Good Eats: Classic Patty Melts on Rye

Last year, I purchased Weber's Way to Grill: The Step-By-Step Guide to Expert Grilling. While we admired the pictures of the food in the book, we did not make a single recipe in the cookbook before putting it on a shelf and forgetting about it for the rest of the grilling season. It was a few weeks ago when I unearthed the cookbook from the mound of cookbooks and magazines that it was buried under and began paging through it once again. Upon showing the book to Jim, he suggested that we spend the spring and summer months grilling our way through the cookbook - sort of like Julie and Julia, minus Amy Adams, Meryl Streep, and the beef bourguignon.

Now, we're attempting to try as many of the 160 recipes from the book as we can. We're not promising to cook all of the meals, however. There's just some meals that we just have no interest in making or eating - take Thai Squid, for example. There are many others, though, that we can't wait to test. We also do not plan to follow any particular order in the book. We'll just make the recipes as we choose them.

Tonight, we tried our second recipe from the cookbook. These patty melts tasted as though they had come from a restaurant. They were a bit messy to make, but worth the trouble in the end. Next time, we'll want to use thicker slices of rye bread, as the bread did not hold up as well as we would have liked it to.

For those of you interested in following our journey through Weber's Way to Grill, I have added a list of those recipes that we have tested to the left.

Recipe for: Classic Patty Melts on Rye
From: Weber's Way to Grill: The Step-By-Step Guide to Expert Grilling

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
Kosher salt
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
12 slices crusty rye bread, each about 1/3 inch thick
2 lbs. ground chuck (80% lean)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups (about 4 ounces) grated Havarti or Swiss cheese
Dijon or spicy brown mustard, optional

Directions:
1. In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the oil. Add the onions, sprinkle with sugar, cover, and cook until the onions are tender and golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with salt. Remove from the heat.
2. Butter the bread on each side and set aside.
3. Prepare the grill for direct cooking over high heat. In a large bowl gently mix the ground chuck with the Worcestershire sauce, 1 teaspoon of salt, and the pepper, incorporating the spices evenly. Gently shape into 6 patties of equal size and thickness, about 3/4 inch thick. With your thumb or the back of a spoon, make a shallow indentation about 1 inch wide in the center of each patty.
4. Brush the cooking grates clean. Grill the patties over direct high heat, with the lid closed as much as possible, until cooked to medium, 8 to 10 minutes, turning once. Transfer the patties to a work surface.
5. Lower the temperature of the grill to medium heat. Grill the bread slices over direct medium heat until toasted on one side only, about 1 minute. Transfer the bread, toasted sides up, to a work surface.
6. Evenly divide the caramelized onions on 6 of the toasted bread slices and top each with a patty. Scatter the cheese over the patties. Place the remaining bread slices, toasted sides down, on top of the patties. Using a wide spatula, carefully place the patty melts back on the cooking grate and grill over direct medium heat until the bread on the bottom is toasted, about 1 minute, and then carefully turn the sandwiches and toast the other side. Serve the patty melts warm with mustard, if desired.