Making a charcuterie board is a super fun and easy way to avoid cooking dinner. All you need to do is open some packages and wash some fruit and you are set 🙂 I made this slightly halloween themed board last night for dinner. You can really apply any holiday or theme to a charcuterie board. Here are some ideas:
Meats/Cheeses – This is the main component of most charcuterie boards. The great thing is that you can completely tailor any component of these boards to your own tastes. I like to have a variety of salami and 2 or 3 kinds of cheese. We really love aged cheddar and blue cheese so I often include those. You could also use mortadella, prosciutto, liverwurst, or any other deli meat item you like.
Olives/Pickles – This is another key component. The salty/sourness of pickles and olives helps to cut the richness of the rest of the ingredients. I like using cornichons or dill pickles. I get an olive mix from my grocery deli section as well.
Fruit – You can include dried or fresh fruit or a mix of both. I like to add fresh berries or apples, dried or freeze dried apples, dried peaches, or pomegranate arils.
Bread/Crackers/Crostini – another key component of a good board is the base for eating your meat and cheese. If I have time I love to make baguettes for this, or buy one, but if I don’t have that I will use crackers or crostini. You can really use anything that works well with cheese.
Chocolate – I love to include a little chocolate on my charcuterie boards. It sounds strange, but my daughter got a blue cheese chocolate truffle at a chocolate shop, which was delicious and we love the combo of blue cheese with chocolate.
Something extra – I like to include an additional item as well on a board, in this case I used these super tasty marinated butter beans, but in the past I have also included hummus, some other type of dip, etc.
Customizing – To add some halloween feel to this board, I added the chocolate in the form of these skulls and also some reese’s pumpkins. You can also include small decor items, like the little skull and spider I had in my halloween decorations. You can also use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the salami or sliced cheese to add to your theme.
Overall, this was fun to create and fun to eat. It might become a new halloween tradition in our house.