Brie Grilled Cheese Sandwich

My Brie Grilled Cheese Sandwich is the perfect blend of sweet and savory with fig jam and apple slices added to the mix.

Ingredient Substitutions

Thick-cut-bread: A nice sourdough bread or something from the bakery is a good choice. You can use thinner-cut pieces of bread but you might want to reduce the amount of Brie so that the sandwich isn’t too floppy. You can use flour tortillas instead of bread to make a Brie quesadilla, if desired.

Garlic and Herb Boursin: Any savory-flavored cream cheese will work instead. Try chive and onion or garlic and herb. If it’s a whipped cream cheese, you can use it straight from the fridge. Otherwise, let it soften at room temperature so that you can spread it easily onto the bread.

Fig Jam/Preserves: Truly any kind of jam will work here. As long as it’s sweet, it will be good. Also, jellied cranberry sauce works really well, as does pie filling of any kind, but my favorites are apple and cherry.

Brie: Instead of Brie cheese, Camembert works perfectly in this recipe. Other than that, you really can use any kind of cheese that will melt. I find that cheeses with a sharp flavor that go well with apple are the best. So Cheddar cheese would be my next choice after Brie and Camembert.

Granny Smith Apple: Make sure that you use an apple that is tart and not too sweet. If you only have sweet apples, then you can use them, but reduce the amount of fig preserves that you’re using, otherwise the sandwich can end up too sweet.  If you aren’t an apple fan, pear is another option.

Butter: A lot of people like using mayonnaise on the outside of their grilled cheese sandwich. If that is your preference, you can use that here. 

Alternatively, you can spray the outside of the sandwich with cooking spray (or with oil from a mister like this) or brush cooking oil onto the outside of the sandwich. You could also warm a teaspoon of cooking oil in the skillet and swirl it around before adding the sandwich. Then, before flipping the sandwich, move it over and add more oil to the skillet then flip the sandwich onto the oil.

What Is Boursin?

If you landed on this recipe, you’re probably already familiar with the main cheese in this sandwich, the Brie cheese. But what is this Boursin I’m talking about?

Boursin is a soft and creamy French cheese that’s available in a variety of flavors. The most popular one is the garlic and herb version I call for in the recipe. Boursin has a texture and flavor that is close to cream cheese which is why that is offered as a substitute. It can be a little crumbly directly out of the fridge, but if you let it soften a little on the counter it will spread nicely.

How To Get Perfectly Melted Cheese

The real trick when making grilled cheese sandwiches, as we’ve seen in other recipes like my Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich, is to not have the bread brown too much before the cheese melts. That can be especially difficult if using thick-sliced bread, as called for in this recipe, because the heat from the pan is further from the cheese.

How I’ve solved this problem here is to get the bread toasted first. Then lower the heat to low and flip it often. That way, the bread is for sure toasted, and the repeated flipping lets the heat get to the middle slowly but without burring the outside.

So, you’ll start the skillet on medium heat and add the sandwich. Once it’s toasted underneath, flip it and then reduce the heat to low. Once it’s golden brown underneath, keep the heat on low and flip the sandwich every minute or so until the cheese in the center is perfectly melty.