Oil fondue ideas.

December 30, 2004 4:57 PM

Fondue filter: Every New Year's Eve, I make a cheese fondue, but this year, I'd like to try an asian oil-based version instead. Besides beef, carrots and mushrooms, what else can I dip? (More recipe info. inside.)
posted by sophie to food & drink (16 answers total)

Shrimp is great in fondue, especially with nice spicy (chili/lime/garlic/etc) dipping sauce.
posted by Dr. Wu at 4:59 PM on December 30, 2004

My SO really wants to try a fondue recipe that consists of oil and butter (Mongolian Hot Pot.) It suggests using beef that's marinated in sugar, rice wine and soy sauce. I was wondering if any seafood, fowl, or other vegetables could be used in a recipe like this. (Unlike my SO, I don't eat red meat.)

(On preview, thanks Dr. Wu. Keep 'em coming!)
posted by sophie at 5:05 PM on December 30, 2004

most seafood--scallops, chunks of fish...

chicken will work too

and tempura-ish veggies.
posted by amberglow at 5:31 PM on December 30, 2004

do a plum sauce for the chicken : >
posted by amberglow at 5:32 PM on December 30, 2004

Does the chicken need to be cooked at all (or sliced really thin) before dipping for food safety?

(By the way, my cookbook is limited when it comes to asian recipes, but I keep using it because the
pictures are so inspiring!)
posted by sophie at 5:42 PM on December 30, 2004

nope, just that you have to cook it thoroughly. i'd do small pieces anyway.

this is a good recipe too
posted by amberglow at 5:53 PM on December 30, 2004

be careful---the oil gets really hot, and can spatter when you put something in.
posted by amberglow at 6:05 PM on December 30, 2004

Get those little frozen won tons and some sauce for dipping. They fry up wonderfully in oil.

Also, chunks of good tuna, dipped just for a minute, are excellent. Assuming it's very good tuna, just dip for a second so that's still raw inside, sashimi-style. Then dip in a nice sesame-wasabi sauce. MMmmmm.
posted by Miko at 7:27 PM on December 30, 2004

One kind of Chinese fondue is done with hot simmering broth - some plain, some spicy. They bring you seafood (squid, cuttlefish, scallops, shrimp) and beef, but not things that have to be cooked with closer attention like chicken and pork. Watercress is the usual vegetable and you can have thin rice noodles that cook almost instantly. I like having mushrooms too. Most things are thinly sliced, shrimps and scallops are left whole, and there are dipping sauce: a soy-vinegar sauce, a hot pepper and oil sauce, and hoisin sauce. You need chopsticks and maybe some kind of skewers. It's fun, and at the end you can drink the broth as soup.
posted by zadcat at 7:29 PM on December 30, 2004

Firm tofu, fried and chilled or plain, cubed. The paper-thin sliced beef that they call shabu-shabu in Korean as well, mostly, is magificent, but that's best dipped in boiling stock, not oil, like zadcat is talking about. Slices of bok choi go nicely with this. Pieces of those monster white radishes (again, usually called daikon after the Japanese name, at least in NAmerica).


It suggests using beef that's marinated in sugar, rice wine and soy sauce.

This is very similar to a signature Korean dish -- bulgogi , which literally means fire-meat. Good stuff.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:57 PM on December 30, 2004

stavros, you have no idea how jealous I am that you get to eat authentic bulgogi on a regular basis.

also, small cubes of bread (as long as you have the oil very hot) can be lovely if very briefly dipped into the fondue pot. I'd also nth the suggestion for tuna, and would like to also suggest duck (in small and manageable pieces), or even something like ostrich or emu.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:20 PM on December 30, 2004

You can dip your balls in it!


(If anyone remembers The State that is.)
posted by o0o0o at 11:16 PM on December 30, 2004

One kind of Chinese fondue is done with hot simmering broth - some plain, some spicy. They bring you seafood (squid, cuttlefish, scallops, shrimp) and beef, but not things that have to be cooked with closer attention like chicken and pork. Watercress is the usual vegetable and you can have thin rice noodles that cook almost instantly. I like having mushrooms too. Most things are thinly sliced, shrimps and scallops are left whole, and there are dipping sauce: a soy-vinegar sauce, a hot pepper and oil sauce, and hoisin sauce. You need chopsticks and maybe some kind of skewers. It's fun, and at the end you can drink the broth as soup.

Huh, I never thought of it as something as fancy as fondue. I prefer calling it steamboat/"da-been-lo". :)
posted by christin at 2:15 AM on December 31, 2004

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. We're going to try to get tuna, scallops, shrimp, chicken and some of the veggies mentioned above. Because we're in Nebraska, our choices may be limited to whatever fresh fish our market carries. I'm so glad you recommended sauces, too. I've never made this type of fondue, and it hadn't occured to me that I'd need them- but they seem crucial now. We're planning on hot mustard, soy/wasabi/ginger, plum sauce and a chili sauce.

And we're definitely going to try some of the other suggestions in the near future - especially wontons, duck and the broth fondue zadcat describes.
posted by sophie at 3:20 PM on December 31, 2004

Rutabaga is amazing, at least when using hot chicken broth rather than oil. Shiitake mushrooms are also very good.

We use my homemade chicken stock, cook chicken, various veggies, then rice noodles in the resulting broth.
posted by QIbHom at 8:30 PM on December 31, 2004

The fondue suggestions were great and I'm glad I used AskMeFi. We ended up with the beef, chicken, scallops, shrimp, shitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots and about 7 different sauces (Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese variations.) We finished eating at 11:58, and my boyfriend passed out from all the food consumption at 12:10. My cats have strewn the scallop and shrimp bits from their dish into their little hiding spots and are sleeping soundly before they return to graze.

We're definitely trying a broth or just plain oil next time. Because my book was clearly published before people considered 1 pound of butter per 2 cups oil in a pot excessive, it seemed wicked buttery to us using the recipe 30 years later.
posted by sophie at 11:14 PM on December 31, 2004