What’s not to love about ooey, gooey, melted cheese served over your starch of choice?

This gif just posted to Reddit’s food community introduced many to the gloriousness that is raclette.

Behold:



The term raclette is, in part, a name for the cheese itself. The semi-firm cheese made from cow’s milk normally comes in wheel-form and is primarily used for melting like you see above. Which sounds pretty ideal to us, really.

Raclette is also the name of a beloved Swiss dish typically consumed in the wintertime: The cheese round is heated under a a heat lamp-like contraption or by a fire, and then simply scraped off the wheel and onto plates—and sometimes directly onto bread or even potatoes.

The peasant origins of raclette appear in medieval writings dating as far back as 1291. Swiss cow herders would bring raclette with them for long journeys while transporting cows from place to place. The herders would place the cheese by the campfire and simply scrape it onto bread at mealtime.

Oh, and by the way, in Switzerland, Domino’s actually sells a raclette pizza:

And for those of you lucky enough to live close to the San Francisco Bay area, the much beloved Cowgirl Creamery sometimes serves up raclette on weekends: