Grilled Cheese Burger

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What’s better than a grilled cheese? A grilled cheese stuffed with a delicious burger patty, red onions, and chipotle mayo – a grilled cheese burger.

A grilled cheese burger on a plate.

If you’ve never had a patty melt before, it’s basically a grilled cheese burger. And what’s not to love about a grilled cheese with a burger inside? Extra cheese, crispy, buttery bread, and a juicy burger. Plus any toppings you want (our favorites are a spicy chipotle aioli and some sliced red onion). We love making this simple grilled cheese burger at home for an easy restaurant style, date night in. 

What This Recipe Entails

  • Ready in: 20 minutes
  • Serves: 2 people
  • Great for: 
  • Flavor profile: Savory, super cheesy burger, with all the crispyness and butteryness of a grilled cheese, with a little kick of chipotle mayo. 
  • Why we love it: We love grilled cheeses and we love cheeseburgers. So we really love combining them into a super comforting, decadent dinner.

Note: This recipe works great as a base for whatever creation you can come up with. Don’t let our choices of ingredients keep you from making your personal best grilled cheese burger!

Ingredients

  • Burger patties – Store-bought or homemade, either works. However, for best results we always make them homemade because you’ll need to shape the patties to fit the grilled cheese either way. And doing that from scratch is easier than re-shapping a store-bought patty. 
  • Grilled cheese – We prefer sourdough for the bread and cheddar cheese for the best creaminess and flavor. However, make the grilled cheese with whatever type of bread and cheese you enjoy most. If you have any questions about grilled cheeses, check out our post on making a great grilled cheese
  • Toppings – Thinly sliced red onion and a drizzle of homemade chipotle mayo are our go to patty melt toppings. But get creative here and make your own flavor combination! Other sauces and classic burger toppings work super well too.
A grilled cheese burger with red onion and chipotle mayo.

How To Make A Grilled Cheese Burger

  1. Hand shape the patties – For a grilled cheese burger to work, the burger patty has to fit well on the grilled cheese. This means hand shaping the patties to fit the bread. It won’t be prefect, but getting a rectangular (or at least oval) patty will make this recipe turn out better.
  2. Make a grilled cheese – Simple as that.
  3. Grill the burgers – Cook the burgers to your desired doneness. A meat thermometer is your friend for getting the perfect cook every time.
  4. Combine and top! – Open up your grilled cheese, add your burger, and top as desired. 
  5. Serve – Serve hot with a side of french fries and a cold beer.

Serving Suggestions

What you serve with your burger is almost as important as the burger itself! Here are some of our favorite ways to turn this recipe into a delicious comforting dinner:

  • A burger deserves a beer – Grab a cold beer to go with your patty melt. We like to pair this burger with a light and refreshing beer like a German hefeweizen.
  • Make a side – Go with a classic like fries or onion rings. Or change it up with something a little more fun. We love making these burgers for a Sunday football dinner, so we often pair them with creamy buffalo chicken dip or other game day appetizers.
  • Get creative – A burger on a grilled cheese is just the start. Play around with adding your favorite condiments and burger toppings to this recipe. Instead of red onion and chipotle mayo, how about some caramelized onions or hot honey? The sky’s the limit.

Give our grilled cheese burger a try when you’re feeling like a greasy, gooey, cheesy, comforting dinner. And let us know what you think of it in the comments below!

Cheers!

A grilled cheese patty melt burger.

Expert Tips

  • Customize it! – Just like any burger, add on your favorite toppings, change out the cheese, and tune this recipe to your tastes! We like the creaminess of cheddar cheese, a little spice from chipotle mayo, and the brightness of the red onion, but there’s so many great ways to enjoy this burger.
  • Hand-shaped patties – Since we want to fit the burger to our sandwich bread, a circular patty doesn’t work very well. We always make out burger patties from scratch, and it makes this recipe so much better because we can shape the patty to fit our bread. That way you get burger in every bite. 
  • Cut it in half – Just like a grilled cheese, we recommend cutting this patty melt in half to help make it more manageable to eat! And we believe diagonally is the way to go.
  • Making the perfect grilled cheese – The trick to making a perfectly gooey grilled cheese is to cook it slowly over medium-low heat, so the cheese has time to melt before the bread gets too crispy. Patience is key!

Love this recipe? You may also enjoy these comforting dinner recipes:


We hope you enjoy this recipe! When you try it out, please leave a review and a star rating in the comments below. Happy cooking! – Nicole and Alex

A grilled cheese burger on a plate.

Grilled Cheese Burger

Nicole & Alex Langdon
What's better than a grilled cheese? A grilled cheese stuffed with a delicious burger patty, red onions, and chipotle mayo – a grilled cheese burger.
5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Course Dinner, Lunch, Main Course
Cuisine American
Servings 2 burgers
Calories 870 kcal

Ingredients
 
 

  • 2 Burger patties Shapped to fit the bread
  • 4 slices sourdough bread
  • 4 teaspoons butter
  • 6 slices cheddar cheese
  • Red onion thinly sliced
  • Chipotle mayo for drizzling

Instructions
 

How To Assemble The Grilled Cheese Patty Melt

  • Prepare the burger patties. Hand-shape each patty to roughly the size of your sourdough bread slices, and flatten slightly.
  • Make the grilled cheese sandwiches as normal. Butter the outside of each slice of bread, put cheese in between, and cook on the stove over low to medium low until it's toasty and melty.
  • While the grilled cheese sandwiches are cooking, grill the burger patties until desired doneness.
  • Transfer grilled cheese sandwiches to plates. Carefully open each grilled cheese and transfer cooked burger patties into the sandwiches. Top with sliced red onions and a drizzle of chipotle mayo, then close the grilled cheeses.
  • Serve immediately with your favorite side, a cold beer, and enjoy!
One last step:Please consider leaving a review to let us know how it was!

Notes

Classic Burger Patties: This is our original burger recipe if you want to make the patties from scratch (we highly recommend you do, since you’ll want to hand-shape the patties to fit the sourdough bread).
Chipotle mayo: We used Sir Kensington’s chipotle mayo – it’s our favorite store-bought since it has so much flavor! Alternatively, we like to make our own chipotle mayo at home, and it tastes great on this patty melt too. Try our chipotle mayo recipe here if you’re interested!
Preparing the grilled cheese sandwiches: The trick to making a perfectly gooey grilled cheese is to cook it slowly over medium-low heat, so the cheese has time to melt before the bread gets too crispy. Patience is key!
Assembling the patty melt: When opening up the grilled cheese sandwiches, pull back each slice of bread super slowly. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to accidentally tear the bread.

Nutrition

Serving: 1patty meltCalories: 870kcalCarbohydrates: 69gProtein: 42gFat: 47gSaturated Fat: 23gPolyunsaturated Fat: 3gMonounsaturated Fat: 14gTrans Fat: 0.3gCholesterol: 133mgSodium: 1281mgPotassium: 507mgFiber: 3gSugar: 7gVitamin A: 764IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 439mgIron: 7mg
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If you have any questions regarding the information presented in this post, please refer to our Nutrition Disclaimer here.

5 from 1 vote (1 rating without comment)

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