A Holiday Charcuterie Board adds to the Magic of the Season
A Holiday Charcuterie Board is a festive way to celebrate with your friends and family and it is really easy to assemble. What is probably going to take the most time will be planning what to serve and shopping for it. Putting it together is the fun part, really! A great way to use your creative juices.
Your board can be small enough for a romantic twosome or your dining table becomes a gigantic charcuterie board for your company holiday party. What makes this better is bringing in elements of the reason for the celebration. We are spotlighting Christmas here, but it could be a birthday celebration or an anniversary. Make it your own by making it extra special.
Ancient Winter Holiday Traditions
America is known as a melting pot for a big reason. This nation is made of up of people from all parts of the world who move here and make their own impact. Our cuisines reflect this as do our reasons for celebrating. We all carry within us traditions and customs of our “native” lands.
You may not be aware that many of our Christmas traditions came to us from Northern Europe. The Norse celebrated the winter festival of Yule with symbols of their hopes for the new year. These were adopted and carried forward to today but their symbolism has changed if not lost completely.
Here are some of those symbols that we still use today:
- Evergreen trees: new life
- Wreaths: eternal cycle of goodwill and friendship
- Candles: welcome back the sun
- Bells: chase away the darkness
- Holly: hope
- Yule log: say goodbye to the old year and welcome the sun
We’re including some of these elements into our Christmas charcuterie board. Include even more of them if you like –– the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
Basic Ingredients
Savory balanced with sweet work best when planning your Holiday Charcuterie Board. Choose seasonal elements when available to add even more interest to your selection. How many different items you use are entirely up to you. Just make sure that you have enough. Besides, leftovers are always welcome!
Savory
A trick that works well when choosing your savory options is to select at least one of each:
- 1 hard cheese (like Cheddar)
- 2 cured meats (like prosciutto and salami)
- 1 or 2 types of crackers
- 1 or 2 pickled vegetables (like olives, gherkins, pickled okra, etc.)
Sweets
Holiday candies are in every grocer across the country this time of year. Have fun with this part and choose candies that not only look pretty but that your guests will really enjoy. This may be the only time of the year you can find some of certain candies, so be sure to include them.
Don’t limit your sweets to candies alone. Fresh and/or dried fruit will add sweetness without all the added sugar of candies. I love grapes and that’s the first thing I head for when they’re there. Remember to put out some individual grapes and some small bunches. (I prefer not to have to pull them off a big bunch). And don’t forget your seasonal frutis like persimmon or pomegranate.
O Christmas Brie, O Christmas Brie!
Don’t forget the dip! A wheel of Brie is a great beginning. When you search the internet, you find ways to prepare your brie and make it your own. Serve it cold or baked in pastry. Top it with different toppings. It is a great base for a fun dip. In this case, we turned it into a festive “bowl” filled with colorful jelly. Just lay the brie flat and slice off the top. Use a cookie cutter of your choice and stamp out the shape. Fill it with a hot pepper jelly for a delicious dip or spread.
Here’s a tip: As the drink accompaniment. Brie should be served with a red wine such as a Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. I would suggest you check out our wines here to find not just the best wine to go with your brie but with any occasion or meal. Here, you’ll find only the finest Napa and Sonoma Valley wines through our Wine of the Month Club.
Jams & Sauces
When you add extra jams and sauces like honey, mustard, ranch, or hummus, you compliment the other items and complete the spread. This all will make for a yummy board too.
Choose Your Board for your Holiday Charcuterie
I guess it’s pretty obvious but you want to choose your board by the number of guests you are having. You can use just about any flat surface as your board. My favorite is a glass plate with a handle, although glass can get a little tricky if your snacks tend to stick like some cheeses will. As I said earlier, you can even lay parchment paper over your dining table and lay your charcuterie goodies out on it. (Easy cleanup!!!)
Bowls, cups or whatever
Let’s not get boring and just spread everything out in perfect rows. Mix it up with small bowls. Don’t forget the tea candles to give a feeling of warmth, maybe some sprigs of fresh herbs, cuttings of fir, whatever might enhance the feeling of the season. Don’t make it too busy, but add some interest with a bit of spirit here or there.
Assembling the Holiday Charcuterie Board
Next let’s start to figure out where our items will be placed on the board. Use one of these four formats to lay out your items.
- Lines
- Stacks
- Curves
- Piles
Let’s get started, so place your vessels first. In this way, you better define the structure of the board.
Lay out your meats and sliced cheeses since they probably will take the most area of your boards. Rows usually work best here but feel free to use your imagination again. If you’re doing a really large board, like your table, you may want to put duplicates of your goodies at different places on the board so more people can be served easily.
Next, let’s add our sweets. In this example, we’ll use green grapes and a red pomegranate (it is Christmas, remember), the holiday color theme. Half of the pomegranate was left whole for a rustic look and the pearls from the other half were used to fill in any empty spaces on the board at the end.
Use your imagination for the candies. You can make your own like peppermint bark to stack up. How about mini Yule logs covered in dark chocolate, maybe with some mint included. Then there are sugar cookies (time to look for new cookie cutters! Everyone loves cookies.
Those little extras like the tea candles can be fitted snuggly between rows and stacks. But do be careful about placing items. Sticky candy and pickle juice may not be best placed to each other.
Finishing Touch
Youe board looks beautiful and tasty doesn’t it? Time to put on the finishing touches, greenery! Fresh herbs work great here for sure. They not only make it festive but can also add some little touch of aroma to whet the appetite. In this case, it’s Christmas! How about sage leaves, or rosemary and thyme.
Just a note: You may notice as you place your items that something looks out of place. Keep balance in mind when you put your board together. Don’t be afraid to move or replace. On our board. we put the pickles direcly on the board and left the bowl off because it didn’t looks right. (But we didn’t put the pickles over by the candies either.)
Don’t forget! You will find a lot of ideas online. Use them as a template to create your own beautiful holiday party charcuterie board. Don’t forget to tell your guests about the history and significance of the delicious ingredients since learning these historical facts can create new fun and meaningful holiday traditions for you and the ones you love.
And don’t forget the wine! Find the best here from Napa and Sonoma Vally in California. Fine Wine at Wine Shop prices and shipped to your door. Save your shopping time for the other goodies!
We can’t thank you enough for visiting us today and if you want more information about anything you see here, be sure to Contact us.
