by Beth
It’s a wisemommies’s tradition to do fondue for New Year’s Eve. We do a cheese, meat and then chocolate fondue. Stemming from a European tradition, where many have Raclette or Fondue for New Year’s Eve, we wisemommies thought to also fondue into the New Year, every year.
Click here for that post!The post shows a traditional and yummy fondue recipe, hot to, step by step ingredients and preparations along with videos!
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Below is how I made our meat fondue course which follows our cheese fondue course. With young kids, on their plates I keep it simple, plain chicken, plain beef, shrimp, and mushrooms.
Wisemommies’s Meat Fondue
The meats I used this year
Chicken
Chicken (marinated in garlic)
Beef
Beef (marinated in teriyaki)
Shrimp
Mushrooms
Ravioli
*Our marinated chicken and beef has been the most popular amongst all adults
** For our meats, we bought, cut and prepared the day before our fondue day. Once cut, we put the different meats into baggies and refrigerated. For the marinated chicken we added minced garlic into the baggie and teriyaki into the baggie with beef.
Our meat batter
We make a tempura batter. You can dip any meat into the tempura batter before placing into the oil to fondue. You can also dip the meat into the oil without tempura batter, but the batter adds a nice flavor to your meat!
Tempura Batter: In a bowl, mix the following together until you have a thick consistency, so add more flour until very thick. Serves 7 people
3-4 egg yolk(s)
4-5 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
3 cups cold water
Oil in the Pot
We use a whole bottle of Canola Oil which fills up the whole pot or nearly fills up the post and then extra virgin oil. You can also use vegetable or peanut oil.
You want the pot filled up with enough oil that everyone can stick their fondue forks in and reach the oil. If you have the oil in the pot too low then it makes it harder for many to get their food cooked.
My favorite fondue cooking pot is Cuisinart Electric Fondue Maker. This pot is really great, easy to cook, easy to clean, and works perfectly for my cheese and meat fondue.My Cuisinart fondue pot was a wedding gift and it has been well-used and cherished.
The cord that came with our fondue pot is not long enough for us to set it in the middle of our table and still allow everyone to reach the pot so we added an extension cord. 
We use Trudeau Stainless Steel Forks for all our cheese and meat fondue. I have three sets so that all family members and guests are sure to have two of their own color coded forks. The color coding is important so you don’t forget which fork is yours cooking in the pot.
Let the oil heat up, in the pot, you should see some bubbles letting you know it’s hot enough to start cooking.
Our sauces
Once you have cooked your meat in the oil pot, fondue, you can eat away or you can further your palate by dipping the meat into a chosen sauce. These are the sauces we make.
1) Teriyaki sauce (This sauce is nearly always a favorite by all. I just find a ready-made teriyaki sauce via the grocery store to use)
2) Curried Yogurt Dipping Sauce #1
Combine 2tsp curry paste, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 2tsp brown sugar, 4 tsp grated onion, 6 Tbsp mayonnaise, and 6 Tbsp plain yogurt
3) Curried Yogurt Dipping Sauce #2
Combine 4 tbsp. butter, 1 cup plain yogurt, 1 tbsp. yellow curry powder, ¼ tsp. garlic powder, and ¼ tsp. kosher salt
4) Instead of one of the above, you could buy a ready made honey-mustard dipping sauce or some other ready-made dipping sauce that you think might work well with your family’s taste buds.
Before dipping meat into any sauce, make sure everyone has cooked their meat, take the meat off the fondue fork and use a regular dinner fork for dipping and eating on their plate. Once we saw how much fun our kids had with fondue, we also invested in fondue plates. These are perfect as you can use the dividers for sauces and pile all the food together. You can see in the picture to the right, with my son about to cook his meat, the black fondue plate separating sauces and meats beside him. The tempura batter is in the individual, yellow, square serving plate.
Approximate fondue cooking times for raw meat, seafood and vegetables:
Beef: 1 minute
Seafood: 2 minutes
Pork: 1 minute
Poultry: 2-3 minutes
Veggies: 3-5 minutes
* When we fondue with our children, we keep the heat of the oil a little lower so we double the above cooking time and usually take a quick glance at their cooked food just to make sure it is cooked!
Click below for our meat fondue video showing our meats and sauces.
http://youtu.be/5g8Xg-2pVhU
Enjoy some more wisdom:
How to do a Meat Fondue Cheese Fondue Recipe Fondue Traditions for New Year’s Eve How to make Chocolate Fondue
