Building The Perfect Plant-based Board
As the weather starts to warm leading us into Spring our cravings for flavourful charcuterie boards have been dancing in our minds. We are often asked if we sell pre-made charcuterie boards and absolutely we can, but the cost savings and the creative fun of building your own board is a fantastic option! We’ve created a little guide to help you build your dream board styled perfectly to your own desires.
Tricks and Tips:
- Start with your favourite cheezes and build around them.
- Try cutting the cheeze in half and resting one piece above the other, play with other fun cuts.
- Keep runny jellies and compotes contained so they don’t leak under your crackers and cheeze making them soggy. We use small ramekins for our runnier jellies.
- When adding plant-based deli-style cold cuts we like to roll and stack them making for a more aesthetic look.
- Choose a variety of crackers with different shapes, colours and textures to liven up the board.
- Once you have your cheezes, ramekins of jellies, cold cuts, and crackers in place it’s time to fill!
- Fill empty spaces with fresh colourful veggies, fruit, berries, pickles, olives, chocolate, herbs, and nuts.
- Anything that’s juicy place in a ramekin or pat dry with a paper towel.
- More is always more with charcuterie!
A Few of our favourite things:
Fruit
- Green apple slices (lightly brush with lemon to prevent browning.)
- Blood Orange slices offer a beautiful gem tone.
- Cubed mango, lightly dab with a paper towel to prevent juices from spreading.
- Kiwi, we like to use a star-shaped cookie cutter to make them extra fun!
- Passion Fruit is a must for us, we like to crack it open and allow the seeds to spill out.
- Lychee is always a fun addition.
- Pomegranate seeds are always the last to go on the board, we like to sprinkle them in all of the blank spaces.
- Grapes of any colour are a stunning way to add dimension and colour.
- Pears, we like to cut in half and thinly slice to be paired with our Blue cheeze.
Berries
- Blackberries add not only colour but also pair well with most cheezes.
- Raspberries in both red and gold are a must for us!
- Blueberries are a great choice to fill empty spaces with their variety of sizes.
- Strawberries, we like to dot small strawberries throughout the board, or cut larger berried into flowers.
- Gooseberries with their golden colour and paper lantern feel add such a beautiful touch of elegance.
- Dried fruits such as cherries, apricots, mango, raisins, dates are great filler.
Vegetables
- Baby rainbow carrots.
- Cucumber slices or sticks are always a hit.
- Cherry tomatoes in a variety of colours, slice a few in half to allow the seeds to show for a fun look (yes we know they are technically a fruit.)
- Watermelon radish offers a stunning pop of colour with its vibrant pink and green when thinly sliced.
- Pickled Asparagus… delicious! Need we say more?
- Pickled pearl onions.
- Pickled Beets are so fun but be sure to pat dry before plating or they will run.
- Pickled gherkins are an obvious choice!
- Mixed olives offer a stunning array of colour but also flavours.
- Fresh herbs such as rosemary, thyme, and sage offer colour as a garnish but are also nice with cheeze.
- Pea shoots are lovely to use as a garnish.
The Fun Stuff
- Pepper Jelly is a must have and is usually a stunning red colour, we use Rad Jamz.
- Fruit compotes, we love fig, apricot or apple based compotes.
- Olive or sun-dried tomato tapenade offer wonderful flavour.
- Bruschetta is always a hit but be sure to put it in a ramekin.
- Plant-based cream cheezes.
- Whole grain mustards are delicious and add texture.
- Hummus, we love to use beet or curried hummus for extra colour.
- Chocolate, we love a high quality smooth dark chocolate broken roughly into pieces. Our top choice is Silver Star Chocolate!
- Turkish delight is a fun unexpected addition to any board.
- Shiitake mushroom chips look amazing on a board.
- Nuts such as roasted cashews, brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts, pistachios, tamari almonds are also a wonderful filler.
The sky’s the limit when building your own board! Design something fun or copy one of the designs we have in the photos shown in this post. Above all have fun!! I’ll say it one more time, more is always more. If you feel discouraged at how your board is looking just keep adding stuff and we promise you’ll surprise yourself at the beautiful board you can build!
Tasha & Damian
