The Cheesy Bread Bowl Trick to Take Your Soups to a New Level

A bowl of hot soup. A gooey grilled cheese. When it comes to this classic comfort food combo, the only thing better than eating them together is fusing them into one decadent dish. Oh yes, it’s possible. Rather than dipping your sandwich in your soup, you can try sipping it from a bowl of wonderfully cheesy bread. While it’s true that even a basic bread bowl can elevate any dining experience, layering your bread with cheese before pouring soup on top is guaranteed to take your edible vessel to a whole new level.

The best part? You can apply this genius tip to almost any of your favorite soup and cheese pairings. Remember, a thicker soup is essential if you want to avoid a soggy bowl of bread, although you certainly shouldn’t run out of options. If you like a rich French onion soup, for example, you can top your bread with creamy Gruyere. Craving a hearty roasted tomato soup? Balance its tang with mild, melty yellow American cheese. And if a good old-fashioned broccoli and cheddar soup is on the menu, enhance its flavors by piling your bread bowl with a second helping of cheddar.

Now that you have some tempting combinations in mind, the next step is to nail the construction. Luckily, a grilled cheese bread bowl isn’t as difficult to construct as it seems. And, in fact, there are several ways to do this.

Read more: 20 Popular Canned Soups, Ranked From Worst to Best

How to Build a Sturdy Grilled Cheese Bread Bowl

The first approach you can take is to prepare your bread as you would cheese pull apart bread. You can start by cutting out this circular “bowl” in the center, which will hold your soup. Next, cut the surrounding area of ​​the bread crosswise, as recipe creator Miriam Hahn demonstrates in Tasting Table’s French Onion Bread recipe, and either leave the slices straight or twist and cut again to create cube or diamond shapes. However, do not cut the bread completely, as you want to preserve the integrity of the bread.

Then simply fill all the crevices with your cheese of choice and bake it in the oven until nice and melty. Once the cheese is softened, you can pour your soup into it and separate your slices of “grilled cheese” as you go. However, you can also go the cheese volcano route, which is the preferred method of culinary creators like Perry Santanachote and TikTok user @spilling_the_sweet_tea, whose version is pictured above.

In this case, you’ll slice a loaf of boule horizontally to get a few thick, flat rounds of bread. Brush each piece with butter, give them a golden brown, then add your cheese while they’re on the griddle. When it starts to melt, stack each slice on top of each other to rebuild your bowl, hollow out the center, and voilà: you have a bowl of stacked grilled cheese ready to soak up all the flavors of your soup.

Read the original article on the tasting table