Ah, there’s nothing like the feeling of biting into a freshly made grilled cheese. That ridiculous burn when you take that first nibble makes the pain all the more worth it when you’re fighting to keep cheese dribble from spilling onto your chin. Over the last few years, grilled cheese have peaked and wavered as a popular food trend. But with all the pop-ups and fast-casual grilled cheese spots, can anything ever really beat the convenience, satisfaction and affordability of a homemade grilled cheese?

There’s been debate over what constitutes as a proper grilled cheese and what doesn’t. You’ll either hear long-winded explanations, or you’ll get shrugs. In the end, it’s as simple as three ingredients to create a grilled cheese proper and true.

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DO: Throw in as much cheese as your heart can take

When deciding to make a grilled cheese, you literally have a world of options in choosing your cheeses. From cheddar to muenster, it’s all relative when the endgame is that oozing goodiness. That being said, it’s better to steer clear of the drier cheeses, like parmesan and romano, when making a sandwich. It’ll take away from the experience, and will definitely hurt your wallet more.

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DON’T: Use overly thick bread, it’s not grilled soup

Like picking your cheeses, bread choice is essential for making a grilled cheese. You can stack as many fancy artisanal breads as you want in that mother and at the end of the day, you’ll be biting more bread than cheese. The key is a bread just thick enough that cheese won’t seep through the pores, but not too thick where it doesn’t melt on the grill.

Just think of your bread as a decent condom. You want to be able to feel the cheese under your finger tips and know it’s there, but you definitely don’t want it to spill all over the place before you have a chance to enjoy it. Yum.

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DO: Use plenty of butter. You’re already in too deep, no going back now.

Bread, butter, cheese. While it’s been argued on how to properly cook a grilled cheese with butter, I found that the easiest method is to coat each exterior of the bread with butter before throwing onto the pan. Don’t be stingy with the butter either. You’re gonna want a nice golden brown crisp to your sandwich. If you’re looking for healthy alternatives to avoid using butter, you probably shouldn’t be making grilled cheese in the first place. Add a generous amount of cheese, shredded melts much faster than sliced or chunks. It also allows for more gooey outpour.

It could also be argued that a proper grilled cheese needs to be cooked on a grill with actual cheese being grilled, ala Alton Brown. As delicious as it looks, who has time for that? The best part of a grilled cheese is grabbing it from the pan and taking a bite almost instantaneously. Will it keep over time? Sure. Will it taste its absolute best five seconds off the grill? You bet your ass.

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DON’T: Add a single non-cheese ingredient. Don’t you fucking dare.

Hey, I have an idea. Let’s add some meat to the sandwich. Maybe some kale and topp it with a fried egg. Ermahgawd, they have bacon here! It’ll be the best grilled cheese ever. Sorry bro, you can add as many cheeses as you’d like, but as soon as that non-dairy item touches the warm insides of the sandwich, it’s no longer a grilled cheese. It’s a melt.

While additions like lamb shank, onion straws and even bacon would make for an amazing sandwich, that’s exactly what it will become. A sandwich. The beauty of a grilled cheese is the simplicity behind it. Bread and cheese. Nothing complicated or fancy, but just the two basic ingredients brought together by a unrespectable amount of butter.

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Anyone can go to a “grilled cheese” restaurant and order a super complicated, multi-ingredient sandwich. Hell, I’ll even recommend some to you. However, if you truly want a down-to-earth, honest grilled cheese experience, the only thing you’ll need is bread, cheese and butter.

Nothing more, nothing less.