Your Halloween Party Needs a Scary Meat Board.
Despite all the candy and colorfully packaged cakes and cookies at the grocery store, Halloween isn’t really a food holiday, especially compared to holidays like Thanksgiving. Since I’m training for a long distance run, I still have less room in my plate for a packet of Twix. Suffice it to say, I was having trouble getting over the Halloween hype until the scary charcuterie boards came my way.
A friend of mine sent me an Instagram video from Petal & Platter that showed some truly disturbing but clever ways to decorate a cheese and meat platter for Halloween. (Cheese Bree Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King’s It, is almost unbearable for me.) After I got over my initial scary clown reaction, I was inspired. Maybe there is hope for Halloween as a food holiday. At least it can be a full-fledged holiday.
The Two Most Important Parts of a Halloween Charcuterie Board
I noticed a couple of patterns on the Petal & Platter charcuterie and cheese boards. The key is to have one large, central, creepy object . Here are a few examples from her plate: maybe it’s a skull with olive features, a Scream mask face with a blackberry hood, or a creepy Pennywise face with pepperoni hair.
Another pattern I’ve noticed is that you should probably use brie cheese to make this centerpiece . Brie comes in flat circles rather than wedges or rectangles, giving you a more even surface to work with. The cheese has a white rind, making it a great canvas for using jam as “ink” for detailing. It is soft but has some integrity so you can easily cut the wheel into a regular shape without cracking. I recommend choosing the double creme brie; triple may become a little cloudy after cutting.
Otherwise, you won’t have to look much different from a regular charcuterie board you’d make for, say, Valentine’s Day. Just make it weird when you see the opportunity. Fill the space with nuts, crackers, other sliced cheeses, blood red jams and lots of eyeballs, made from olives and creatively cut cheeses, of course. Feel free to cut up sliced white cheese to make ghosts, and yes, salami roses make sense in this grim scene too.
I found it easier to use a pre-cut selection like this charcuterie tasting board from Columbus Craft Meats—it gives you a solid variety to start with. I added a wheel of brie to my artist’s palette and completed the contents of my board with Cracker Barrel pieces, dried apricots, olives, and candied pecans.
How to make a Halloween charcuterie board.
To make this a charcuterie graveyard, I suggest having a separate cutting board for slicing and doing the dirty work, as well as a nice presentation board.
1. Start with the basics: Brie cheese tombstones.
Cut two straight sides, keeping the natural curve of the wheel for the top. Cut the straight bottom and you will have a beautiful tombstone.
2. If you like, make “weed” out of the cream cheese.
I thought it was a nice touch that it allowed me to stick short crackers into the cream cheese so they could stand up like the other tombstones. Mix a few drops of green food coloring with the whipped cream cheese (about a half cup to a cup). Use a spoon to scatter the drops over the cheese board. Using a chopping motion, pierce it like grass.
3. Make a couple of residents
Make some ghosts out of white cheddar cheese or another white cheese that won’t tip over. I used a paring knife to cut out the ghost shape and pressed down black sesame seeds for the facial features.
4. Arrange the parts of the statement
Place the brie over the herbaceous cream cheese. Stick short crackers or thick pepperoni halves into the grass to represent other graves. Add cheese ghosts.
5. Finish the tombstone
Use red jam to write RIP on the large brie tombstone. I used a toothpick to make it bloodier. Halloween food is immune to logic, so adding bloody lettering here makes sense.
6. Fill in the blanks
The large tombstone and two ghosts provide enough context for the eater to understand what is on display without any further clues. Never forget that its main purpose is a meat and cheese board. Add rows of sliced cheese, a pile of crackers, a pile of chorizo, and a few sauces. A small bowl containing the olive eyes of a green goblin, a pile of dirt and pecan stones, and a fleshy rosette as a sign of respect for the dead.
Even if you’re not building a graveyard, the steps are roughly the same: big brie statement, other Halloween anchor pieces, place them on the board, then fill in the blanks. Add some bloody jam, green slime or monster eyes and you’re ready for a real Halloween treat, whether you’re entertaining friends or having a spooky movie night with the family.