Raclette.
Swiss Scraped Melted Cheese with Potatoes
Raclette du Valais · say it: rah-KLET
Raclette is melted cheese scraped straight onto a plate of hot boiled potatoes, and the whole meal is essentially that one move repeated for an hour. A half-wheel of Valais raclette cheese is heated at its cut face until the surface bubbles and slumps, then the molten layer is scraped off with a blade over waxy potatoes still in their skins. The cheese is milder and much fattier than Gruyere, so what you taste is warm milk, salt and a light nutty edge, cut by the vinegar sharpness of cornichons and pickled onions and by a lot of black pepper. It needs no sauce, no technique and barely any recipe. What it needs is time, a table of people, and the discipline to keep serving in small rounds so every plate arrives while the cheese is still flowing.
- Gate
- SwitzerlandValais
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total time
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Status
- Easy
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 780 kcal
- Protein 42 g
- Carbs 45 g
- Fat 46 g
- Fiber 5 g
- Sodium 1600 mg
Why this recipe works.
- Works three ways — half-wheel, tabletop grill, or a hot oven — with the timings and the trade-offs spelled out for each.
- Gets the potatoes right: waxy, skins on, boiled in well-salted water and held hot so the cheese does not seize on contact.
- Correct quantities per person, which is the one thing hosts always get wrong at their first raclette.
- Honest about the accompaniments Valaisans actually put on the table and the ones they do not.
Ingredients.
8 itemsMain
On the table
Equipment
- Raclette wheel heater, tabletop raclette grill, or an oven grill
- Large pot for the potatoes
- Wide flat scraper or palette knife
Instructions.
Boil the potatoes
Put 1 kg of scrubbed potatoes in a large pot, cover with cold water, add the coarse salt and bring to a boil. Simmer for 18 to 22 minutes depending on size, until a thin knife slides into the centre with only slight resistance and the skins have just begun to crack.
Tip Start the potatoes before you turn on the cheese heater — the cheese takes only minutes, the potatoes do not.
Hold them hot
Drain the potatoes, return them to the dry hot pot, cover with a folded tea towel and the lid, and leave them on the lowest heat. They must still be steaming when the cheese hits them, or the melt will set instantly into a skin.
Set the table
Put out the cornichons, pickled onions, pepper grinder and any cured meat in small bowls so everyone can reach them without moving. Warm the plates — cold plates are the second most common way to ruin raclette.
Heat the cheese
If using a wheel heater, set the half-wheel cut face up beneath the element and heat for 4 to 6 minutes, until the surface bubbles, glistens and slumps visibly and the edge nearest the heat starts to brown. With a tabletop grill, fill each coupelle with a thick slice and slide it under for 4 to 5 minutes to the same signals.
Scrape and serve
Split two or three hot potatoes open on each warmed plate, then scrape the molten layer off the wheel across them in one confident sweep with the blade, right up to the browned edge. Grind black pepper over immediately while the surface is still liquid.
Tip Serve those plates now. Do not wait to make the rest — raclette goes round the table in continuous rounds, not in one service.
Keep the rounds going
Push the wheel back under the heat and start the next round while the first is being eaten, adding potatoes to the pot as needed. Carry on until people slow down, which usually takes longer than anyone plans for.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Buy waxy potatoes of an even, smallish size — Charlotte, Ratte, Nicola or new potatoes. Floury bakers collapse into the cheese instead of holding it.
- Keep the cooked potatoes covered and hot in the pan they boiled in. Cheese poured over cold potato stiffens on contact and turns to a rubbery skin.
- Count 200 g of cheese and about 250 g of potatoes per person for a full meal. Guests will eat more raclette than they expect to.
- Grind black pepper over the cheese the moment it lands, while the surface is still liquid — it sticks and blooms, which it will not do a minute later.
- Serve in rounds of two or three plates rather than trying to feed everyone at once. Raclette is meant to arrive continuously, not all at the same moment.
- Cut the rind side of the cheese free but leave the rind on while melting; it acts as a wall that holds the molten cheese on the wheel until you scrape it.
Substitutions.
- Raclette du Valais → French raclette de Savoie, young Morbier, Fontina or a young Appenzeller
- You want a semi-soft washed-rind cheese with high moisture and a smooth melt. Aged hard cheeses like Gruyere or Comte are the wrong choice here — they separate into oil and strands.
- Cornichons and pickled onions → Sharp gherkins, pickled gherkin slices, or quick-pickled red onion
- Some acidity on the plate is not optional. Without it the meal becomes very heavy by the third round.
- Boiled potatoes → Thick slices of dark rye or country bread, lightly toasted
- The older Valais way, and still common. Bread soaks up more cheese, so allow a little extra.
Variations.
