Gourmetten: a dinner you cook yourself, and a campaign that may have started it

By Rafe Calder

It has nothing to do with fine dining. The word looks French and the meal is not. Everyone at the table cooks their own food in a tiny pan on a shared hotplate, and the evening takes as long as it takes.

What it is

I Am Expat, a magazine for the international community, describes a Dutch Christmas dining tradition in which people gather around a tabletop hotplate and cook meat, fish, vegetables, even small pancakes and omelettes, in tiny pans. It compares the device to a Swiss raclette and stresses that the point is to be “gezellig”, the Dutch word for cosy togetherness.

DutchReview, a Dutch culture site, adds that it is also done at New Year, on winter birthdays and on ordinary evenings, and describes the supermarket “gourmetschotel”, a pre-packed meat set with beef, chicken, turkey, pork and processed items such as slavinken, which are minced meat rolls wrapped in bacon.

Where did it come from?

The four sources do not agree.

Vice, in a piece dated 25 December 2014, says gourmetten “originally hailed from Switzerland”, and adds that how it reached the Netherlands is unknown, even to its pioneers.
DutchReview also says it originally came from Switzerland.
I Am Expat gives two accounts, neither confirmed: that it came from the Dutch East Indies, and that it was the result of a 1970s campaign.
Learn Dutch, a language site, says the tradition grew popular in the late 1970s and does not give an earlier origin.

The campaign

Vice gives the most detail, and it is a single account. It says that in 1977 the Dutch Meat Office saw cheese fondue growing in popularity and feared that in a dairy country cheese would overtake meat. It hired two representatives of a butchers’ interest group, who toured the Netherlands from the late 1970s for more than 20 years.

Learn Dutch tells the same story in fewer words: butchers and the meat industry ran a campaign as fondue gained ground, with the slogan “Gourmet, probeer ‘t eens!” I Am Expat says the former Dutch Meat Office hired two chefs to tour the country. DutchReview says two chefs toured the country in the 1970s promoting the dish to Dutch housewives.

Vice calls the two men butchers’ representatives, and I Am Expat calls them chefs. We keep both words.

Which day

Learn Dutch says the Dutch Christmas holiday spans up to three dinner days: Christmas Eve, the first Christmas Day and the second Christmas Day, and that gourmet can appear on any of them. I Am Expat says it is part of Dutch Christmas but gives no day.

Dates in order

1977: the Dutch Meat Office approaches the two promoters (Vice).
Late 1970s: the tradition grows popular (Learn Dutch).
More than 20 years: the touring promotion continues (Vice).
25 December 2014: Vice publishes.

At the table

DutchReview and Learn Dutch both say the smell lingers. I Am Expat advises patience with the cooking.

Questions a buyer would ask

Do I need a special set? The sources describe a tabletop hotplate or grill with small individual pans. DutchReview compares it to a raclette device. None of them names a brand or a model, and we name none.

Is it only meat? No. All three descriptions list fish, vegetables or pancakes as well.

What we left out

We left out the sauces and drinks the sources list, because some include alcohol, and every price and supermarket brand.

Quick answers

What is gourmetten? According to I Am Expat, a Dutch Christmas dinner in which people cook meat, fish, vegetables or pancakes in tiny pans on a tabletop hotplate.

Where does it come from? Vice and DutchReview say Switzerland. I Am Expat gives the Dutch East Indies and a 1970s meat campaign as two unconfirmed accounts.

Roam first. Shop later.

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