Oct 08, 2026

The ultimate cheese toastie

On the side of your favourite soup, for a speedy working-from-home lunch or as the ultimate hangover cure, it’s hard to beat a cheese toastie (grilled cheese sandwich) at this time of year.

Golden, crisp-edged toast. Plenty of butter or mayonnaise if that’s your thing and almost-scolding molten cheese with a shattering crunch, hot from the frying pan.

Simple and comforting food, made truly excellent with good quality ingredients and the perfect condiment.

This is the Halen Môn guide to the ultimate (Welsh) cheese toastie.

Good bread

A sourdough is our favourite. Something crusty and chewy that can stand up to a serious amount of melted cheese. A good farmhouse loaf will do very nicely too.

Make sure to slice it generously, doorstep style. A toastie should have a beautiful crunchy first bite whilst holding onto a little bit of the breads chewy texture too.

Butter or mayonnaise?

Then butter the outside. When we say butter, we mean butter, this is no time for a polite scraping. We love Castle Dairies butter, with Halen Mon, of course.

There are those who use mayonnaise here, the idea being that it doesn’t burn too quickly, adds crispiness and helps avoid sticking to the pan.

Make it Welsh

Wales has some of the very best, in our unbiased opinion, cheeses for a toastie. Choose one of the below or, even better, a mix of one or two of them together. Slice your cheese thickly again or grate your cheeses together before squashing between your sliced bread.

Caerphilly - the classic. Made for cheese toasties, melts perfectly.

Y Fenni - made with wholegrain mustard and ale. Almost a cheat’s Welsh rarebit.

Hafod - a Welsh take on cheddar. Sharpy, punchy and savoury.

Perl Wen - a Welsh soft cheese, gooey almost Brie-like.

Grilled or fried?

No toastie makers here please. Get a nice heavy frying pan on a medium-low heat. Put the cheese on one of the slices of bread and top with the other. When your pan is hot, add it and weigh it down with something heavy, a small plate or press it down with a spatula.

Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side until crisp and golden.

Serve immediately, or put in the oven while you repeat. Eat as soon as is comfortably possible.