Everything You Need to Know to Become a Charcuterie Board Expert
Image: @worldofshanik
Got visions of being the hostess with the mostest? The trick is to produce the perfect charcuterie board—and it’s not as hard as it looks.
However, there are a few tricks to creating a board that will impress even the fussiest of guests. Here are the keys to being the lord of the board.
Keep reading for our advice on:
Meat
Cheese
Condiments
Wine Paring
Presentation
And much, much more.
What Do You Put on a Charcuterie Board?
Ingredients
You’ll need to serve a combination of meats, cheeses, fruit, nuts, and crackers or bread. It’s good to have at least a few from each category, with variety and contrast the aim of the selection. It’s important to consider your audience; are they a cheddar and jatz crowd or a pâté and lavosh group?
Meat
Image: @charcuterie.chick
Unless your group is vegetarian, choose a few different varieties of deli meats. It’s worth adjusting the amount of meat to the ratio of carnivores to non meat-eaters.
Some of our favourites are prosciutto, sopressata, salami (spicy and otherwise), capicola, mortadella and pepperoni.
Cheese
Image: @formaggiocello
Go for a few hard options, at least one soft option and something with a bit of stink. A sharp cheddar, gouda, brie, camembert, manchego, a blue cheese—they’re all good options.
Cheeses should be served at room temperature—the soft ones should be gooey so you have to spread them with the shorter, rounder knife and the hard ones can be cut with the pronged cheese knife.
Marinated and Brined
Olives, sundried tomatoes, roasted capsicum, grilled eggplant, artichokes and pickles of all varieties. Anything oily can be served in tiny dishes, but other things can be drained and served straight on the board.
Condiments
Image: @pointreyescheese
Sweet preserves, honey and jams are a great way to cut through the sharpness or creaminess of the cheese. You can also get more savoury options like tapenade, pesto, dips and chutneys. To take things to the next level, add something fancy, like truffle hot sauce.
Fruit and nuts
Fresh and dried fruits add sweetness and colour to your board. Figs, green apples, grapes and berries are all popular for charcuterie boards. All nuts are good, but almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews and pistachios are some of the most popular. Be wary of guests with nut allergies—you may want to serve the nuts in small dishes to avoid them touching other foods.
Sweets
Why not? Chocolate covered almonds, squares of dark chocolate, even M&Ms, they’re all a great way to keep your sweet tooth friends happy.
Vehicles
Image: @bakeclub_australia
Crackers and bread may be the vehicles for the rest of your goodies, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be exciting in their own right. Fresh sourdough or baguettes pre-cut into bite-sized pieces are good, and it’s nice to offer a couple of different crackers—grab a flavoured kind, some Jatz and some plain water crackers.
Presentation
There are no rules, but if you fill up every space on the board, it gives a greater sense of abundance. Choose a few bigger pieces, such as large wedges of cheese and items served in dishes, and place them first, then fill in the spaces with everything else. Forget order and logic—you want to cultivate a sense of delicious chaos.
Contrast the flavours, colours and textures that sit next to each other to make it look good, but avoid adding inedible decorations.
Consider dietary requirements: Do you need to keep nuts away from other food, or meats away from vegan options, or kosher options separate?
If it doesn’t all fit on the board, add dishes around the board to get everything in there. But make sure you’ve got enough space for the correct utensils—cheese knives, tiny spoons, spreaders—and don’t forget napkins.
Wine
Provide a range—at least one red and one white variety and you may also want a sparkling option. Don’t be stingy with the wine. There’s nothing worse than running out to the wine shop halfway through a fancy evening.
If you want your wine to work a little harder, look at the majority of ingredients on your board. Most meats and cheeses will work well with red wine, which will cut through the salt and fat in the ingredients.
If you’re serving lighter flavours, such as soft cheeses, fruits and simple dips, look to white wines that won’t drown out the ingredients.
And of course, let everyone choose their own wine. Some people will want their favourite drop regardless of what they’re eating.
Bon appetit!
Now that you’ve got the food sorted, it’s time to think drinks. Learn about the service that will bring fine wines straight to your doorstep, here.