Griddled patty melts on rye — Old Fashion Patty Melt, Patty Melts with Secret Sauce, Bacon Patty Melt, The Throwback Patty Melt — for busy weeknights.
★ dinner
Simple sandwich recipe the family will love!
P.S. We update the recipes on this page every few days. If you want to cook this recipe over and over again, we'd love it if you downloaded Pepper 🤝.
More to try
Find more recipes like this
Join 1M+ cooks discovering, organizing, and sharing their recipes on Pepper
Open in Pepper →A patty melt is what happens when a hamburger and a grilled cheese stop arguing. Ground beef, soft onions cooked down slow, melty cheese, and buttered rye griddled until the crust crackles — all from things you probably already have.
Cooks on Pepper reach for these on the nights when nobody wants to decide, when the ground beef is thawed and dinner needs to be hot in half an hour with one skillet to wash.
Every recipe here is a real patty melt: Old Fashion Patty Melt with American cheese and white onion, Patty Melts with Secret Sauce, a provolone-and-rye version, Bacon Patty Melt, The Throwback Patty Melt, and a Kick-Ass Patty Melt with Tangy Onion Sauce.
Cook the onions slow
Give thinly sliced onions 20 to 25 minutes over medium-low in butter, stirring now and then, until deep gold. Rushing them on high just burns the edges.
Use 80/20 ground beef
The fat is what keeps the patty juicy under all that cheese. Press the patties thin and a little wider than the bread, since they shrink about a half inch.
Butter the bread, not the pan
Spread softened butter edge to edge on the outside of each rye slice so the whole crust browns evenly in 3 to 4 minutes per side.
Melt with a lid
Cover the skillet for the last 1 to 2 minutes over medium-low heat. The trapped steam melts the cheese before the bread goes too dark.