Learn how to make an easy homemade DIY charcuterie board for serving up a fun lunch, snack, or appetizer. This is so easy to make, and loaded with flavorful cheese, fruit, meats, crackers, and more.
Charcuterie boards are great for any occasion. Whether you are hosting a small gathering at your home, or looking for a fun snack board to take to a work party.
This snack tray is versatile in ingredients you can put on your tray!
🍽️ Why This Works
Versatile Ingredients – As mentioned above, you can truly use all types of crackers, cheese, meats, and more to pile on your board. Use ingredients you enjoy, for a fun grazing board to enjoy.
Easy to Assemble – It can take just minutes to throw together this board. I share how easy it is to assemble the board to give it that gorgeous presentation you are looking for.
Budget Friendly – If you want a budget friendly snack charcuterie board, you can easily buy ingredients that fit in your price range. This doesn’t have to be expensive!
Party Appetizer – This is a wonderful party appetizer that allows guests to pick and choose what they might want to snack on! A protein packed option!
🔪 Ingredients
Meat – For the meat I used York Ham, Mortadella, and salami. Feel free to change up to include what you prefer.
Cheese – Grab a few varieties of cheese. I went for brie, goat cheese, cheddar, and Gorgonzola.
Fruit and Veggies – Blueberries, grapes, tomatoes, and olives are tasty. But reach for your favorites.
Various Items – Jams, crackers, breadsticks, or even sliced bread works great.
🔥 Instructions
Step One: Prepare your meat and cheese by slicing and cutting them. Place various bowls and plates on your tray, to serve as the base.
Step Two: Place the cheeses on the board. As you can see, I spread them out, some cheese is sliced, others I left whole, or crumbled. The type of cheese will dictate how you serve them.
Step Three: Place the meats around the cheese. I made a few meat roses, and simply folded the others.
Step Four: Add the fruits and olives around the meats, cheese, and bowls. Try to fill in any empty gaps you may see.
Step Five: Add in your crackers and dips or spreads.
Step Six: Serve and enjoy your gorgeous homemade charcuterie board.
❗ Expert Tips
- It is important to use a variety of ingredients to give your board depth and dimension.
- Odd numbers of cheese are more aesthetic to the eye. So instead of like four varieties, use three or five.
- Make sure when you are placing the food on the tray, you try and fill in empty spaces. You want food to evenly cover the board.
- Use bowls to hold some crackers and fruit. It will provide some dimension to the tray. As you can see, I filled some with grapes and crackers. Get creative.
- Nuts, crackers, and berries work great at filling in gaps in your tray.
- If you don’t have a large enough serving tray, place two together to add more space for everything.
- Downsize the tray if you are not planning to serve that many people.
Thanksgiving version:
Add golden or orange hued foods to highlight your tray. Think about apricots, red grapes, orange cheeses, golden pretzels, nuts, a small pumpkin and look at the store for fall/leaf shaped crackers.
Christmas version:
Look for tomatoes, green grapes, sugared cranberries, pomegranate, pecans, cut the cheeses into small trees with cookie cutters, look for holiday theme crackers. Even place a huge bed of rosemary underneath everything for a festive and gorgeous base.
Halloween version:
Look for all the fun candies and treats that scream halloween for this version. Make sure to center it with a small pumpkin. Look for some black foods for a base like olives, black grapes and black crackers/tortilla chips. This version will be one of the easiest to make as you will simply go to the store and everything is packaged for you. Grab what you like and come home to design your tray.
Recipe FAQ
shaar·koo·tr·ee
Charcuterie boards are a meat and cheese board that have crackers, nuts and fruit. You can use this board for an appetizer, to serve before a meal when entertaining, or even a grazing board for a picnic.
Different cheeses require different preparation. Harder cheeses require slicing or cutting into wedges. Blue Cheese is usually crumbled. Soft cheese, like brie, require a small serving utensile.
Most of these have meats, cheese, fruits, veggies, nuts, crackers or other dippers, and even spreads or dips.
Limit it to two hours before putting back into the refrigerator.
Plan 2-3 ounces for each person.
No, you can use whatever you like. Remember, it will get completely covered.
