Do you Fondue?

My daughter, Julia, decided the other day that we NEED to get a fondue pot.  Well, I have never had fondue so I was intrigued.  One of my goals for 2013 is to try new things and I thought this fit the bill nicely.  Maybe I was too young when fondue was all the rage decades ago, but apparently it's trendy again and we jumped right on the bandwagon eager to get our hands on some skewers and something warm and melty!!

I did some research and it's amazing how many different types of fondue pots are out there and also the price ranges!!  You can get some pretty fancy ones!  Having never had fondue, I didn't want to invest a lot of money for our little adventure and found this one in Target:

It has great reviews and everyone seemed very pleased with it's performance and it's easy to clean (that's always a bonus!).  It also has a "break-away" electrical cord for those of you with little ones or are just clumsy so you don't burn yourself. 

Now, being the fondue novice that I am, I thought that you just put a bunch of cheese in the pot and let it melt away.  Wrong!!  So wrong!!  Thank goodness I came across this important information during my research, otherwise our Fondue Night could have been tragic.  Just tragic.  What I discovered is that fondue is really a combination of cheeses, wine, spices and sometimes cream or milk.  Who knew?  So, I figured we'd start with a basic cheese fondue recipe that I found online (I can't seem to locate the recipe online again so I don't have a link to it).  It got great reviews and was supposed to mimic one of the great fondues served at The Melting Pot.  Have you been?  I hear it's a great night out and loads of fun, but not too kind to your wallet!  The hubby and I are planning to go soon so I'll tell you all about it!

The kids helped me prepare the fondue and we cut up french bread, sausage, apples and broccoli to dip.  It was soooo good and so much fun!  We had a lot of laughs and loved dipping our skewers into the melty goodness.  I was skeptical of the recipe when we were making it.  We used 6 oz. of white wine (sauvignon blanc), 1 clove of minced garlic, 1 lemon squeezed, 1 cup of Gruyere shredded,1 cup of muenster shredded, a few dashes of freshly ground pepper and a few dashes of nutmeg.  Delish!

 

I think I will be purchasing this cookbook to try some new recipes for our future Fondue Nights!

Do you have a fondue pot?  Do you have favorite fondue recipes to share?