How to Make a DIY Charcuterie Board
A DIY charcuterie board of epic proportions for a rooftop celebration! I'm sharing the pics and breaking down how to make a charcuterie board!
When my sister’s now-fiancé planned a surprise engagement party for the weekend they got engaged, I, of course, offered to bring the cheese board. My sister and I have a shared deep love of cheese and I wanted to put something together that would make her proud.
I started with my friend, the Internet, for inspo. Have you guys googled cheeseboards? Holy cow, there are some framed art worthy boards out there. I really wanted ideas for using color and for making it big and bold.
We ended up with 2 charcuterie boards because I went overboard on the amount of snacks that I wanted to include. V on brand.
When I’m building a cheese board, here are the things I try to include:
How to Make a Charcuterie Board
Soft and creamy cheeses
Ideas: I love tangy goat and creamy Brie or chèvre. I often buy a goat cheese rolled in something sweet, like dried blueberries or made with honey. Brie is amazing with some fig jam on top!
Hard, sharp cheeses
Ideas: I love blue cheese. I like it veiny, stinky and drizzled with honey.
A standard mild cheese
Ideas: any cheddar, Kerrygold Dubliner, little mozzarella pearls or Manchego
Something salty and briny
Ideas: olives!!!!!! Preferably pitted but whatevs no one will care either way because olives are the GOAT
Salty Italian meats
Ideas: prosciutto, salami, capicola or even turkey pepperoni
A dip - or many dips!
Ideas: hummus or multiple hummuses (hummai?), and Tzatziki or spinach dip are also great. Basically any good looking store bought dip!
Something sweet
Ideas: fig jam will always always have a place on my cheeseboard. Or honey. Or hot honey. Or all of the above. Every.single.time.
A little heat
Ideas: I chose hot honey for this board but a spicy charcuterie would also be cool. Or spiced or smokey nuts. Be aware of nut allergies though.
Something fresh
Ideas: fresh fruit like grapes (great for color too!) or dried fruit, cherry tomatoes, carrots, celery, cucumbers. Love all of these as a palette refresher. I picked up these gorgeous dried orange slices from Trader Joe's and people kept asking about them. Yes, they were totally edible!
Great crackers
Ideas: I tried lots of different crackers here and I loved the variety. My favorite crackers include wafer crackers, fig and olive crisps from Trader Joe’s and old fashioned Club multigrain crackers (srsly these are the BEST). Parmesan crisps can also take the place of crackers!
Of course not every cheese board requires this amount of variety! For smaller gatherings, I pick 3-4 of these and that’s plenty! For a larger party, I went all out and had all of the above lol. You can also adjust for special diets. When I’m keto’ing, I use more veg like cucumbers with spinach dip and Parmesan crisps instead of crackers.
And to put it together, I typically have some sort of vision in my head of how I want to lay it out. I like to have color throughout. If the brie is meant to go with the fig jam, then I put it next to the fig jam. Otherwise, you really can't go wrong!
I’m really happy with how these turned out. Next time I’ll try to incorporate a bit more green into the board a la Ina Garten and her fig leaves (where can I get those btw?) but generally I like the balance of colors, varieties and flavors here.
What do you think? What are your cheeseboard must haves?
