you can’t summon the willpower to do much more than open the air fryer and butter up a few slices of bread. Perfection is frequently the enemy of the pretty damn good, and this is especially true when you’re feeling down.
