Hosting a Raclette Dinner Party | FOOD

Raclette is one of my favourite meals and its so much fun for a dinner party – if you love cheese then you’ll definitely enjoy this!

Raclette is served using a table top grill where each guest has their own little pan and can build their own combination of ingredients and top with a piece of raclette cheese. You pop it under the grill and watch the cheese bubble and melt then slide the dish onto your plate and tuck in with salads and bread while you load up your next pan and get it back under the grill.

It’s so great for dinner parties because guests can completely customise their own food and can subtly avoid any ingredients they don’t like. Plus there’s the added fun and wow factor element of doing something so unique for your friends. It’s just an easy, stress free meal. The hardest part is the preparation – just chop up some veg, plate up your cheese and boil some potatoes. There’s no actual cooking required in advance as your guests will cook everything themselves! What’s not to love?

The actual word raclette is the name of a specific type of cheese and the dish itself too. You can buy Raclette cheese in specialist cheese shops but I’ve also managed to find it in Waitrose over the last few years. It’s a mild cheese and comes in thickish slices which melt perfectly – this isn’t a cheese designed to be eaten raw.

The star of the show is without a doubt ALL THE CHEESE. I always buy a selection of three or four different types of cheeses for a bit of variety. My faves are raclette (obvs), sliced edam, sliced smoked applewood and sliced portsalut but to be honest anything goes! Halloumi is also DIVINE if you slice it up and throw it on the grill on top. At my house you’ll also find some mozzerella tucked away in a salad somewhere so this meal really is a total cheese fest.

All you need to get started is a Raclette grill and you can get these at a really reasonable price. I’ve managed to find a few different ones online. Mine is an eight pan set which means that either I can do a really big dinner party or for a group of four – everybody gets two pans.

I also tend to serve some cooked chicken and sliced cooked sausages but I know that prawns go down well with seafood lovers and the occasional beef fillet steak (chopped into smaller pieces) is delicious too. Salami is delicious to throw on the top grill because it goes really nice and crispy. I’ve listed some ideas of the typical things I serve with my raclette dinners below.

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Food for Raclette

Sliced Cheese

Chicken

Sausages

Salami

Chopped Ham

Prawns

Halloumi

Potatoes

Peppers

Asparagus

Mushrooms

There are so many other possibilities with this; you could even do roasted nuts in the pans or prepare mini skewers to cook on the top grill. Serve with a variety of salads and breads and tuck in to all the cheesy deliciousness!

Have you had raclette before?

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