Crusty Ham and Cheese Panini Recipe

Crusty Ham and Cheese Panini Recipe Hi, I am Betty. Welcome to Betty’s Kitchen. Today we are making ham and cheese paninis. And if you are expecting this to be very Italian, it won’t be. It will be more on the order of grilled ham and cheese but it will have some elements of the panini. Starting with some French bread, actually not Italian bread, you can buy panini buns, you can buy buns that are more of the order of what you will expect for a regular panini but also, you can just use something like this which is one of the two twin loaves that I got just at my deli section of the grocery store. And then when you slice it horizontally and then chop it down the middle, you have two halves like that that will work just like a bun. So it is very nice. And I have taken the other have of this piece and I have grilled the side that was down. What I did was to have some softened butter and I had just spread that on here and then I put it in a skillet that was dry and that way I did not have a whole lot of extra butter, but it just got the part that I needed grilled. I have these two halves grilled and then I have these two halves that are plain. I am going to make one panini over here and you are going to see a little bit of difference with the one over here. Just for some variation, it is nothing special, really. What I am going to put on here, I am going to start by putting some cheese and I have chosen Swiss cheese and these are nice slices. I will start with one on this side, I will put some other ingredients here and then I will have one that will meet this side and these will be going together. So what I am going to choose is the Roma tomato, I think that is really good inside a grilled sandwich because the juice of the tomato begins to run and melt together with the cheese and the meat, whatever using and we are using ham in this case, it is going to warm up and all of it just blends together really well. We will put some thinly sliced Roma tomatoes to cover this and I will echo that on the other side when I get over to this side. In the middle here, we are going to have a ham. What I have is just some honey ham from the deli and we would be putting probably about a quarter of a pound, this is shaved and it is very easy to work with if you will get it like this or you can get it thin sliced if you would rather and you just put the amount that you want. Whatever looks good to you will be fine and we will finish up by just putting that amount on. Then as I said, I was going to echo my beginning so that means it will be easier if I placed it right here. That will be three slices of tomato and then one slice of Swiss cheese. I made this all difficult by no leveling it out so you might want to go back and adjust and then out your slice of cheese on and then put this on. It’s much easier to assemble like that. Now, we will get back to that in just a moment. But the other one just for a little bit of difference, I am not grilling it with butter, I am going to use some of this called submarine dressing, so really it probably is used on submarine sandwiches more than paninis but anything that you like to flavor of. My rule is, go ahead and use it as you prefer. So this one is going to have some nice spices, this dressing actually has some oil, wine vinegar, has some sugar and some spices. The bread surface, both pieces, I will just put enough to make sure that, that is noticed. Let us just spread that, just a little bit so it will not be lumping in one corner, here or there. This one, I am going to sip the tomatoes on, just for variety and this time I am going to choose provolone cheese. It is just really whatever you like. If you like the cheese, if you do not, then choose something else. You might want cheddar cheese on these, although usually Italian sandwiches will have white cheese. So we have those and I went ahead and did that because it is not going too be hard to close up and then the center over there, again I am choosing the same meat. If you have another meat, it might be nice to have some variety here, but all I have is what I bought this morning at the deli and it happens to be honey ham. This gives you a little bit of variation as to how you might put them together. At this point, I am going to put one more piece of provolone cheese and these are pretty thick sliced, actually thicker than the Swiss cheese over here. Oh, I already have that, sorry. We do not need that tight now so I am going to close it up and then what I am going to do, I could brush this with butter that would be fine. I need to have the top of the modeling brush with either butter or perhaps you might prefer olive oil. I do decide to olive oil so I have a little bit out of the bottle here and then if you have some kind of pastry brush, you can just brush this on. It will be either do that or use your spreading knife and spread on some melted butter, but once you get one side done, then just go ahead and place that on you skillet and turn it so that the other side is up and then we will brush that. So now they are ready to go on the stove. Paninis are generally pressed and in fact, you can buy a paninni maker or panini press. I do not have one, so what I am going to do is bring these over to the stove and I will be turning it on in just a second but I have picked up what is the heaviest thing in my kitchen, which is an iron skillet and I am going to use that to press them down, but I am going to use my hands to press to begin with to just give it a little start, but it is very stable and what I am going to do is turn this on and cook it on a very low heat because I really want more than to brown it quickly, I want all of the juices to blend together. I want the cheese melted, I want those tomatoes to kind of run a little bit and I want the ham heated and it is going to simmer. We are going to turn this down very low as though as I can get it without it clicking like that and then we will just watch it and what I will do is turn it over mid way through cooking because I will notice when it is getting brown on the bottom and then we will just turn it over and get brown on the top and the I will show you what my result is in a few minutes. The paninis are ready and I have brought them over here to my work space and here is what they look like, I will take off the iron skillet, we do not need hat anymore, but you see how it has pressed these down and that gives them that panini name. What I am going to do is bring one off over here and my husband and I are going to share of these because they're a little bit different so I am going to put an - in here. You see it is nice and crusty and then I will cut down the center. This is why you can see what it looks like in the side and I put a nice slice of sweet pickle right here and we will put a half of this on each plate. I would like to see what that looks like and you see some melted cheese and some good flavor there that we have put it from that submarine sauce. The other one, I think I will cut it here as the tomatoes, this may be a little messier , but has just a little bit different flavor and we will bring over this one to this plate and this one to this plate. So now we have a nice dinner with a couple of pieces of panini and deal our sweet pickle to go with it and of course my glass of iced tea.