Patty Melts

November 12, 2023

Thin cooked ground beef between two layers of cheese with onions on rye bread. How can you miss, right? These are pretty quick to make and really taste great!

Note that the cook time assumes you’re working linearly. If you carnalize the onions while you’re making and cooking the patties and prepping the sandwiches you can cut it down.

Summary

  • Prep Time: 5 min
  • Cook Time: 50 min
  • Other:
  • Total Time: 55 min
  • Servings: 4
  • Yield: 4

Ingredients

  • 1 stick butter
  • 1 whole large onion, halved and sliced
  • 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
  • 5 dashes Worcestershire sauce
  • Salt and fresh ground black pepper
  • 8 slices rye bread
  • 8 slices Swiss cheese

Directions

  1. In a medium skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-low heat. Throw in the sliced onions and cook slowly until the onions are golden brown and soft, 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  2. In a medium bowl, mix together the ground beef, Worcestershire and some salt and pepper. Form into 4 patties.
  3. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a separate skillet over medium heat. Cook the patties on both sides until totally done in the middle.
  4. Assemble the patty melts this way: Slice of bread, slice of cheese, hamburger patty, a quarter of the cooked onions, another slice of cheese and another slice of bread.
  5. On a clean griddle or in a large skillet over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter and grill the sandwiches until golden brown. Remove the sandwiches and add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter to the skillet. Return the sandwiches to the skillet, flipping them to the other side. Cook until golden brown and crisp, and until the cheese is melted. Slice in half and serve immediately!

Adjustments

  • I plan to swap out olive oil for cooking the onions and burgers. For browning the bread I will try 50/50 oil/butter. Note: Rule of thumb is reduce quantity by 25% when changing to butter to oil.

History

  • 2023-11-12 – Made these for the first time and we loved them. Cut everything in half and made 2 melts. The only issue was I set off the cooking alarm (a.k.a. smoke detector) even with the exhaust fan going but that was probably because I had the temp in the iron skillet too high when browning the bread. Next time I intend to swap out olive oil for a good bit of the butter and will brown the bread using less heat!

References