Fun Dinner Idea: Raclette -- An Alternative to Fondue

My sister, Pam F, introduced the raclette to our family a few years ago after her family visited her husband's family in Luxembourg (a small European country bordering Belgium). Though we do not use it the way the Europeans do - with lots of fancy stinky cheeses and more pickled items, it is a very fun (yet incredibly fattening) meal to share with family and friends. If you like fondue, you will really love the raclette.We had my mom over for dinner on Sunday and decided it was time to raclette again - though it was the first time for my mother-in-law, Donna, and 15 yr old sister-in-law, KyLi. They absolutely loved it!

Technically speaking, Raclette is a type of farmers cheese originally used with the raclette grill. I will explain the raclette the way we used it this weekend rather than the traditional European way. If you want more information and ideas, I found Gourmetsleuth.com has lots of good information about the history and ideas on how to use your raclette grill.

A raclette is an electric tabletop grill with a flat surface on top and sections below where you can place trays of cheese to melt. The general concept is that you use a boiled potato as your base, then you use things such as rare roast beef, hard salami, bacon, pre-cooked chicken (we pre-cook it to avoid cross contamination on the grill and make the grill time shorter), and other meats you may choose (my SIL said some carne asada would have been good - I agree!). You also have vegetables such as onions and broccoli (broccoli also pre-cooked) and mushrooms (we got portabello mushrooms and marinated them in Sun-dried Tomato Vinaigrette - we wished we had gotten more than one package). You have a variety of cheeses to choose from to melt in the little trays and then pour on top of the potato, meats, and veggies. We had sharp cheddar (takes a long time to melt so consider slicing it thin), Muenster, Havarti, Bruschetta (this was so good - we had never tried it. It is an Italian herb cheese similar to pepper jack, but with Italian herbs in it and garlic - we found it at Sam's club), and pepper jack.

You should make about 1-3 potatoes per person (though none of us could eat more than two). We got a half pound of the roast beef and wished we had bought more. 1/2 pound of hard salami was plenty - we only used about half of it. We had plenty of cheeses left over, but would buy the same amount again to make sure we have plenty of variety. We are going to make homemade mac and cheese with the leftovers - recipe to follow if it turns out well. I think that Bruschetta and pepper jack will make it awesome! We would like to try some different cheeses next time too. Overall, this was a very fun and filling meal. My brother-in-law insists you should eat a crisp mini-dill pickle to help your digestion of this meal - we did not do that this time though.

I hope you will give this a try. You can find raclette grills online or at your local grill store. Pam found the one I have at a thrift store - it works great and is T-fal brand. It claims to serve 8 people, but we think 6 is the max and it is nice to sometimes have 2 trays of cheese melting at the same time per person. I only used one, but as soon as one tray was done melting I put another in. This is very fattening - so it is not your every day meal, but when you have friends or family over it is a fun meal to share.

Things to note:

• it gets very hot sitting around the grill - you may want a fan going.
• if you are too close to the grill you will get spattered from the dressing on the grill.
• this is so much better on a bigger table - we have a small round table and with 5 people and lots of food it was too close for comfort.

Enjoy! I would love to hear about your raclette experience - will you dare to do stinky cheeses? Pam says they are worth it but we have not tried them yet. Please go to the photo slide show where I discuss each picture in more detail. It will help you if you plan on doing this sometime.