How To Make A Charcuterie Board

I never knew what a Charcuterie board was until a little while ago and I instantly fell in love with them. We had a really fantastic one in Hawaii and it started this new craze for me.

Charcuterie originated in France and translates as “Pork-butcher shop” The original translation refers to pork, but more modern charcuterie boards include more universal foods-cheese, chicken, toast and fruit. It’s more a style of eating. It’s a fun way to present food and make them look really pretty and have a fun variety of things to eat.

They can be pretty and can please many, many people. I always thought they were just for fancy occasions and lately I’ve been giving them to my kids after school or while we have friends over and they are loving it. So I thought I would write up a post to let you all in on the things I do to make my boards fun. These can be simple and just pull things you have from the pantry. That’s what I did on the two I made last week (see above.) I pulled out some pumpkin bread, pistachios, peanuts, cheddar cheese, crackers, homemade jam, caramels and some chocolate treats. All stuff I had on hand, and bam! Everyone loved it. When I’m wanting to really impress everyone I will go a little more all out and buy some more fun cheeses and such.

This is what I would do if I were hosting a party or having people over for dinner and wanted to really WOW them…

To start I would grab a fun board to put all this on. I found a fun one here that I love and would work great for this! Having sides on the board really help keep it all together.

Secondly I would get some great cheese knives. These are both from Walmart and aren’t going to break the bank getting them. If you already have something that works that’s a great idea too!

I did some research on what exactly you should have on a charcuterie board and turns out there were some interesting ideas and I loved their suggestions so I looked through all the info and decided to make up what I love on my board.

Cheese: choose 4

Soft, stinky, hard, and semi hard

• soft cheeses-boursin cheese(comes in a lot of different flavors), Brie, Feta, laughing cow, or camembert
• stinky- blue cheese, gorgonzola, pepper jack, swiss, or roquefort,
• hard-parmesan, manchego, asiago or pecorino
• semi-hard-Cheddar, provolone, gouda, or gruyere

Meat: choose 2

• summer sausage
• salami
• prosciutto
• smoked ham
• dry-cured chorizo

Olives: choose 1

• manzanilla
• kalamata
• Castelvetrano
• arbequina
• picholine
• liguria

Crackers: Choose 3

• multigrain cracker
• rice cracker
• crispbread
• mini naan bread
• ritz cracker
• sea salt cracker

Fruit: Choose 3

• grapes
• raspberries
• blueberries
• orange slices
• dried fuit

Spreads: choose 1-2

• jam or preserve-homemade jam!!!
• honey
• any marmalade

Nuts: choose 2

• pistachio
• salted peanuts
• cinnamon candied almonds
• pecans
• walnuts
• macadamia nuts

Extras

• chocolate of some sort(s’mores mix from Costco)
• dried fruit(craisins, mangos, apricot)
• pickles

Now this might seem overwhelming to look at, but look in your fridge or pantry and get creative. These are just suggestions! There is no wrong or right way to make a board, You can make it festive too and throw in some cranberries and rosemary twigs to make it look Christmas-y. You can spruce it up any way you like, this is also great to customize for people that have allergies or intolerances.

There is no exact way to put all of these items on your board. I simply just started by throwing on my cheeses in different areas of the board and added my crackers around them. I added the biggest things first which would be your cheese and crackers and then filled in the spots with nuts and olives.

Here are some ideas for making a board:

Dinner party

After school snack(create something your kids will love)

Appetizer before thanksgiving diner(I’m doing this!)

Take to a party(you’ll wow them!)

 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you found this helpful! Thank you, we love youuuuu!