There is not much better in the culinary world than a well-assembled charcuterie board. It is as ideal for entertaining as it is for sampling local fare in a new city, particularly abroad. It can be a creative snack or a full meal depending on the design. More than anything though, the charcuterie board is a palette of foodstuffs that says a lot about the tastes of the person who designed it.
The core of what makes the charcuterie plate great has been lost a little bit in recent years. It’s become a trendy, Instagram-able plate of food that more often reflects solely the aesthetic tastes of the board curator. To each his or her own, but the joy of assembling the charcuterie plate for me lies in complementing and contrasting taste, smell, texture, temperature, size and more in addition to the prettiness of it.
That said, charcuterie should be fun. We’re talking about cured meats and sausages, cheeses, terrines, pâté, confit, fruits, breads, nuts and more. You needn’t spend a lot of money or time to acquire enough of those items to put together a board, nor should you have to drop a lot of money at a restaurant for its boards. Whether you want Hormel pepperoni or jamón ibérico de bellota is your call. Heck, Lunchables were nothing more than a children’s charcuterie plate if you think about it.
So given that the charcuterie plate should reflect your personal taste, there are a couple anchor categories that you should think about having on the plate: cured whole muscle, cured sausage, a pâté or terrine, hard and soft cheese, a crispy starch, some form of fruit or sweet jam, and then anything else you feel compelled to throw on there.
But the first place to start is the board. You’re likely to find a lot of creative reclaimed and refinished wood boards of varying sizes throughout Boulder County — local places like Cheese Importers in Longmont or Cured in Boulder will have some, and so will chains like Williams-Sonoma and Sur la Table. A wood board will absorb all the oils from your meats and cheeses, which will wear it in over time in an organic way — though you should probably still wash it after each use. Conversely, you’ll want to get a board that has been finished with food-friendly oils. You can also work with other board surfaces like marble, granite or even a salt slab.
When it comes to selecting your meats and cheeses, the best course of action is to head down to a charcuterie and cheese purveyor like Cured, Cheese Importers, Blackbelly Market, or just to your local grocer’s deli section — King Sooper’s and Whole Foods have surprisingly large selections of cured meats and cheese. There, you can pick the brains of the cheese, charcuterie and salumi (Italian cured meats) experts both on individual food items and on the direction of your board as a whole.
Starting with the first major category for your board, cured whole muscles, you’ll have a lot of options. Prosciutto, specifically those from Parma and San Daniele, are the cream of the crop for Italian cured pork meats. Or, from Spain, you can splurge on the jamón ibérico. Both items are dry cured from the ham, or hind leg, of the pig, anywhere from a couple months to a year. When curing is complete, the prosciutto or jamón is sliced from the leg fresh, and great care is usually put into maintaining the larger cured ham. On the cheaper side, you can find decent prosciutto prepackaged by the slice from reputable American producers like Creminelli. Other whole muscles you could consider for your plate are pancetta (pork belly), speck (spiced and smoked prosciutto), coppa or capicola (pork neck), bresaola (dry cured beef top round) and duck prosciutto.
The next category you’ll want to poke around in is cured sausages. These are your salami and saucissons. What’s nice about this meat category is that you can get flavorful cured sausages for pretty cheap in the U.S., but if you’re looking for nuance, there are plenty of opportunities. Wild boar salami and saucisson de Lyon (beef and bacon sausage) will be robust, while cured chorizo will be spicier and almost fruity, and something like salame Finocchiona is fennel-infused and really snappy. Here’s an opportunity to complement meats: coppa and saucisson de Lyon; or contrast meats: smoked duck breast and cured chorizo d’Espana.
Then you’ll be well-served to put on a pâté or terrine. You’ll likely recognize them as the Jello-crusted-looking things in upscale or European meat shops, but here is an opportunity to get wild. Fish terrine could be a bridge to some sharp cheese, or liver pâté can be a salty nugget that ties into the other meats or nuts you have on the board. You can go with chicken liver or rabbit, or heavy and traditionally French with deer or boar terrine.
As a last note on meats, it wouldn’t hurt to consider something like lardo, which is basically cured pork fat. When well-made and fresh, it’s like butter and can complement the meats above or be eaten with bread.
By this point, your board is likely filling up, but now comes the cheese. Cheese, for me, is complementary. It complements wine, meat, bread and oil and changes so drastically on each bite that paying attention to your meat pairings is critical. My only criteria for choosing cheeses to go on a board are that one is hard and one is soft, and preferably that one is from goat’s milk and one is from cow’s or buffalo’s milk.
My two favorites, if the meat I have on hand is something familiar or mild like prosciutto or Genoa salami, are Humboldt Fog goat cheese and and either mozzarella di bufala or manchego. The Humboldt Fog is a world-renowned chèvre from California and really changes from grassy to citrusy to nutty depending on what my last bite was. Mozzarella di bufala can come from any number of producers, but it’s best from the protected designation of origin that spans from Lazio to Campania in Southern Italy. Thick, juicy slices of the buffalo mozzarella immediately changes the mouthfeel on every bite. Manchego has long been paired with jamón ibérico, and its sharpness complements the buttery ham perfectly.
Again, a good cheese purveyor should be able to walk you through exactly what you’re looking for.
Now we get into some personal choices. When it comes to starches, you’re probably choosing between bread and crackers. Crackers don’t do it for me, and I like the temperature difference that toasted bread can bring to a charcuterie plate. I like a baguette that is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside, sliced about a half-inch thick.
Another must for the charcuterie plate is a bowl of olives. I like to go nuts and get a variety, so that each bite is a bit of a surprise — that is, alternating the rich flavors that olives bring amplifies the taste receptors and keeps the combos fresh. You’ll want, at least, some salty kalamatas, sweet castelvetranos and buttery cerignolas (these oval, puke green olives are ubiquitous in olive dishes). You could even go with straight-up canned California black olives — there’s no shame in that.
The nut that you choose will largely depend on the cheeses you select. Almonds are a favorite because of their substance and their palate-cleansing properties, and something woody like walnuts would be good to pair with a jamón ibérico de bellota, which comes from a pig that only feeds on acorns. But cross-reference the nuttiness of your cheeses to make sure you’re hitting on the complementary or contrasting taste you’re seeking.
And then finally, a lot of folks put out dried fruits like apricots, raisins or mangoes on a plate, which is fine — they add a texture for sure. But I like the texture and temperature of fresh fruit more, and I think there is no better flavor combination than prosciutto and melon or white peach. You could also put on apples or blood oranges for different feels.
A board should also have a bottle of olive oil nearby and some salt and pepper, and maybe some vinegar or glaze if you’re inclined.
But no matter what you select, take chances and have fun. It’s just meat and cheese after all.
