Camp Cheese Fondue
Powdered cheese sauce with real gruyere melted in, thickened over a stove and eaten off bread chunks.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 113
- protein
- 28 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 10 min
- total time
- 15 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Snack
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Gruyere | 8 oz | grated at home; a hard aged wheel keeps for days out of a fridge |
|---|---|---|
| Swiss cheese | 4 oz | grated at home with the gruyere |
| Chicken bouillon | 1 tsp | stands in for 1 cup of stock |
| Cornstarch | 1 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1/2 tsp | replaces the crushed clove |
| Lemon juice | 1 tsp | from a squeeze bottle, or a pinch of citric acid |
| Paprika and nutmeg | a dash of each | |
| Baguette or dense bread | 1 loaf | cut into chunks; crackers and apples work too |
Method
- Toss the grated cheese with the cornstarch in the bag before you leave home. It keeps the cheese from clumping and does the thickening later.
- At camp, bring 300 ml of water to a simmer with the bouillon and garlic powder. Do not let it boil hard.
- Turn the flame as low as it goes. Add the cheese by the handful, stirring after each one until it disappears.
- Stir in the lemon juice, paprika, and nutmeg. The acid keeps the sauce from breaking into oil and rubber.
- Kill the heat and eat straight from the pot. Dip bread chunks on a fork or a stick.
Fondue is stove cooking, not one-pot dump cooking, and the only thing standing between you and a pot of greasy strings is temperature. Cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat above a simmer, so the flame stays low from the moment the cheese goes in. The cornstarch and the lemon juice are both insurance: starch holds the emulsion together, acid keeps the protein from knitting into a ball.
The original called for a cup of chicken stock and a fondue pot. Bouillon and water do the same job at a fraction of the weight, and any pot over a low flame works. Hard aged cheese is the one perishable here, and it will sit two or three days out of a cooler without trouble. Grate it at home; grating in camp is misery and you lose half of it.
Packing
Grate the cheese at home, toss it with the cornstarch, and pack it in a zip bag. Bouillon, garlic powder, and spices go in a small tube together. Cheese rides in the middle of the pack where it stays coolest.
Variations
- Vegetable bouillon in place of chicken makes it vegetarian.
- Dried apple rings and hard salami round it out into a full dinner.
- A splash of the pot water at the end loosens it back up if it stiffens.
https://homeandkind.com/blogs/food-recipes/cheese-fondue