Acquiring Creativity: Tips for the Perfect Charcuterie Board
For us here at The Edge, as soon as it hits fall, 1950s jazz tunes are turned on, candles are lit, our wardrobes are restocked with sweaters and scarves and cozy parties and movie nights become all the more appealing. A charcuterie board is the perfect addition to any fall festivity.
It may seem like a complicated task, but in embracing the creative process, you’d be surprised at the art you can create even with a few ingredients. Let’s walk through the process.
Elements:
Assortment of meats: “Charcuterie” is French for an assortment of meats like prosciutto, sausage and salami. However, tradition aside, I think you can make some pretty nice spreads while leaving meats out.
Hard cheese and soft cheese: The best boards have opportunities to scoop & spread as well as stack. Diverse textures of cheese allow for this.
Seasonal fruits with different sizes and textures: Have fruits that are good fillers, like handfuls of berries and figs, as well as sliced fruits like apples and nectarines that take up a good amount of space and fan out well. You can also intermix dried and fresh fruit.
Nuts or seeds: I love adding maple glazed or rosemary roasted nuts to my boards.
Bread/crackers: It is usually best to use both; bread for the soft cheeses and crackers for the hard cheeses.
Dark chocolate or something sweet
Olives (awesome fillers!)
Garnishing elements: Crispy fava beans, olive oil drizzle (my fav is Graza), balsamic glaze, honey and flakey salt, to name a few!
Look in your pantry/fridge and grab anything!
The ingredients are not nearly as important as the assemblage. You can create a pretty beautiful spread with even just three or four of the options above! The key is in the interplay between textures, shapes and asymmetry.
Tips for assembling your board:
Start with the big ingredients — I typically place the biggest cheese I plan to use on the board first. It doesn’t necessarily have to be centered, but just a starting point to build on. From there, I will cluster crackers, meats or fruit around the cheese, bunched and layered.
Cut ingredients into different shapes and at different angles.
Abandon all traditional standards of beautiful plating — embrace unevenness, asymmetry and rustic elegance (paradoxically true, I promise).
Layer elements — fanning crackers and fruit, mixing berries or overlaying different meats, clustering nuts and folding or bunching meats provide an effortless comfort to the board.
Fill those gaps as you assemble — if you run out of bigger elements, grab some seeds or berries and sprinkle in the gaps. The most satisfying boards completely cover the surface area.
All this to say, the perfect board is what you make of it. To acquire any skill involves welcoming the creative process and finding excitement in trial and error. The best boards embrace imperfections or unevenness and lean into jagged beauty. So start in a clean kitchen, turn on some music, pour your favorite beverage, lay out your ingredients and get to charcuterie-ing!