What is one of the most popular lunch dishes in Switzerland?
Rösti is a potato dish made by frying (or occasionally baking) flat round patties of coarsely grated raw or parboiled (semi-cooked), seasoned potato in oil. Sometimes bacon, onion, cheese are added to the mix. It’s eaten as a side dish to accompany fried eggs and spinach or a sausage meat called fleischkäse.
Raclette
Raclette is the name of a very popular meal in Switzerland. Made from cow’s milk (slightly nutty, a little like gruyère) slices of raclette are melted in table-top raclette pans or grills, and accompanied by potatoes cooked in their skins, vegetables, charcuterie, pickled gerkins, onions and bread.
Zurchergeschnetzeltes
This translates as ‘cut meat Zurich style’, usually the dish will be made using strips of veal (calf meat) and sometimes veal liver. The veal is cooked with mushrooms, onions, wine and cream and usually eaten with rösti (see above), noodles or rice.
Berner platte
Berner platte (‘Bernese platter’) consists of a whole range of meats and sausages – beef, ham, smoked bacon, smoked beef and pork tongue, spare ribs, pork knuckle, pork loin and shoulder, marrow bone – plus some juniper-flavoured sauerkraut, potatoes and dried beans in there, too.
Bündnerfleisch
In Switzerland’s eastern mountains, they have perfected the art of air drying beef. Traditional Bündnerfleisch meat has been cured and dried for 10 to 15 weeks in the clear Alpine air. A must-eat delicacy while in Switzerland!
Tartiflette was conceived near the French-Swiss border in the department of Haute-Savoie, home to the local Reblochon cheese.
Leeks with potatoes and sausage (Papet Vaudois)
Papet Vaudois is best described as a mash of leeks and potatoes that are stewed for hours. The result is an earthy, onion-tinged mixture that makes the perfect root bed for fat sausage, unique to the canton of Vaud (saucisson Vaudois).
Basel-style roasted flour soup
It was once said that a girl from Basel could not marry until she knew how to make roasted flour soup. Though there are countless ways to make the dish, at its most basic, it is simply flour, butter, onion and beef stock, topped with a reserved grating of Gruyere.
