Cheese Board Ideas: How to Build a Cheese Platter

By Jodie Smith, The Gourmet Pantry.

Most cheese boards fail in the same place. Four cheeses go on, one packet of crackers goes beside them, and by three o'clock there is cheese left over and nothing to eat it with. The fix is to build the board the other way round. Choose the crackers, the fruit paste and the sharp preserve first, then buy the cheese two days out.

This is the year round guide. For the Christmas version, with quantities for 6 to 20 guests and the summer heat problem solved, read the Christmas cheese board. Every other board we have written is linked at the foot of this page, one for every size of table.

One thing worth saying plainly. We do not sell cheese. We sell the half of the board that keeps in a cupboard: crackers and flatbreads, fruit pastes and cheese knives. Buy the cheese at a counter the day before. Buy everything else here whenever it suits you, because none of it goes off.

How much cheese, and how many cheeses

Allow 100g of cheese a head as a working number. Drop to 60g when a full meal follows the board, and go to 120g when the board is the meal. Buy by weight rather than by number of pieces: four cheeses for eight people means 800g between them, not four polite little wedges.

Three cheeses is a board. Four is a party. Five is the ceiling, and only above about fifteen guests, because a board with seven cheeses on it ends the night as seven half eaten wedges in the fridge.

One soft white. Brie, camembert or a triple cream. It goes first every single time, so make it the biggest piece on the board.

One hard and aged. Vintage cheddar, aged gouda or parmesan. This is the one that copes with a warm afternoon while everything around it softens.

One blue. A small wedge, on its own little plate. Blue left on the main board leaves its edge on the brie and on every cracker anybody has touched.

One wildcard. A washed rind if the room is cool and the crowd is game, a fresh goat's curd if it is hot, or a mild flavoured cheddar when there are children who will otherwise eat only crackers.

Build it in this order

1. Cheese first, spaced apart. Not in a tidy line. The cheeses are the anchors and everything else fills in around them. Mix the shapes and the colours: a pale round brie, a sharp wedge of parmesan, a square of cheddar.

2. Cured meat next. Salami, kabana, pancetta or prosciutto, rolled or folded rather than laid flat, so the board has some height in it.

3. Then the salty things. Olives, sun dried tomatoes, marinated artichokes or mushrooms, and nuts. Small bowls with their own spoons, never a jar left out with one spoon shared between them.

4. Then fruit. Grapes snipped into small clusters so nobody has to tear at a bunch, plus figs, cherries, dried apricots and muscatels on the stem. Slice any pear at the last minute so it does not brown.

5. Crackers last, ten minutes before. Not an hour. Laid out early they go soft, and a humid afternoon does it faster. Fan them in overlapping arcs rather than stacks, so people can take one without dismantling the arrangement.

6. Garnish, then knives. Rosemary, parsley or edible flowers into the last gaps, and one knife per cheese. A blade that has been through blue makes everything after it taste of blue. Leave a little bare board showing: one packed edge to edge looks impressive for four minutes and then looks ransacked.

The shopping list

Split it in two. The cheese, the cured meat and the fresh fruit live inside a two day window. Everything else is sealed packets and unopened jars that keep in a cupboard for months, and by item count that is well over half the board.

From a counter, two days out

• Soft white: brie, camembert or a triple cream
• Hard and aged: vintage cheddar, aged gouda or parmesan
• Blue, one small wedge
• A wildcard: washed rind, goat's curd or a mild flavoured cheddar
• Cured meat: salami, kabana, pancetta or prosciutto
• Fruit: grapes, figs, cherries, muscatels, one firm pear

From the cupboard, buy it any time

This half is ours, and everything below is in stock as this page is written.

• VPC Crackerthins Plain 100g, $3.49. The volume cracker. Thin enough that the cheese is still what you taste.
• VPC Valley Seed Crisps Quince & Almond 150g, $6.95. Thick and seeded, and the only one here that holds a wedge of blue without folding in half.
• Mini Artisan Crackers with Cheese 110g, $4.95. Three savoury flavours in one packet, so a single box does the work of three.
• VPC Crackerthins Parmesan Cheese 100g, $2.95. Salty and thin, and the one to put under the soft white cheese.
• VPC Artisan Flatbread Cheese 130g, $4.95. Snapped into shards rather than laid out whole, so the board has height.
• VPC Crackerthins Gluten Free Original 100g, $3.49. Made with potato starch, so they crunch instead of crumbling. Put them on their own plate.
• VPC Fruit Pyramid Fig & Almond 75g, $6.95. Black mission figs cooked down with roasted almonds through them. Slice into fingers beside the blue.
• 2pc Cheese Knife & Spreader in olive wood, $49.95. Made in France by Laguiole Jean Neron. More sets on the cheese knife sets page.

If you would rather not choose at all, the Just Add Cheese Hamper at $79.95 is that cupboard list in a box, packed by hand at our place in Corio in Victoria. You add the cheese.

Thirteen more cheese board ideas

Each of these is a board built for a different table. Start with the one that matches the number of people you are feeding.

• Christmas cheese board: quantities for 6, 8, 12 and 20 guests, and what the heat does to a summer board.
• Which cracker goes with which cheese: thin under soft, seeded under blue, and why three styles is one too many.
• Quince, fig or pear: choosing the one sweet thing on the board.
• How to store cheese: paper not plastic, and what is still good three days later.
• Christmas charcuterie board: the same build with the cured meat as the point.
• Italian antipasto platter: the Christmas Eve version, no oven involved.
• Vegetarian grazing board: a meat free board that still has something salty on it.
• A grazing box for two: the small format, without four half eaten wedges left over.
• An office grazing board for twenty: quantities and the two board rule for a warm meeting room.
• A grazing table that survives the heat: scaling the board up to a table.
• Truffle chips on a grazing board: what to serve beside them.
• A drinks board: truffle chips and macadamias, for standing up with a glass.
• New Year's Eve grazing: the board that needs no cooking at all.

Two more worth a look: the cheese ball rolled in seed crisps, and the sweet version of all this, the dessert board.

Questions we get asked

What should be on a cheese board?

Four things, in this order of importance. Cheese, three to five of them across soft, hard and blue. Two cracker styles, one thin and one seeded. One sweet thing, usually a fruit paste. One salty thing, olives or nuts. Cured meat and fresh fruit are the fifth and sixth items, not the first two, and a board without them still works.

What are some easy cheese platter ideas?

The easiest good platter is three cheeses, two crackers, one fruit paste and a bowl of olives, on a board at least 30cm across. Everything but the cheese can be bought weeks ahead and left in the cupboard, which is what makes it easy. Past twelve guests run two smaller boards at opposite ends of the table rather than one big one, because a single board makes a queue.

How much cheese per person on a cheese board?

Allow 100g a head as the working number. Drop to 60g where a full meal follows the board and go to 120g where the board is the meal. Children eat about half as much, and nearly all of it from the soft white cheese.

What crackers go with a cheese board?

Two styles, not one and not four. A thin plain cracker under the soft cheeses, because it carries flavour without adding any of its own. A thick seeded crisp for blue and for aged cheddar, sturdy enough not to fold under the weight. Work on one 100g packet for every four people.

How long can a cheese board sit out?

Australian food safety guidance for chilled food works on two hours and four hours. Under two hours out and it can go back in the fridge. Between two and four hours it should be eaten rather than saved. Past four hours it goes in the bin. The clock starts when the board lands on the table, not when the guests arrive.

Start with the half that keeps. Our cracker range starts at $2.95 a packet, orders over $100 ship free anywhere in Australia, and weekday orders placed before 12pm leave us the same day.