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Fondue Pots
By Andrew Long | January 31, 2009
If you want to start enjoying delicious fondue in the comforts of your own home, the first thing you’ll need is a fondue pot. But there’s some things you should know before you buy your first fondue pot.
What types of fondue do you plan on making? There’s cheese, chocolate, hot oil and even broth fondue. When making hot oil and broth fondue, you skewer raw meats like chicken, pork or beef and cook them in the fondue pot. Knowing what you want to make before buying the pot is important. Not all pots can get hot enough to cook meats.
Those old fashioned fondue pots with a small tea light candle underneath them are cute but not very effective at melting cheese. If you get one of those, you’ll have to heat your ingredients on the stove and then move them into the fondue pot on the dinner table. The best way to go is an electric hot pot. Just turn the dial and it heats up. No open flame to worry about and even the most stubborn chocolate will melt nicely in an electric fondue pot.
Another great new feature that some fondue pots have is a magnetic cord that just snaps apart if pulled. This comes in very handy if you have pets or children who never sit still and may trip over the electric cord. Chocolate covered pets are probably pretty hard to clean so these new snap off cords really come in handy.
Having the right amount of fondue forks is always important. If you only have four forks, then you can only have four guests. Try to find a fondue pot that not only comes with forks but also try to find one that comes with at least six of them. Otherwise you’ll have to buy a separate set of fondue forks and you’ll probably worry about the new set matching the old set and just wind up spending too much money on something as silly as forks.
If you want to cook hot oil fondue or broth fondue, you’ll need some control over how hot the fondue pot is getting. An electronic thermostat is the easiest possible way to do this. If the recipe requires that the oil be heated to 350 degrees fahrenheit, then you would just turn the dial to 350. It doesn’t get easier than that. Otherwise you’ll have to break out a thermometer and have to adjust the heat up and down to maintain the correct cooking temperature.
Let’s face it, you’ll never want to make fondue if it takes forever to clean up the fondue pot. So having a non-stick coating is very important. Just imagine how hard it would be to scrub burnt chocolate off of the bottom of a pot and you’ll opt for the non-stick pot.
A dishwasher safe fondue pot is the easiest thing in the world to clean because all you have to do is put it in the dishwasher. If you have a dishwasher in your house, then you should make a point of trying to find a dishwasher safe fondue pot.
While I don’t recommend moving a hot fondue pot, a cool touch handle is a valuable feature if you have to. Some recipes are more complicated than others and require you to heat ingredients up on the stove and then transfer them to the fondue pot. Having a cool touch handle makes this job a little easier.
And if you’re cooking hot oil fondue be sure not to use one of those old fashioned ceramic fondue pots. The high temperature of the oil could crack the ceramic pot and then scalding hot oil will get everywhere. If you want to make chocolate, cheese and hot oil fondue then you should go with an all purpose fondue pot made of stainless steel.
If you buy a new fondue pot at the store or online, if you make sure that it has at least of a few of these features, you’ll be on your way to making an enjoyable fondue meal.
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