What? You haven’t made fondue lately? Well then you are missing out. On absolute cheesy decadence. I routinely chuckle to myself when I read through people’s wedding registries and see all sorts of kitchen gadgets that nobody needs and nobody uses. Like fondue pots. But of course there we were at Macy’s last summer manning the scanner gun when I couldn’t stop myself. Beep. One fondue pot. Because I like fondue. It’s a very 70′s thing to own, but just like magic, someone gave it to us for our wedding. And we finally took it for a spin. After the first taste of ooey gooey goodness we honestly don’t know why it took us so long to test it out.
We decided to start easy with a basic cheese fondue recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook (also online here), which called for:
- 2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
- 2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons brandy
I began by shredding the Swiss and Gruyere cheeses.
After the cheese was shredded, I put it all in a plastic bag with the flour and shook it to coat the cheese. Then I cut the garlic clove in half and rubbed it all around the fondue pot.
Next, after heating our electric Cuisinart Fondue Pot to simmer (or about a 2), I added the wine until it was almost boiling and then stirred in the lemon juice. Then you gradually add in the cheese about 1/2 cup at a time continually whisking as you go.
When all the cheese is melted, you add the brandy. The traditional recipe actually calls for Kirsch, but we didn’t want to make a special trip to the liquor store just for that so we substituted brandy as the recipe suggested. Traditional Swiss fondue also calls for Emmentaler cheese, but TJs doesn’t stock that either.
When the cheese was ready, we simply cut up some apple slices and tore some french bread cubes for our dipping pleasure.
The fondue stays nice and creamy if you keep it on low heat so we plugged it in by the table, and we moved the rest of the spread out to the dining room too. Then we were ready to eat with our mouths already watering.
It was only the two of us so we definitely didn’t need to set out all of the dipping forks, but they are so cute since they are all color coded. We also clearly didn’t need to make that much fondue, but a) that was our whole dinner and b) we didn’t eat it all.
Although it was hard not to because it was amazing. Truly. If you like booze and cheese, you can’t not like fondue. The bread is good, but the apple in the fondue is just over the top.
So that was our Friday night date night at home. We bought the ingredients at Trader Joe’s, and the cashier was completely amused that we were making fondue. She actually said…you’re making fondue TONIGHT? Yep. Why not? It’s really not hard at all. In fact it was easier than most of the meals we made in the past few weeks. She also asked us if we got our fondue pot for our wedding which had us giggling out the door because that’s basically the only reason people seem to have fondue pots anymore. Call us old school or maybe we were Swiss in a previous life. But we love ourselves some fondue. Next will be the chocolate variety. Do you have a fondue pot gathering dust in your cupboard? If so, you should break it out and treat yourself.
