Charlie at Back to the Fridge brought back some great memories from high school for me when he showed us how he makes Grilled PB&J sandwiches. My favorite part is the buttery grilled bread. Yum-ee! I used to eat those puppies all the time back in the day when I played on the school tennis team and had a metabolism like a furnace.
On occasion, I still enjoy the grilled PB&Js but I make a much healthier version today because the ones I ate back then had Wonder Bread, PB&J with high fructose corn syrup, and margarine. So nowadays, here's how I make a health-upped Grilled PB&J.
Ingredients
- Food For Life Ezekiel bread. The Ezekiel breads contain both soluble and insoluble fiber, and are made of organic sprouted grains, wheat, soybeans, lentils, and seeds which provides the fiber. See, now you can impress people and say you know how to get fiber with a PB&J.
- Crunchy Whole Foods 365 brand Peanut Butter. I like crunchy PB because I feel like I'm actually eating a food instead of feeling like I'm eating a candy like caramel. The ideal is to use organic fresh ground peanut butter that is nothing but peanuts and maybe salt. Basically anything without added sugars, and artificial ingredients or preservatives is better. It doesn't have to be organic. Nice alternatives to the PB are almond and cashew butter.
- Fruit spread or if you feel like making a holiday like version use Pumpkin Butter. Now I like the fruit spread over jelly or jam because the spreads are pretty much just ground up fruit. Jellies and Jams can have lots of additives, extra sugars, and preservatives added into them. I like the Whole Foods 365 fruit spreads because they just use fruit and some grape juice for a sweetening boost plus it's really cheap.Check your local store.
- When it comes to butter, I admittedly have a bit of a snobbery. If I'm gonna eat fat, then I'm going to eat some good high quality stuff. I have the Type II cow milk allergy but I find that if I eat organic or high quality butters in small amounts, then I'm okay. My favorite butter is this Plugra European Style Salted Butter. I love it because it's creamy with this amazing flavor, and you really don't need to use much. The creamy is due to some extra butter fat, but I don't care, this stuff is awesome!
Let's start cookin'
- Heat up a pan to medium high
- While you're waiting for the pan to heat up, slather butter on one side of each piece of Ezekiel bread for your sandwich.
- Grill the buttered side first until it's a nice golden crispy brown
- When the buttered side is done, flip bread over and toast up the dry side a little bit.
- Spread PB on one piece, and the fruit spread on the other slice, and slap together. Sometimes, if I don't want a whole sandwich, I'll just grill up one piece of bread and put the PB & fruit spread on top and eat like regular toast.
Doesn't that look divine? Well get noshing!
