Cooking Grilled Cheese Sandwiches in Occupational Therapy

March 9, 2022 BY Renee Limon

Grilled cheese sandwiches are the ultimate comfort food. The warm, toasty bread. The rich scent of the butter. The stretchy, melted cheese! (Warning: you may not want to read this post if you are hungry.Making grilled cheese sandwiches is also a great way to practice occupational therapy skills — fine motor skills, sensory integration, following directions, and paying attention during all of the phases of prep, cooking, and tasting. 

As you can imagine, it’s best to do this kind of activity when the client is hungry. Christina and occupational therapy grad student Liz let their client know ahead of time that they would be cooking and they gathered the necessary ingredients and cooking supplies. The task was to make some interesting and unique flavor combinations of grilled cheese sandwiches. Once cooked, the next step was to taste them all and report back on how the flavor combinations turned out. Combos included: bacon and black olives, black olives only, and sliced green apple. 

Butter, bread, cheese, bacon, olives and apple and child cutting crust to make grilled cheese.

Grilled cheese sandwiches can be made in a variety of ways: cast-iron skillet or panini press. Since our kitchen didn’t have either of those options, Christina adapted and improvised with a tiny waffle iron. 

Child putting bread in waffle iron at The Hello Clinic.

This is part of the story where the tiny waffle iron needed a little help making contact with the bread and butter to ensure a crispy, toasty melding of the bread and melted cheese!

Hand pushing down on lid of waffle iron to grill sandwich at The Hello Clinic.

We all had a great time and the clinic smelled like bacon and cheesy bread! If we’ve made you hanker for a grilled cheese sandwich, here’s the basic Waffle Iron Grilled Cheese recipe we used. Let us know your favorite unique flavor combinations!