Typical Switzerland Food

Posted on 06/25/2021 | About Switzerland

Culinary Switzerland is a gourmet’s paradise to be explored afresh wherever you go as the menu in addition to a modest number of national dishes mainly features regional specialities.

Swiss cuisine combines influences from the German, French and North Italian cuisine. However, it varies greatly from region to region with the language divisions constituting a rough boundary outline. Mind you, many dishes have crossed the local borders and become firm favourites throughout Switzerland. These dishes include, among others:

Cheese fondue

Melted cheese with bread cubes. The bread cubes are picked up on the fork and swivelled in the melted cheese, which is served in a traditional ceramic fondue pot called ‘caquelon’.

Raclette

Melted cheese served with "Gschwellti" (jacket potatoes), cocktail gherkins and onions as well as pickled fruit.

Älplermagronen

A kind of gratin with potatoes, macaroni, cheese, cream and onions. And most importantly, stewed apple on the side.

This is a traditional Swiss dish served on the slopes of the Alps. I like to top it with chunky apple sauce and crunchy onions to serve.

Ingredients

Ingredient Checklist

• 3 potatoes, scrubbed
• 1 (12 ounce) package uncooked elbow macaroni
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 large onions, peeled and sliced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ½ cup shredded Gruyere cheese
• ¾ cup heavy cream
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Instructions Checklist

• Step 1Place the potatoes in a large pot and fill with enough water to cover them. Bring to a boil and cook until tender enough to pierce with a fork. Drain and cool slightly, then remove the peels, and slice into 1/4 inch thick slices.
• Step 2Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x9 inch baking dish.
• Step 3Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add macaroni and cook until barely tender, about 6 minutes. Drain and set aside.
• Step 4Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; cook and stir until onion starts to turn translucent. Stir in the garlic, and cook for a few more minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
• Step 5Layer the macaroni, onions and potatoes into the prepared baking dish. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the shredded Gruyere cheese over the top, and drizzle cream evenly over the entire dish.
• Step 6Bake in the preheated oven until the top is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes

Röste

A flat, hot cake made of grated, cooked jacket or raw potatoes and fried in hot butter or fat. The dish is bound by nothing apart from the starch contained in the potatoes.

Birchermüesli

Developed around about 1900 by the Swiss doctor Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Brenner, it contains oat flakes, lemon juice, condensed milk, grated apples, hazelnuts or almonds.

Swiss chocolate

Chocolate came to Europe in the course of the 16th century, by the 17th century at the very latest it became known and was produced in Switzerland as well. In the second half of the 19th century Swiss chocolate started to gain a reputation abroad. The invention of milk chocolate by Daniel Peter as well as the development of conching (fondant chocolate) by Rodolphe Lindt were closely connected with the rise of Swiss chocolate's renown. But Switzerland not only exported chocolate, its chocolatiers went abroad as well and their names remain well-known to this day: the Josty brothers, who opened their famous chocolate shop in Berlin or Salomon Wolf and Tobias Béranger who ran the famous Café Chinois in St. Petersburg. The Cloetta brothers opened chocolate factories in Scandinavia while Karl Fazer established the first confectionary shop in Helsinki; later this developed into the Cloetta-Fazer brand. Even Belgian chocolate has Swiss roots: Jean Neuhaus opened a confectionary shop in Brussels and his son Frédéric in 1912 invented the praline chocolate. To find out more about Swiss chocolate visit Verbands Schweizerischer Schokoladefabrikanten.

Swiss cheese

One could quite easily explore Switzerland travelling from cheese dairy to cheese dairy. Each area of the country, each region has its own types of cheese – the diversity of products created from one single base ingredient – good Swiss milk – is quite astonishing! Such as, for example, the soft and melting Vacherin cheese. The aromatic Appenzeller. The full-flavoured Sbrinz. The Emmentaler, famous for its big holes. The world-famous Gruyère. Or the Tête de Moine which is shaved into decorative rosettes. All of these – and their round about 450 other cheese siblings – make a fondue, a raclette, an «afternoon snack platter» a culinary experience. By the way, the stalls of farmers and cheese merchants at the weekly markets are a true treasure trove. Many of the cheeses sold there come straight from the Alpine pastures and are cut from the wheel. The many demonstration cheese dairies and Alpine cheese cellars are also well worth a visit.