Fondue party advice

[danaeris]

I want to eventually have fondue parties, and I'm wondering if anyone out there has ever done these before, and might be able to give advice on what one needs to make it work...

I'm currently thinking three separate sets, one for oil/wine fondue, one for cheese, and one for chocolate. But I was looking at this website, and it had this fondue set where the one burner fits all three pots, so you save space etc. My concern is that this will cut into the number of people who can eat at once, and so the fondue parties would have to be tiny.

At fondue parties, do they have all three pots out at once? Large pots, or small ones? I guess I could have small fondue dinner parties, or large snacky parties, such that the fondue wouldn't have to make up a whole meal.

I'd also love advice on brands... I bought a nice, big, expensive crate and barrel pot while I lived in Boston and it wouldn't stay lit, which was hella frustrating. I'd love to avoid an experience like that...

Comments

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

Fondue parties I've been to have usually had two or three separate pots. The one I remember best had about a dozen people, which seemed like the upper limit for the way we did it: one type of fondue going at a time, with two pots for cheese and then later one for chocolate. The hosts asked each guest to bring a bottle of white wine, a block of gruyere or emmentaler, or a pound of veggies or some bread. Then a lot of the guests helped cut/grate/etc, which made it much more pleasant (preparing it all yourself is a pain, and it's hard to make the cheese fondue ahead of time).

I don't know anything about brands, though.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I am an admitted die-hard Euro-snob about fondue (and a few other things). By strictest Swiss custom, one does not serve meat and cheese fondue for the same meal. (And even if one does, one should certainly save the chocolate for last; leaving it on the burner too long isn't great.) I don't know how American fondue parties in the great Seventies tradition work, and don't feel any need to.

Most fondue sets I've run across are about medium-sauceman sized or a little smaller in capacity, and should serve 4 people, maybe five, but the elbows start to get in the way. (I'm also especially fond of the color-coded fondue forks. And of giving the guests spares. Technically, the little three-pronged ones are for cheese, the larger pointier two-pronged ones are for meats.)

A cheese party is slightly less expensive (cheese and meat are both pricey to feed a lot of people) and eases nicely into chocolate, since both are yummy with fruit. ALso, both can be vegetarian. (You can serve cold meats, such as salami, along with the fondue, but ask guests not to dunk them if there are vegetarians present.)

I've rarely had a problem with the sort of burner that runs on Sterno. They're pretty reliable. Metal unlined pots are for meat/oil/wine; they are not as ideal for chocolate or cheese, which are happier in ceramics. Also, oil requires a higher temperature burner; Sterno may not quite cut it unless it's a large Sterno. Always, always go for something with a mechanism for adjusting the flame, even if it's just a twist aperture. ALso check to make sure the frame is sturdy enough to support a heavy pot. One of the best designs I owned (and sadly, lost) was a metal pot with a ceramic liner that could be removed for oil use. There was room for water between the metal and the ceramic, thus preventing you from really burning the cheese or chocolate and ensuring a nice even temperature.

Ask Bryan -- He Does Fondue

[karenbynight.livejournal.com]

Poke Bryan about this question if he doesn't respond to this -- we threw a fondue party for his birthday in May. Ours certainly wasn't up to "Euro-snob" standards... but all of the guests exclaimed loudly about how much they loved it, so we didn't much care. :-)

I don't think we did much meat, though; mostly cheese and chocolate. For that purpose, candle-heated nonstick pots were perfectly decent. And they were cheap, too, at $10 apiece at Ross. I think we have 4 of them, and scavenged another 2 from family for the party. We laid out all 6 pots of cheese and heaping plates of stuff to dip into it onto our coffee table, and the guests just crowded around.

If you're going to cook meat, you'll probably need something more complex than candle-heated pots.

I think you left my birthay party too early to catch us revisiting three of the chocolate fondues -- Bry didn't start cooking them until at least 1am. It made a tasty late-party snack, and hey, we already had the pots!