How to Make a Fondue Dinner

Successful entertaining takes planning, attention to details, and a carefully crafted guest list. If you love to entertain, then you're probably looking for new ideas to make your parties memorable. Serving fondue was the rage decades ago, and it's back in style again because it's fun. You can make fondue from scratch or buy premade products.

Hosting a fondue dinner requires a lot of prep work, but you will end up with more free time to enjoy your guests.

Fondue equipment

Naturally, you'll need a couple of fondue pots, dipping cups and plenty of fondue sticks. Each pot should be an appropriate size for the food you want your guests to dip. You will also have to decide if you want to stick with the traditional fondue pot with an open-flame heating unit or go electric with a style that allows you to regulate pot temperature.

Get started with fondue appetizers

Cheese fondues are a popular appetizer course. You can use several small pots with different cheese combinations for culinary flair. Offer a selection of cheeses like Muenster along with sharper cheeses like cheddar, pepper Jack, gruyere, and Cajun cheese variations. Some cheese fondue recipes made from scratch combine cheeses with onions and other spices.

Dip pieces of bread, cut into bite-size cubes, and pieces of apple and whole grapes. Also popular and tasty with cheese are small bites of precooked new potatoes, broccoli, and cauliflower.

You can also choose not to serve fondue for your appetizer course. If you want to keep things simple for cocktail hour, serve regular appetizers that aren't too heavy.

Fondue dinner main course

Some people like to use only oil for cooking meats, while others like to have a pot with hot broth inside. What's inside the pot doesn't matter as much as the dipping sauces. After the meat has been cooked inside the pot, you will need to offer a tasty variety of dipping sauces for each meat on your menu.

Get creative with your dipping sauces, trying to find flavors that will go with more than one meat. Most fondue dinners offer beef, chicken, and a seafood as a way to satisfy the palate of every guest. Dipping sauces can go international, with Asian mango-pepper for seafood, or spicy peanut, blue cheese, or old-fashioned green goddess sauce for beef and chicken.

It's a good idea to balance out your main course by serving a mixed green salad. This will also help to slow down meat consumption. You don't want your guests so full of meat that they don't have room for your decadent fondue desserts.

Fondue dessert

The truth is that it wouldn't be a fondue dinner without chocolate. Many fruits, such as strawberries, bananas, and apples, are perfect for dipping. On the other hand, not everyone likes chocolate. Add a pot with a caramel/butterscotch and coffee fondue, and you can serve pieces of pound cake, biscotti, and even marshmallows for dipping.

Get creative with your fondue dinner by checking out the many recipes offered online. One important tip no matter how you make a fondue dinner is to always watch your pot temperatures closely so that the contents don't burn.

Fondue dinners are great to try with a crowd or just as an intimate dinner for two. There's nothing like sharing a dipping fork over candlelight to add romance to your relationship.