How to Make the Perfect Cheese Platter

A cheese platter can be anything. Party dish, appetizer, even lunch – a cheese platter can do all this and more. It doesn’t require cooking, but creating a perfectly harmonious plate of delicious dairy products is a delicate balance and requires some foresight.

It can be easy to overdo it with both cheeses and accessories, but having a clear idea of ​​what kind of cheese plate you want to donate to the world will help you stay on track. But before you can do that, you need to decide how many cheeses you want to serve.

One cheese, two cheeses, hot cheese, blue cheese

Isolation of one cheese

Introducing a single cheese, you can go in two ways. You can choose the audience’s favorite good spicy cheddar or excellent brie-brie, or you can opt for a slightly more controversial show stopper such as the super funky blue or the smelly yet tasty Taleggio. In any case, you will need at least one vehicle delivery system and one additional one. Serious Eats has a good guide to different delicious cheeses , but here are a few of my favorite ways to add sparkle to a single cheese:

• Dubliner + Apple Slices + Grilled Baguette Slices: Dubliner is a hard, aged cow’s milk cheese, spicy, sweet and nutty with delicious little crystals scattered all over the surface. Because it has such a complex, strong taste, I like it when the bread should be simple and the fresh, vibrant fruit purifies the taste. (I’ve found that green apple slices keep your mouth from being oversaturated with dairy, which means you can eat more cheese over a longer period of time.)
• Camposola + Fruit Chips + Honey: This combination of French soft ripened triple cream cheese and Italian gorgonzola is exactly what you might think, with a softer blue flavor and a whole bouquet of creamy character. I love to eat these chips with figs and olives , but cranberry chips are fine too. I’m also a big fan of drizzling honey of any kind of blue cheese, and this is no exception.
• Parmigiano Reggiano + Really Good Balsamic: I got this idea from Bon Appetit, who also have some really great ideas for single cheese plates, which is good . Use real thick aged vinegar for pouring and dipping and you can forget about the carbide feeding system altogether.

Another good way to focus on one cheese is to bake it or pickle it. Baked brie-en-crouté , goat cheese with tomato sauce and pickled mozzarella or feta make a great cheese dish .

Double (or triple) your pleasure

For some reason I’m not a fan of even cheese platters, but if you are only going to serve two cheeses, I would make one hard and one soft and they would be very good. However, I prefer using three because it gives you the freedom to add something wild and crazy to the mix. Here are some of my favorite picks for each category:

• Something tricky: Beecher’s Flagship Cloth Bound Cheddar, Aged Gouda ( Cowgirl Creamery’s L’Amuse Brabander is excellent), Dubliner , a really good edam – take the one that comes in a red wax ball; Mississippi State University makes excellent edam – really good parma ( take a piece close to the rind ) and Spanish manchengo will treat you right.
• Something bland: burrata (creamy cousin of mozzarella), mushroom camembert, meaty but fruity taleggio, fresh chevron, homemade ricotta and, of course, brie are all delicious ways to enjoy the softer side of cheese.
• Something fun: Your best bet is to talk to a cheese vendor and tell them that you want to “surprise and delight” your guests with something. The cheese vendors are some of the most helpful people I have ever met and they will be happy to help you with your selection. Some of my favorite “out of there” suggestions include the fictional Norwegian brown cheese , this weird Trader Joe’s chocolate cheese sprinkled with lavender and fennel Purple Haze , Havarti dill, or the softest, smelly cheese you can get your hands on. It’s also a good place to add a little quirk to your meal; Pimento cheese may seem unusual, but insanely delicious and always desirable.

To ensure a good variety of flavors, you can try picking one from each dairy (cow, sheep, goat), but I have used my hard, soft, fun template with great success. (This pattern seems a lot dirtier than it actually is now that I’ve printed it.)

Accessories, accessories, accessories!

Now that we have selected our cheeses, we can think of fun additions. It can be very easy to go crazy here, so I try to limit myself to one sweet, one salty, one sweet savory and one savory savory dish. You will also need bread and crackers.

• Fresh fruits: apples, grapes, pears, blueberries, strawberries, any berries and fresh figs – all this cleanses the taste of greasy and salty dairy products.
• Dried Fruit: Pie and sweet dried cherries and cranberries pair very well with funky blues, and dried stone fruits like apricots add a bright touch that I really love with richer cheeses. Dates are also a good choice and go well with both very spicy and softer, creamy dishes.
• Olives: Instead of buying one can of one type of olives, try the olive bar and get a wide variety of shapes, sizes and treatments. Just remember to include a small pit bowl. (And be sure to tell your guests about the pits.)
• Pickles: I actually only have one pickle I can recommend for your cheese platter, and that is a small but powerful gherkin. These tiny guys have a pretty acid punch and they are so damn cute.
• Meat: Be careful as your cheese platter can get out of hand and turn into a meat platter. (And what a tragedy that will be.) Pick one very good meat and let it shine. If I’m serving a lot of strong, salty, or unusual cheeses, I’ll go for a less aggressive carnivorous choice like mortadella, but usually I’ll go for the super-spiced salami (I like the Olympic seasoning ) or the super-satisfying pâté. or liver mousse to accompany my broth .
• Nuts: You can use the mixture here, but my personal favorites are the candied pecans, pistachios, and marquin almonds . (Confession: I also really like these almonds with wasabi and soy sauce , although they spoil the taste a little.)
• Honey and Jam: The first time I sprinkled honey on a slice of hot cheddar, I thought I had invented something great. It turns out that before me many people combined cheese and honey together, but this discovery still changed my life for the better. Jams and jellies give the cheese platter that same sweet flavor, and I especially like the ones that have a bit of astringency. (I am, however, an unabashed fan of pepper jelly poured onto a slice of cream cheese and served with wheat thinners. I don’t know if that’s cheesy, and honestly, I don’t give a damn.)
• Mustard and Vinegar: This dairy-dominated spread is very acidic, and a fatty grainy mustard can satisfy that need. Thick syrupy vinegar can make a nice rain too, and I wouldn’t be angry if you put on a small decanter of pomegranate molasses .
• Bread and crackers : These are delivery systems, and they exist to get cheese to your mouth, not distract from it. I love to cook a simple slice of baguette (toasted for crisp) along with one fun, shabby or fruit-strewn cracker or crisp.

I know this is a lot of gourmet information that needs to be learned right away, so we will recap very quickly: unless you are following the “one cheese” route that we went through earlier, my Platonic cheese plate ideal is:

1 hard cheese + 1 soft cheese + 1 cheerful cheese

Served:

plain toasted toast + some shabby or fruit crackers

Paired with:

1 sweet + 1 salty + 1 sweet savory + 1 salty savory

This may sound like a lot, but I’ve never had a lot of leftovers along the way and if the unthinkable really happens you are tormented by “excess cheese,” you can always make cheese chips or Fromage Fort . Everybody wins.

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