Just Add Cheese: Which Cheeses to Buy for the Hamper

The Just Add Cheese Hamper holds nine pantry items and no cheese, which is deliberate. Buy three cheeses: an aged cheddar, a blue and a soft white, about 600g between them for six to eight people. The box carries the rest of the board, and read the right way it tells you which three to ask for.

Why a cheese hamper has no cheese in it

Cheese is a chilled product with a short window, and anything refrigerated is at the courier's mercy in an Australian summer. So the box holds the other half of the board instead: crackers in sealed packets, olives and relish in unopened jars, a fruit paste that is happier for sitting. All of it keeps in a cupboard for months, which is why you can buy it in September and think about it again in December.

That split is the useful part. Cheese takes ten minutes to buy and lives inside a two day window. The pantry half takes an afternoon of deciding, and it is the half people forget until the morning of, when the good crackers have gone and the only fruit paste left is the one nobody wanted. This box is that afternoon, already done. If you are building a board from scratch rather than from this one, our year round cheese board guide starts further back.

Nine items, and four of them are crackers

The box runs to four cracker styles, two spreads, a fruit paste, a jar of olives and a packet of nuts. The crackers are a plain water cracker, a sea salt mini artisan cracker, a native cracker baked with wattleseed and fig, and a boxed artisan pita made with olive oil and sea salt. The spreads are a Ploughman's relish and a roasted red capsicum tapenade. The sweet piece is a fig and almond fruit pyramid, and the salty pieces are Kangaroo Island Mediterranean olives and roasted peanuts.

Four cracker packets is more than one board needs. At the usual rate of one 100g packet for every four people, the box carries enough for two boards, or one board and a fortnight of afternoons after it. Take that as licence to be generous with the first board, not as a reason to buy a fourth cheese. If you do want a fifth style on the table, the box's own packets come from our crackers range.

1. An aged cheddar, about 250g: the Ploughman's relish's partner, and the second biggest piece.
2. A soft white, the biggest piece on the board: it rides the plain crackerthins and the capsicum tapenade.
3. A blue, about 150g: the fig and almond pyramid and the wattleseed crackers are there for it.

The relish picks the first cheese: an aged cheddar

The label tells you the order: apple first, then sugar, water and tomato, sultanas and currants further down. Fruit leads it, which lands the relish nearer a chutney than a tomato pickle: dense and sweet rather than loose and sharp, and thick enough to stay where you put it. That relish has one true partner and it is a good aged cheddar. The pairing is the ploughman's lunch, which is cheese, bread and pickle and very little else, and it has lasted because the sweetness of the pickle is what stops a dry, salty cheddar tasting only of salt. We have written about the ploughman's rebuilt for an Australian Christmas if you want to build the whole plate around it.

Ask for a vintage or a clothbound cheddar rather than a mild one, and buy it as the second biggest piece on the board. It is also the cheese that copes best with a warm room, so if the board is going outside, this is the one still looking like cheese at four o'clock. Aged gouda does the same job if the cheddar on the day looks tired.

The fig pyramid and the native crackers pick the second: a blue

Two items in the box point at the same cheese. The fig and almond fruit pyramid is black mission figs caramelised down with roasted almonds crushed through them, firm enough to slice into fingers rather than spoon out. The native artisan crackers with wattleseed and fig are baked with wattleseed, which reads roasted and nutty, closer to coffee than to herb.

Sweet, roasted and sturdy is a blue cheese in three words. A gorgonzola dolce is the easy pick when someone at the table says they do not like blue, because it is creamy and mild and behaves like a soft cheese. A stilton or a firm Australian blue is the pick when they do. Buy a small wedge either way, and give it its own plate and its own knife. A blade that has been through blue makes everything after it taste of blue.

