With the passing of another Christmas Holiday we were looking forward to a relaxed evening with a few good friends at our house on New Year’s Eve. As we usually include some kind of meal we again had to make the decision of what to serve.
From friends and family in Germany we have heard for awhile about the good times they had “doing” Raclette evenings, which seems to have quite a following over there. To make a long story short, it did not happen on New Year’s Eve, as we could not find the appliance you need for it in any of the stores we visited here in the Detroit area, as a matter of fact, a couple of the stores showed an inventory on their website and once we got there nobody knew what we were talking about. So we had to order a unit online and it did arrive after the New Year. Just a short mention, we ended up serving Weinbrand Steak that night, which was a great success as everybody seemed to enjoy it.
So our initial “Raclette evening” happened with our kids a week later and all of us loved it.
First a little history: Our research shows, that already back in the Middle Ages in the German speaking region of Switzerland, cow herders high up in the Alps placed the “Bratkäse” (frying cheese) next to the fire to melt. Once melted they scraped it onto potatoes as a very nutritious meal.
There is a 5 minute video about an outdoor Raclette party in the Swiss Alps on youtube which gives you an idea of how they still do it. “Swiss raclette on fire”
To give the at home version a try we bought the West Bend 6130 for under $50 and to have the real cheese taste found sliced Raclette cheese at Trader Joe’s.
The Raclette unit is basically a table top grill and broiler combination, as you can see in the picture, a heating coil is placed a couple of inches above the base.
Small cooking pans are placed below this to melt the cheese.
This is covered with a grill top or a warming stone.
Besides the broiling pans you also get a scraper to transfer your melted cheese onto the rest of your meal selection.
Our unit worked fine even with the metal of the grill top being kind of thin.
For the first time we tried all kinds of food from beef to pork, from chicken breast to shrimp, we added salami and smoked luncheon meat ham.
As for the cheeses: We served, besides French Raclette cheese, Muenster, Brie and Jarlsberg Swiss, we also included shredded mozzarella, hot pepper and a Mexican blend. All of them worked fine.
Naturally we tried the traditional recipe of potatoes with pearl onions and small pickles and here we used the Raclette cheese to experience the original taste. We also tried pre-steamed carrots and even Brussels sprouts, raw and fried mushrooms and did the same with onions. Even peas were excellent with cheese melted over them.
Thinly sliced French bread, toasted on the grill with salami, onions, mushrooms, pizza sauce and mozzarella broiled in the pan underneath and transferred to the toast is worth a definite mention.
We ate for a couple hours with much interaction at the table as everything had to be passed back and forth. Experimenting with different combinations, there was never a dull moment with remarks like “Man, try this” or “I shouldn’t have added this”, which shows that most of the table talk centered on our “culinary experience”.
For the spices and other seasonings use your imagination and also add some geared to the individual preferences of your guests.
As this does not require your food to be deep fried like in a fondue and you actually can control the amount of cheese consumed, you can be as diet conscious as you want to be. We also noticed that because of the time required to prepare and cook our dishes the total amounts of food we used was less then usual.