Winter's deep chill has arrived, and you can expect it to stay here for a few months. Forget salads for dinner; our bodies need food that coats our bellies and warms our hearts. And few dishes heat us like cheese fondue, the perfect dish with which to greet cold friends coming to your home for dinner.

When was the last time you dunked bread cubes into a simmering soup of liquid cheese? Fondue went out of fashion in the 1980s, but only after it had been in fashion so long that it became trite. Only in the last few years have food magazines unearthed their old fondue features. Dig your fondue pot out of the closet, or pull it off that high shelf, and whip together a batch for you and your friends to enjoy.

Photo by Melissa Schneider

Good cheese—and you should use good cheese—varies from batch to batch and producer to producer, so adjust your mixture as the cheese and your taste dictates. When we assemble cheese fondue, we grate 2 parts Emmenthaler, 2 parts Gruyere, and 1 part Appenzeller, but we don't add it all to the bowl at once. Taste each individually, and then combine about 90% of each cheese in a large bowl. Dig your hands into the mixture, and toss the grated cheese until it's well combined. Taste a pinch. Too sharp? Add a pinch of Emmenthaler to mellow it. Lacks depth? Add more Gruyere. Too bland? Add Appenzeller. Adjust, re-toss, and try again. Of course, you can use any good melting cheese you'd like, and the same technique will get you a great fondue each time.

For 1 pound of grated cheese, rub the side of a fondue pot with a cut garlic clove, and then bring 2/3 cup dry white wine (see below) to a boil in that pot. Add the cheese and stir it until it melts into a thick pool. Mix 1 tablespoon cornstarch with 3 tablespoons kirsch, a cherry brandy, and add that mix to the bubbling cheese. Stir the mixture very well, and then let the cheese bubble softly over low heat to remove the starch flavor. Use that lull to slice bread into spearable cubes, which we like to put in one large bowl for dinner guests to share. Move the fondue pot to a Sterno flame on the table, and start spearing chunks of bread.

You can't go wrong with a Savoie wine to accompany your fondue. The vibrant, minerally white wine, made in the shadow of the Alps, has a modest price tag and a regional affinity for liquid cheese. Any similar wine, Grüner Veltliner perhaps—would be a fine match, if your local wine store lacks a Savoie selection. Either way, use the wine you're going to drink in the fondue itself, which may require you to buy an extra bottle.

Dueling fondue forks and porous, slippery bread have spawned a wealth of traditions centered around fondue eaters who drop their bread cubes into the goop. The men in the SFist test kitchen enjoy the rule that requires women to kiss each man at the table when she drops a bread cube, but everyone likes the rule that requires a man to buy a bottle of wine for the table for his own slip of the skewer. Perhaps here we should dictate that women buy the wine and men deliver kisses. But we wouldn't discard the old tradition that gives a special prize to the adept bread cube handler who never loses control of the fondue fork: the deep brown cheese crust that forms at the bottom of the pot as the night wears on.

Do you have an old fondue pot in need of some love? Prefer a different mix of cheeses? Let us know in the comments.