Southern Comfort Snack · Grilled Cheese Roll
Southland Cheese Rolls
Photo: Ready.eddy / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The earliest known recipe dates to a 1930s newspaper, but the snack only took off decades later, once widely available sliced bread from the 1950s made rolling it up quick and easy.
White bread is rolled around a savoury cheese-and-onion-soup filling, then toasted on a griddle until the outside turns crisp and golden and the inside goes molten. They're sold by the dozen at Southland and Otago bakeries, dairies and school fundraisers, cheap enough to buy by the bagful.
Why it's made this way: Southland's cold climate made hot, filling snacks like this especially popular, and cheese rolls have stayed a South Island specialty that's still little known north of the Waitaki River.
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