Make a juicy patty melt every time when you follow these 7 tips

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Before we get started diving into tips on how to make the perfect patty melt, we need to get one thing straight. Patty melts are not burgers, they're sandwiches. Yes there's a beef patty sandwiched in between two pieces of bread, but it's bread, not a bun. Patty melts are also much simpler than burgers that stand tall with all their toppings. For this dish, all you need are some quality beef patties, good cheese, onions, and slices of bread.
It's that simplicity that makes patty melts so delicious. It's also the fact that you don't need to unhinge your jaw to eat them, as you do some burgers. Instead, you should be able to pick it up, perhaps even with just one hand, and let that grease slide as far down your arm as you're comfortable with. After all, this isn't a gourmet dish from France. It's food straight from the diner, and that's some of the best food of all. And with the tips below, you don't even have to visit a diner to get one.
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1. Use rye bread
Remember, patty melts ditch the bun and use bread instead. But not just any bread; while patty melts are simple, that bread still needs to be sturdy enough to stand up to a beef patty, cheese, and caramelized onions. That's too much for your average slice of white. Start with a sturdy rye, and your patty melt will be off to a good start.
2. Use mayonnaise
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Whether it's a plain old grilled cheese sandwich or a tuna melt, when making a cheesy sandwich in a frying pan, you may be tempted to spread butter generously on that bread. It's what most of us have been told to do all our lives, after all. But when you want to up the tasty factor in your patty melt, use mayonnaise. Not only will it impart a delicious flavor that's surprisingly unlike mayonnaise, it will also help brown the bread better than butter. That's right, I said better than butter.
3. Use thin patties
Again, this is a patty melt, not a burger, and there are a lot of stars in this show. If you make your beef patty too large, it will overwhelm the dish as a whole and you will, in fact, feel like you're eating a burger. Not a terrible thing, but not a patty melt either. And don't go too crazy with seasonings and other ingredients for those patties. It's all about simplicity!
To make the patties, combine one pound of ground chuck with a little bit of salt and pepper and some Worcestershire sauce. That's all you need! Shape or press them into 1/4" patties and then let them rest in the fridge for 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes to help them keep their shape.
4. Caramelize those onions!
Caramelized onions can take a long time to cook — up to an hour depending on how many you're using. But it's worth it. And crispy sautéed onions do not make a patty melt. They must be caramelized, and it will be well worth your time to make them.
To caramelize onions, slice up as many onions as you'd like to use, and place them over low heat in a frying pan with some butter and oil. Keep that heat at medium-low and continue to cook, stirring regularly, until the natural sugars are coaxed out and they begin to develop a deep brown color. Then remove the onions from the heat, and get ready to pile a ton of deliciousness onto your patty melt.
5. Choose your cheese
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Most patty melts you get in a diner will be served with Swiss cheese melted all over that patty. And it's true that Swiss cheese is the very best kind you could use. But also don't limit yourself. You should use at least two slices of cheese so everything gets a little bit of melt on them, and varying those slices will make for a much more interesting sandwich.
6. Layer it right
There are few basic components of a patty melt, but if they're not layered just right, you're not going to get the result you were looking for.
To properly layer a patty melt, do so in this order: one slice of bread, one slice of cheese, the hamburger patty, some onions, another slice of cheese, and top it with the other slice of bread. Remember, when layering your bread, you want the side slathered with mayonnaise to be facing out so it can get crispy and yummy when placed in direct contact with the grill or pan.
7. Weight it
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If you leave all that goodness to grill as it is, you're going to get a very large sandwich that is more like a burger. And we don't need to get into that again, do we? To help shape it into sandwich form, use a weight that will compress the sandwich together and make it very easy to hold and recognize! Restaurants and diners have grill weights, but if you don't have a restaurant supply store near you, you can use a cast iron skillet or another heavy pan. I even keep a brick in my cupboard that I can wrap in aluminum foil for jobs just like this.
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