Related Recipes
Homemade Charcuterie Board
Equipment
- Bowls
Ingredients
Cheeses
- Gorgonzola (blue cheese)
- Brie cheese
- Hard cheese
- Goat cheese
- Cheddar cheese
Meats
- Salami
- York ham
- Mortadella
Fruits
- Grapes
- Cherry tomatoes
- Blueberries
- Olives
- Cucumber
Other Complements
- Jam
- Crackers
- Breadsticks and crackers
- Bread
Instructions
Process
- The first thing you have to do is looking for the place for your charcuterie board. 15 square inches should be enough to fit all the ingredients, so here is some advice to choose the perfect one.
Prepare the Scene
- The first and easiest way is to place round slices of meat directly from the package, one over the other.
- This second method may take some more time, but they look better. You can fold a round slice in half to get a half-moon, and you can fold twice to get a beautiful pyramid form.
- The last method probably takes the longest time, but you obtain a gorgeous presentation for your mortadella or salami. Depending on the diameter of your round meat slices, use a glass according to the size. (I used 4-inch in diameter slices and 1.5-inch in diameter glass). Place the meat slice in the rim of the glass. Fold by half into and out of the glass. Repeat the process overlapping slices all over the rim of the glass until there is no more space in the interior. Eight slices should be enough to form the “meat flower” you will get. Turn around the glass, and there you have your meat slices turned into a gorgeous form.
Cheeses
- To start preparing the charcuterie board, I would have in mind that an odd number of items is usually more aesthetic than an even number, so I would use five different kinds of cheese if they fit on the board. If not, I would not force them to fit in. It works perfectly okay with 4.
- Cheese is the first ingredient to place in the charcuterie board. It is necessary to fill the board with them. I do not mean everything should be cheese, but they should be the structure, and you will fill in the gaps in between afterward.
- They should always be cut, sliced, or crushed depending on the type of cheese. If not, no one may taste it. It is not good to cut every piece, so you will always have a large portion and slices of every cheese.
Meats
- The second type of food to place on the charcuterie board is meat. Fill in the main gaps between cheeses with the different types of meat. You should fold meat precisely to do it more aesthetic, and there are several ways to do this. Here are the ones I used:
- The first and easiest way is to place round slices of meat directly from the package, one over the other.
- This second method may take some more time, but they look better. You can fold a round slice in half to get a half-moon, and you can fold twice to get a beautiful pyramid form.
- The last method probably takes the longest time, but you obtain a gorgeous presentation for your mortadella or salami. Depending on the diameter of your round meat slices, use a glass according to the size. (I used 4-inch in diameter slices and 1.5-inch in diameter glass). Place the meat slice in the rim of the glass. Fold by half into and out of the glass. Repeat the process overlapping slices all over the rim of the glass until there is no more space in the interior. Eight slices should be enough to form the “meat flower” you will get. Turn around the glass, and there you have your meat slices turned into a gorgeous form.
Fruit, complements, and other tips:
- To finish the charcuterie board, add the fruits that fit better to your taste. It is the step where you can freely create the final details. The most significant thing in adding fruits and complements is always to have in mind which ingredients combine better and placing ones near the others. These are a few examples: grapes and hard cheese, cherry tomatoes and brie cheese, jam and goat cheese.
- The last step would be to fill in the bowls with jam, breadsticks, or the things you had in mind at the start of the process.
- One thing you can choose is the type of charcuterie board you want, either seasonal or evergreen. Depending on this, you will add one kind of fruit or the others. If it is evergreen, the fruit I recommend in the ingredients list is tasty.
- The combination of colors is something to worry about because your guests notice for sure if the board is pleasing to their eyes. Do not put together the same color a lot of times on the same side of the board. Try spacing food with a similar color like meat or different types of bread.
- Be aware of gaps that could remain in the board. The easiest way to fill them in is by adding crackers or different types of nuts. They also add another completely different texture and help you combining different flavors. Another thing you could add to fill in gaps is edible flowers. It is a simple way to solve the problem.
- The last tip I would tell about preparing a charcuterie board is: place things so that it is easy and appealing for your guests to eat.
Notes
Hi!
Ginny Collins is a passionate foodie and recipe creator of Savor and Savvy and Kitchenlaughter. Indoors she focuses on easy, quick recipes for busy families and kitchen basics. Outdoors, she focuses on backyard grilling and smoking to bring family and friends together. She is a lifelong learner who is always taking cooking classes on her travels overseas and stateside. Her work has been featured on MSN, Parade, Fox News, Yahoo, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and many local news outlets. She lives in Florida where you will find her outside on the water in her kayak, riding her bike on trails, and planning her next overseas adventure.
What a perfect balance of salty, sweet, and nutty! Saved wine night with my girlfriends