Oh boy, where do I begin. Piper (who just got married yesterday! YAY PIPER!) spent a year teaching in Spain. While she was over there, she was introduced to raclette. Now, raclette is a cheese and I guess this term used to refer to putting raclette cheese on a stand with a hot light over it and you would scrape a cracker across the top of the melted cheese and it was effing delicious (visual here). But when I refer to raclette, I mean the appliance. Here's what mine looks like:
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So, how do you make a meal out of this magical device? First, I would recommend you invite a couple of people over to do this. I would say between 4 and 6. Two people are going to have waaayy too much food left over and once you get past six people, it kind of turns into a cluster.
Anyway, what you do is, you gather up some delicious vegetables, meats, and cheeses (make sure your cheeses are creamy, melty kinds - you do NOT want hard cheeses for this). I like to use the following:
- asparagus
- bell peppers
- mushrooms
- onions
- zucchini
- ham
- summer sausage
- prosciutto
- havarti
- raclette
- fondue cheese
- baby potatoes
- baguette
Now, this isn't really a wrong way to do raclette. There are only two rules:
- DO NOT use silverware on any of the surfaces of the raclette, it's non-stick and if it gets scratched it becomes sticky and apparently it's really bad for you too. Use the little plastic thingies that come with the appliance.
- DO NOT let the food you put on the trays underneath touch the element, then you just get a burny, smelly, sticky MESS!
Confused yet? How about just READING THE WIKI ARTICLE HERE.
Usually what we do, is melt some cheese in the little pans while other stuff grills on top (make sure you use olive oil on the top so food doesn't stick), then we put the melted cheese over the meat/potato/veggie mix and go to town.
Once the first round is done, I like to put my veggies and potatoes in the pan and melt cheese over the top of them.
So it ends up looking like this....
Soooo good, omnomnom...
Like I said, there is no wrong way to do it (as long as you follow the two rules). One of my friends just melts cheese in his little pan and treats it like fondu. Another friend makes mini pizzas. Whatever tastes best to you!