How to Make Restaurant Style Panini Sandwiches Without a Panini Grill

Panini sandwiches are a relatively new and very popular menu item at many American restaurants. Italian in origin, these grilled sandwiches are usually filled with meats and / or vegetables and cheeses, which are pressed tightly together, causing the ingredients to interact, which produces an intensely flavorful sandwich.

Panini, or panino sandwiches, as they are traditionally known, are often cooked on a special grill, which is called a panini grill. Generally about the size of an average skillet, with a hinged- top attached, panini grills have grooves, or ridges, on the inside, top and bottom. When the grill is heated, these grooves produce the unique panini grill- marks on sandwiches that are cooked inside of it. Although the use of a traditional panini grill is recommended for producing authentic panini, or panino sandwiches, the intrepid home cook can improvise, using everyday household items, to make excellent panini sandwiches, when no panini grill is available.

An old chef's trick for making grilled sandwiches cook faster, involves placing a weighted object, quite often a brick wrapped in aluminum foil, on top of the sandwich as it cooks. This same principle can be applied to producing panini sandwiches, without a panini grill. Because the act of cooking itself, in theory, is applying food to a heat source, many variations on traditional cooking methods are often born out of necessity. That having been said, nothing fancier than a frying pan or skillet is required to produce a quite- satisfactory panini sandwich. Although panini grills cook sandwiches on both sides simutaneously, by weighing down the sandwich while grilling, then turning over and repeating the process on the other side, a close facsimile can be produced. The only difference is that the sandwich cooked in a frying pan will not have the distinctive panini grill- marks.