A How-To for Cheese 🧀 Platters

A cheese platter is a great appetizer, an incredible light lunch and really easy to adjust to your liking. This isn’t exactly a “Recipe” so I am going to give you a quick guide for cheese platters below!

What your goal should be:

You want to make sure to include a wide range of flavors, sharpness of cheese, contrast between sweet and salty and a variety of soft and hard texture. I will list some of my favorite ingredients that I always include on a cheese platter.

Ingredient options:

Cheeses—> we want to include sharp and mild cheese as well as soft and hard cheese.

Options for hard cheese: cheddar(raw milk, beer, pepper, white), pepper jack, Parmesan, Swiss, Muenster and so many more. Make sure you include different levels of sharpness.

Options for soft cheese: goat cheese, chèvre, mozzarella, Brie and more. Soft cheese is usually very mild.

@thecheeseguyhas a wide selection of gourmet kosher cheeses.

I like to include fruit on the platter.

Options for fruit: apricots, pear or apple slices, berries, grapes, dried fruits, figs and more. Go with what you think your crowd will like!

Jams are always important. For soft and mild cheese, jam is a beautiful companion on your cracker.

I like to use fig, strawberry, cherry, apricot, blackberry or grape jam. They are sweet with a tang.@oxygenimportsbrand is a fan fave around my house.

To contrast all this sweet, we need to ask some salt and some crunch.

For this I like to add nuts: salted, raw, toasted or honey roasted peanuts, cashews, pecans, pistachios. These are fun to pop in your mouth and also to include a salty contrast to your jams and fruit.

I also usually include olives as well, for a nice briney bite.

Lastly, you need to add your crackers!

Tam Tams, Marys and virtually every other cracker is great. Include 3 or 4 different types of crackers, some with and some without strong flavors. A nice flavorful cracker goes great with some goat whereas tam tams are better for pepper jacks.

When compiling:

Try to separate things that look and taste similarly. But really, go with your gut and it will be delicious and beautiful every time!