Cheese Fondue Recipe - How To Make A Delicious 4 Cheese Fondue

This cheese fondue recipe came into existance from lots of experimentation with different cheeses. If you like your cheese fondue quite cheesey, opposed to creamy in flavor, this is a great recipe to try.

Using just Emmenthal and Gruyere in cheese fondue gives a lovely creamy flavor that is quite subtle, but by adding Taleggio and Camembert you still have the creamy flavor but with a cheese kick that is neither overpowering nor too subtle. For personal taste, it's the perfect combination that took a few fondue experiments to come up with.

These cheeses work so well together and one of the great things about this recipe is that so long as you have the overall quantitiy of cheese combined from the 4, it's up to you what amounts of the individual cheeses are used. That way you can alter the recipe to suit your personal tastes.

Here's how I divide the 400g of cheese up:

125g Emmenthal

100g Gruyere

120g Camembert

55g Taleggio

200ml Dry White Wine (plus a splash for mixing with the corn flour)

1/2 tablespoon Lemon Juice

1 heaped teaspoon Corn Flour

In our home these ingredients serve 2 very hungry people. If you want to serve 4 people, ingredients above would be doubled.

If you work to the guide of 200g of cheese per person, 100ml of wine, this makes it really easy to increase quantities to however many people you want. Lemon juice and corn flour should be increased by half the above quantity per extra person.

• Weigh the cheese to get the correct quantities
• Cut off any rind (for Camembert I've started using an Oxo vegetable peeler, it doesn't get it all off, but it works great especially on the curved part of the wedge and edges)
  
• Dice the fondue cheese into roughly cm squares (do this straight from the fridge, if the Camembert and Taleggio have been at room temperature for a few minutes, they get really sticky and difficult to cut)
  
• Measure the wine and lemon juice - mix together
• Put the corn flour into a bowl and leave until later

That's the preparation for making the cheese fondue, next you will want to prepare your dipping items if you haven't already done so. More about things to dip later.

Make sure that you have everything to hand when you start, making fondue is a pretty fast process, you will need everything close by so that you can continue stirring while the cheese is melting together. If you don't constantly stir, the fondue won't turn out right.

This is how it's done in an electric fondue pot:

• Pour the wine and lemon juice mixture into the pot
• Turn the fondue pot on - set at the highest heat
• Wait until the liquid bubbles
  
• Slowly add the diced cheese a small handfull at a time
• Stir continuously
• Continue to add the cheese in small amounts, stir continously - by now it should be melting into the liquid
• Once all the cheese is added, melted and there is no visible liquid left, continue to stir
• Add the splash on wine to the cornflour and mix until a runny liquid has formed
• Pour the corn flour mixture into the fondue pot and continue to stir - turn the heat to low
• Once the corn flour is mixed in you're ready to start dipping!
• If the cheese starts to separate the heat is too high
  
• If starts to go hard turn the heat up again
  

I use a stainless steel electric fondue pot, I know that ceramic is considered to be best for cheese fondue, but I like having total control over the temperature. Having total control over the temperature means that we can change it if the fondue looks like it might be separating or sticking, plus, we never end up with a cheese ball due to the cheese getting cold. Our fondue pot heats up really fast too.

With ceramic fondue pots you either have to heat the cheese on the stove and then transfer it to the cereamic pot, or if you have heat it on the stove in the pot and then bring it to the table anyway. With our electric fondue pot, everything is done at the table, once the ingredients are prepared, it's no fuss. We sit down, add the ingredients, stir and then eat!

Plus it's great for oil and chocolate fondue too.

What to dip in fondue is really down to individual preferences, but here's some ideas (though they all taste great, some are easier to keep on fondue forks than others!).

• Crusty bread - we use ciabatta and lightly toast it
• Any kind of continental sausages such as Salami or Chroizo
• Smoked gammon
  
• Mushrooms - we use shitake
• Baby corn
• Fries
• Prawns
• Apple
  

If you want to have the full fondue experience at the table like we do, and only do the preparation in the kitchen, we discovered a great way of doing so.

Instead of cooking the stuff we want to dip and transferring it to the table - meaning it gets cold quite quick - we use an indoor grill next to the fondue pot so that everything is cooked as we want it. If you put all your raw ingredients onto the table as you begin the fondue, it's a really easy way eat at your own pace without worrying that stuff will get cold. Just cook as needed.

We use a raclette grill, we put the meat and vegetables on the griddle and toast the bread underneath. It works a treat!

We didn't specifically buy the raclett grill for this purpose, it gets used for so many other meals. It just seemed like a great idea to have the items we wanted to dip warm all being cooked as we wanted them. It heats the place up pretty nice too!