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favorite-dish-raclette Close-up on raclette

The first leaves falling, the chilly early mornings... As soon as autumn has set in, we only have one dish in mind: Raclette ! 😍 Recently ranked second favorite dish of the French behind the unbeatable Sunday chicken and fries, the raclette makes us melt for its conviviality and its delicacy. But what do you really know about this unmissable winter dish? 🤔 Quai Sud tells you everything (very) good to know about raclette.

But where does the raclette come from?…

Raclette was born by chance in Switzerland in the XNUMXthnd century, in the current canton of Valais. The story is a bit fuzzy: a shepherd (or a winegrower) would have approached a piece of cheese 🧀 a little too close to the fire at snack time. Accident or deliberate act, the question is not settled, but the cheese began to melt...

The story spread until it became a tradition among Swiss peasants, who then approached cheese wheels near the fire. When the cheese started to melt, they “scraped” the wheel and then tasted the cheese on bread. THE " roasted cheese was born ✨.

But it was not until the 70s that this custom caught the eye of a representative of a famous French cheese factory. He returned from Switzerland with the idea of ​​making an equivalent cheese in France, which would be called "raclette" and offered in very young ski resorts ⛷. Very quickly popularized thanks to the rise of winter sports, raclette became the flat symbol of mountain vacation 🏔.

But it's not easy to heat up half a wheel of cheese in your fireplace and to improvise yourself as a master scraper in your dining room... Aren't you going to wait until you get back to skiing to taste this divine dish? The famous cheese dairy then joined forces with a no less famous brand of household appliances to invent the device that will definitively democratize raclette in all homes... and the hearts of the French ❤.

Which raclette cheese to choose?

If you want to taste the original flavors of raclette, choose the Valais raclette, a Swiss PDO cheese made from raw milk. In France, we make a PGI raclette cheese in Savoie and Haute-Savoie, exclusively made from Abondance, Tarentaise or Montbéliarde cow's milk. Less than 700 dairy producers process and refine this raclette cheese. It is most often a pasteurized cheese, matured for 4 to 5 months.

In Franche-Comté, only a few farms also make raclette cheese. The recipe is either based on pasteurized milk or raw milk from Montbéliarde cows. The best wheels are matured for 8 weeks on spruce boards, an old Jura tradition. But then… which raclette cheese to choose? 🤔

It is above all a matter of taste because they are all great. If you prefer the typical and authentic flavors of the mountains, turn instead to a raw milk raclette cheese. Pasteurized milk raclette does not lack flavor either since it is matured longer, but its taste remains mild; it is therefore suitable for everyone and more particularly for children or future mothers 🤰 who must not consume raw milk. It is easily found on the market, whereas the raw milk raclette is more often found at the cut or at a cheesemonger.

The essential ingredients of a good raclette

A raclette is easy to prepare and that's also why we love it: it's impossible to miss! Everyone adds what they like, grills their cheese more or less, with or without the crust… Here are the ingredients for a good traditional raclette:

  • Of course, raclette cheese : it can be flavored (cumin, pepper, white wine), smoked… or not! Purists will cry sacrilege and won't read the following lines, but you can also make a raclette with Morbier, Munster, Reblochon... 😱
  • Potatoes with firm flesh boiled and dressed in the fields (with the skin for those who are angry with the kitchen 😉).
  • Low-fat charcuterie : Graubünden meat, bacon, raw ham, dry sausage…
  • Condiments : pickles, baby onions…
  • A winter salad (lamb's lettuce, lettuce, endive) seasoned with a mustard vinaigrette.
  • Optionally chopped fresh herbs : parsley, chives, wild garlic…

As an accompaniment, choose a rather tannic red wine (Cabernet, Brouilly) to hold up against the cheese, or a dry white (Riesling, Apremont, Vin Jaune du Jura). No great vintage, the cheese would hide its subtlety, and always in moderation 😉.

A bit of all or some of the ingredients, the choice is yours. Some add fruits, vegetables, other condiments... At Quai Sud, we have chosen spices : cumin, mustard seeds and a mixture of 4 peppers. To slide under the cheese to prevent them from burning, or to sprinkle just after melting 😋. Discover them in our Full Metal Raclette box, with pretty spatulas and wooden boards to place your pans.

Finally, we do not forget the essential ingredients of a good raclette: family, friends and conviviality!

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