- Raclette au feu de bois
- The original: the half-wheel propped beside a wood fire rather than under an electric element. The smoke perfumes the melting face and the edge caramelises harder.
- Tabletop coupelle raclette
- Each guest melts a slice in their own small pan under the grill while cooking meat, mushrooms or peppers on the hot plate above. The everyday Swiss home version.
- Raclette with dried meat
- Valais tradition served alongside viande sechee or Bundnerfleisch and dark rye bread, which turns the meal into a full alpine spread.
Storage & reheating.
Uncut raclette cheese keeps for weeks wrapped in waxed paper in the fridge; once cut, wrap the face tightly and use within a week, as the exposed surface dries and hardens. Melted cheese does not keep well — reheating leftovers is disappointing. Leftover boiled potatoes are the exception and are excellent the next day, sliced and fried in butter until crisp, with any remaining cheese grated over at the end.
Serve with
Hot boiled potatoes in their skins, cornichons, pickled silverskin onions, dried alpine beef, and a glass of dry Fendant or hot black tea.
The story behind Raclette.
The word comes from the French racler, to scrape, and the practice comes from the cowherds of Valais, the deep alpine valley in Switzerland's south-west. A herdsman with a wheel of his own cheese, a fire and a bag of potatoes had everything he needed: prop the cut half of the wheel against the embers, wait for the exposed face to soften, scrape the melted layer onto bread or potatoes, push the wheel back toward the heat and repeat. Cheese made in high summer pastures kept for months and travelled badly, so eating it this way — melting off only what you wanted, when you wanted it — made complete practical sense long before it made restaurant sense.
Raclette du Valais AOP is a protected designation today, made from raw milk in the canton and aged around three to six months, and Valaisans hold firm views about what may and may not sit on the plate beside it. Potatoes, cornichons, pickled silverskin onions, pepper: yes. Cured meat: acceptable. Bread instead of potatoes: a Valais tradition in its own right. Pineapple, mushrooms, curry powder and the small pans of vegetables that the tabletop grill industry encouraged: tolerated in the rest of the country and quietly resented at home.
Most people now meet raclette as a tabletop appliance — a grill with a hot plate on top and little coupelles underneath, each person melting their own slice while cooking something on the surface above. It is sociable and it works, but it is a different dish from the half-wheel version. The wheel produces a thicker, hotter, more caramelised layer with a crisped edge, and it arrives on the plate all at once instead of in a small rectangle. If you can only manage a tabletop grill, run it hot and serve in fast rounds rather than letting each coupelle sit lukewarm, and the gap narrows considerably. What does not change is the rule that raclette is drunk with white wine or hot tea and never rushed.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between raclette and fondue?
Fondue is cheese melted with white wine into a communal pot and eaten with bread on long forks; raclette is cheese melted at a cut face and scraped, undiluted, over potatoes on individual plates. Fondue uses aged hard cheeses that need wine and starch to melt smoothly. Raclette uses a softer, higher-moisture cheese that melts cleanly on its own.
Can I make raclette without any special equipment?
Yes. Cut the cheese into slices about 5 mm thick, lay them in a shallow ovenproof dish or in individual small dishes, and put them under a hot grill or in an oven at 220 C for 5 to 8 minutes, until molten with brown blistered spots. Slide it straight onto hot potatoes. It is not quite the wheel experience but it is genuinely close.
How much cheese should I buy per person?
About 200 g per person for raclette as a main course, more if your guests are enthusiastic or if the meal will run long. For a lighter meal or one course among several, 150 g each is enough. Buy a piece with a good flat cut face rather than pre-sliced cheese if you can, as slices dry out fast.
Which potatoes work best and should I peel them?
Use small waxy varieties such as Charlotte, Ratte, Nicola or new potatoes, boiled in well-salted water until a knife slides in with slight resistance. Leave the skins on: they hold the potato together under hot cheese and are traditional. Guests can peel their own at the table if they prefer.
Why did my cheese turn oily and stringy?
Either the cheese was too aged and hard for melting, or the heat was too high for too long. Raclette cheese should melt at a moderate heat and slump smoothly within a few minutes. If you used Gruyere, Comte or another long-aged wheel, the fat will separate no matter what you do — switch to a semi-soft washed-rind cheese.
What do you drink with raclette?
Dry white wine from Valais, above all Fendant, or another crisp high-acid white. Hot black tea is the traditional non-alcoholic partner and is genuinely common in Switzerland. Cold water and beer are widely believed locally to make the cheese sit heavily, which is folklore rather than physiology, but the tea does taste right.
You might also like.
All recipes →
Keep exploring Switzerland.
Switzerland has 9 more dishes in the atlas — Älplermagronen and Basler Mehlsuppe, and 7 more.
Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 19, 2026 · updated August 19, 2026