National Grilled Cheese Day is an unofficial holiday which celebrates one of the most popular comfort foods on the planet: the grilled cheese. On this holiday, which just so happens to fall on April 12th, people all over the U.S and the world make themselves their favorite version of a grilled cheese sandwich.6 Fun Facts about Grilled Cheese
Grilled Cheese did not start out a sandwich. …
LA once had a Grilled Cheese Invitational. …
Mayo is the Secret Sauce. …
One sandwich has about 300 calories. …
It was originally a called a Cheese Dream. …
A grilled cheese once sold for $28,000. The French have been making their famous croque monsieurs since the early 1900s — today’s notion of the grilled cheese is commonly traced back to the 1920s, when Otto Frederick Rohwedder, considered “the father of sliced bread,” invented a bread slicer that made distributing white bread easy and affordable.processed cheese had been patented by James L. Kraft, an entrepreneur whose revolutionary pasteurizing process ensured that cheese wouldn’t spoil, even when transported long distances. By 1914, J.L. Kraft & Bros. Company (the precursor to Kraft Foods) opened its first plant in Illinois. Five years later, the company had already expanded into Canada. Of course, this “factory cheese” — disparagingly termed “rattrap cheese” or “rat cheese” by the English who were fiercely proud of their cheddars — was not considered a delicacy. Both sliced bread and processed cheese went full steam ahead. During World War II, Navy cooks prepared countless “American cheese filling sandwiches” — as instructed by government-issued cookbooks — in ships’ kitchens.Supermarkets began stocking “Kraft Singles” in 1965. Also around that time, the second, perhaps most important, piece of bread was added on top, likely as a way to make the sandwich more filling, and the modern notion of a grilled cheese sandwiches was born.Melted Cheese and Toasted Sandwiches , Waffle iron heating were some of the ideas people introduced in its preparations.In 2004, the online casino GoldenPalace.com paid $28,000 for a half-eaten grilled cheese with the likeness of the Virgin Mary depicted in the “burn” pattern. The sandwich had been sold to the casino by a Florida woman who had kept the sandwich intact for a decade — no joke.Joey Chestnut won the World Green Chile Grilled Cheese Eating Champion by devouring a whopping 34.5 grilled cheeses in one sitting.Now That’s Cheesy
From 1993 to 2014, the the National Grilled Cheese Invitational was held in Los Angeles, California. Self-proclaimed grilled cheese experts gathered to compete, with the judges ultimately crowning one of the makers “Grilled Cheese Champion.” Nowadays you can head to the Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Championship on April 23, 2022, for some friendly competition, or to the Atlanta Grilled Cheese Festival on April 30, 2022, for some deliciously cheesy tasting. Yum!