The plain crackerthins and the tapenade pick the third: a soft white

The plain crackerthins are a water cracker, thin and unseasoned, and their whole job is to carry a cheese without adding anything of their own. That is what a brie, a camembert or a triple cream wants underneath it. The G for George tapenade is the other half of the argument: roasted red capsicum rather than black olive, so it is brighter and sweeter than the word tapenade suggests, and it sits on a soft cheese without shouting over it.

Make the soft white the biggest piece on the board, as our Christmas cheese board guide rules. It goes first at every table, every time, and the common mistake is buying a polite little wheel of it. On a hot afternoon a fresh goat's curd holds its shape better than a triple cream and does the same work beside the tapenade. For the rest of the pairings, which cracker goes with which cheese takes it further.

A fourth cheese, and when to leave it out

Three cheeses is a board. A fourth earns its place past about ten people, and then it should be the one that surprises: a washed rind if the room is cool and the crowd is game, a marinated fetta if it is not. Under ten, spend the money on more of the three you have already chosen. Four half eaten wedges in the fridge on Boxing Day is the usual outcome of a fourth cheese, and storing cheese properly only buys back part of it.

How much to buy, and what to say at the counter

Our Christmas cheese board guide sets the general rule: 60g of cheese a head where a meal follows the board, and 120g where the board is the meal. This box lands between the two, because the crackers, spreads, fruit paste, olives and nuts are already doing part of the feeding. Six to eight people, three cheeses, about 600g in total. Buy by weight rather than by number of wedges: three cheeses for eight people is not three polite slivers.

That guide answers the how many question with four for a Christmas crowd, and elsewhere we have made the case for two hard cheeses plus one soft against these crackers. Both hold up for a board you are building from nothing. Three is the trade-off we would make against this box in particular: one cheese for each argument the box makes, and no half wedge left over on Boxing Day.

At the counter, ask in this order. A vintage cheddar, about 250g, in one piece. A soft white, about 200g, whole if it comes as a small wheel. A blue, about 150g, wrapped separately. Say what it is for: a good counter will steer you to whatever is eating well that week, and that answer beats the one you walked in with. Then leave the lot out of the fridge for half an hour before it goes on the board. Cold cheese tastes of very little.

Sending the box rather than opening it

As a gift, the box does something a finished board cannot: it arrives intact, at room temperature, in any weather, and it waits. The person opening it picks their own cheese, which is the part of a board people have opinions about. Write the three on the gift card if you want to be useful. Cheddar, blue, soft white, and they can walk into any deli in the country and be done in five minutes.

It is hand-packed at our Corio warehouse into the French blue box, the gold ribbon tied, and we write the gift card for you at no extra cost.

Questions we get asked

Does the Just Add Cheese Hamper contain any cheese?

No, and the name is the instruction. It holds nine pantry items chosen to go beside cheese: four cracker styles, two spreads, a fruit paste, olives and nuts. You buy the cheese fresh, which is the only good way to buy it.

How many cheeses should I buy to go with it?

Three. An aged cheddar for the relish, a blue for the fruit pyramid and the wattleseed crackers, and a soft white for the plain crackerthins and the tapenade. About 600g between them feeds six to eight alongside everything in the box. A fourth is worth it past ten people.

Does anything in the hamper need refrigerating?

Nothing does. Every item is stored in a cool, dry place and travels at room temperature, which is what lets the box be posted anywhere in Australia in December. Once the relish and the tapenade are opened, those two go in the fridge.

Can you add cheese to the hamper before it is sent?

Not from us. What we can do is get the pantry half to any address in the country, tracked, so the cheese only has to travel from a counter near the recipient to their kitchen. That is the trip cheese is good at.

Is it suitable for someone who does not drink?

Yes. There is no alcohol in the box at all, so it suits a recipient who is not drinking and a workplace where a bottle is not appropriate.

The Just Add Cheese Hamper sits under $100. Free Australia-wide shipping kicks in at $100, so pair it with a few pantry jars or a second box and the freight looks after itself. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Those bigger boxes, built for a table rather than a board, sit in the Christmas hampers range.