Blackberry Grilled Cheese

As a kid and even into adulthood, I remember thinking that a grilled cheese couldn’t be a healthy or nutritious choice. And that can be true depending on the quality of the ingredients. The quality of the ingredients really, really matters. I talked about this more in my homemade vanilla ice cream recipe. Most things that aren’t healthy (ie. lacking any real nutrients) can be made healthy with the right products.

So how did I make this blackberry grilled cheese healthy? I used quality cheese, quality bread and quality butter (and of course, fresh blackberries).

• For cheese I used fontina because it gives that melty, creamy texture that we all love. If you can find a raw fontina (I got mine at Whole Foods), then that’s your best choice. Raw milk cheese will retain it’s natural flavors the best, as well as providing you with more bioavailable nutrients and probiotics. This is what our great grandparents used to eat, before cheese making became industrialized. If you can’t find raw fontina, opt for a fontina made with grass-fed milk.
• For bread, I always use sourdough. Sourdough has added benefits that other breads don’t have: decreased antinutrients, lower glycemic load, and less gluten.
• Use a grass-finished butter, or even better, raw butter.

Most sourdough on the store shelves aren’t actually sourdough. How they can get away with this, I don’t know. If your sourdough says something like yeast or lactic, citric, ascorbic or acetic acid, it’s most likely not real sourdough. The ingredients of real sourdough will be flour, salt, water and possibly culture/starter (referring to the natural fermentation process that makes sourdough, sourdough).

I also recommend choosing a sourdough that is made with unbleached and unbromated flour. Bromate is a possible carcinogen that is added to many flours and is banned in other countries. I recommend King Arthur Flour, which is always unbromated.

My favorite store-bought bread is Iggy’s and I get it from Whole Foods.

• A cutting board and a knife
• A fry pan, griddle or panini pan

• Fontina cheese: if you don’t have fontina, here are some other creamy, melty cheese options: gouda, mozzarella, provolone and gruyere.
• Blackberries: use any berry of your choosing. I think blueberries would work great, too.
• Sourdough: of course you can use any bread of your choosing, but I choose sourdough for the benefits listed above.
• Butter: can be substituted with mayo.
• Raw honey: can be substituted with pure maple syrup.

• Jerk chicken tacos with peach salsa
• Potato salad with bacon
• Pickled onion and cucumber salad
• Roasted peach lemonade