Nando's
Nando's Garlic Bread Copycat Recipe
A baguette, a compound butter with peri-peri in it, twelve minutes in the oven. About twenty pence a portion.
How to Make Sizzler Cheese Toast at Home
Cheese Toast: Griddled Cheese-Side-Down, Which Is the Whole Idea
The most requested discontinued restaurant item in Australia, in four minutes.
AI-generated illustration created for food.fast. It is not photographic evidence of a prepared batch.
Ask an Australian about Sizzler and the conversation will reach cheese toast within thirty seconds. It is one of the most fondly remembered discontinued restaurant items anywhere, and it is four minutes of work.
The thing everybody gets wrong is the heat source. This is not made under a grill. The cheese paste goes on the bread, and then the bread goes cheese-side-down onto a hot griddle or pan, so the cheese toasts in direct contact with metal rather than under radiant heat from above.
That contact is what produces the specific burnished, slightly crisp, faintly nutty surface. Under a grill you get melted cheese on toast, which is a different and lesser thing.
How this page shows its working
The method gives quantities, timings and observable cues rather than asking you to guess. The 4 cases in If it goes wrong explain likely causes and corrective action; 2 ingredient notes explain choices that materially affect the result.
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Why griddling beats grilling here, in one paragraph
Under a grill, cheese melts and then browns unevenly wherever the surface happens to be closest to the element. The result is a molten layer with darker patches.
On a hot pan, the cheese is pressed flat against 190 °C metal across its whole surface. Conduction is far more efficient than radiation, so the cheese browns evenly and quickly, and the parmesan's proteins and milk sugars form an even, brittle, deeply savoury crust.
It also means the bread underneath steams slightly rather than drying out, so you get a crisp surface on a still-soft slice.
The pan wants to be medium, not high. High heat browns the cheese in thirty seconds and leaves the butter unmelted and the bread cold.
Parmesan, not cheddar, and finely grated
Parmesan has very little moisture and a great deal of protein and salt, which is why it forms a crisp crust rather than a molten puddle. Cheddar melts and runs off the edge into the pan, where it burns. Grate it finely - coarse shreds sit in clumps and brown unevenly.
Soft white bread, deliberately
Ordinary supermarket white sandwich bread, thick cut. Sourdough and crusty bread both have too much structure - the whole appeal of this is a crisp cheese surface on a soft, slightly squashy slice. This is not the moment for good bread.
How to make it, step by step
Make it
-
Beat the butter, parmesan and garlic salt to a paste
Hard, with a fork, until it is completely uniform and spreadable. It should look like a thick cheese butter.
About 3 min -
Spread the paste on one side, butter on the other
Paste on one face, right to the edges - edges are where it crisps. Plain softened butter on the reverse.
About 2 min -
Cheese side down on a medium pan, three minutes
Do not press it, do not move it. You are looking for a deep golden, slightly lacy crust across the whole face.
TipMedium heat. High browns the cheese before the butter has melted.About 3 min -
Turn and give the buttered side ninety seconds
With a palette knife, in one movement. The second side just needs colour.
About 2 min -
Cut in half diagonally and eat it now
Straight onto a board and cut corner to corner. The cheese crust softens within about five minutes as steam from the bread works its way back into it, so this is genuinely a make-it-and-eat-it dish rather than one to hold for the table.
About 1 min
What it goes with, and a quantity warning
At Sizzler it comes with the salad bar and the steaks, and at home it works the same way - beside soup, beside a salad, beside anything.
The honest warning is that four slices between four people is nobody's actual consumption. It is the sort of thing where people eat three slices each while saying they will only have one. Make eight.
The paste keeps a fortnight in the fridge and freezes as a log for three months, like the Nando's garlic butter, so making a big batch of paste and toasting bread on demand is the sensible arrangement.
Ways to change it once you have made it once
With a little cheddar
20 g of finely grated mature cheddar alongside the parmesan. More cheese flavour, slightly less crisp.
Herby
A teaspoon of dried oregano and a tablespoon of chopped parsley in the paste.
On a baguette
Split lengthways, pasted and griddled cut side down. Harder to handle and very good.
What went wrong, and how to fix it
Each entry names a likely cause as well as a correction, so the advice remains useful when equipment, ingredients or batch size differ.
The cheese melted and ran into the pan
- Why it happened
- Cheddar or another high-moisture cheese.
- What to do
- Parmesan. It is low enough in moisture to crust rather than run.
Burnt cheese, cold bread
- Why it happened
- The pan was too hot.
- What to do
- Medium. Three minutes is the target, not ninety seconds.
The crust tore when I turned it
- Why it happened
- Turned too early, or with a narrow spatula.
- What to do
- A palette knife and the full three minutes. A set crust lifts cleanly.
Pale in the middle, brown at the edges
- Why it happened
- The pan base is warped and not making full contact.
- What to do
- Press gently with a fish slice for the first ten seconds only, or use a flatter pan.
Questions people actually ask about this recipe
Why griddle rather than grill it?
Direct contact with hot metal browns the cheese evenly and quickly into a crisp crust. A grill gives patchy melted cheese.
Can I use cheddar?
It melts and runs into the pan. Parmesan is low enough in moisture to form a crust.
What bread should I use?
Ordinary soft white sandwich bread, thick cut. Crusty bread defeats the point.
Can I make the paste ahead?
Yes - two weeks in the fridge or three months frozen as a log.
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