How to Make the Perfect Vegan Charcuterie Board

Get 10 tips for how to make the perfect vegan charcuterie board and over 100 vegan ideas for what to put on your vegan grazing board.

When you hear charcuterie board, you likely don’t think that there’s a vegan way to make it. However, not only are we going to be showing you this epic vegan charcuterie board, but we are also going to give you 10 tips for making it even better than you could ever imagine.

What is a vegan charcuterie board?

First, let’s talk about how to say it. It’s /SHär’koodərē/ or “shahr-ku-tuh-ree. It’s a French word that references a portion of the cooking experience (appetizers or tapas in other countries) that is specifically prepared from meats, especially cured and smoked.

There is an art to the way charcuterie boards are presented and while the traditional focus is on the meats, as these boards have gained in popularity, there is focus on more than that.

Sometimes they may also be referenced as a grazing board or a cheese board. As the name suggests cheese board is more focus on the cheese, whereas charcuterie boards are on the meat, but they likely have very similar ingredients.

Vegan charcuterie board ideas are the same concept except using vegan meats and cheeses instead of animal-based options.

Watch us make and give tips on an epic vegan charcuterie board:

When do you serve a vegan charcuterie board?

Charcuterie boards are great around the holidays or special occasions; however, they are also great for snack type of dinners, especially if they family is sitting around watching a movie or having a game night.

Speaking of, if. you are having a movie night in, these are a great way to have some food while watching a movie without a lot of effort.

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How do I know what size board to pick to make my vegan charcuterie board?

The great news is …THERE’S NOT A RIGHT SIZE!

Vegan charcuterie boards can be as big or as small as you want them to be. It really depends on how many people you are serving and how much time you want to spend.

The larger the board, the more food you are going to need and also the longer it will take to prepare it. The smaller the board, the less time.

If you are only serving 2 people, you could get away with a 9×13 board or even just an 8×8 pan size type of dish.

If you are serving a crowd, especially for holidays, you may want to go much larger or another idea is to put multiple smaller boards together in some type of design. For example, you could put 4 together to make a larger square or you could line them up side by side to have an epically long board.

What size board are you using in the photos and video?

The board size we choose for the presentation you see in the photos and video is 18×24 inches. This is a huge board that should easily feed 8-10 people and allows for enough on at one time but easily able to refill as things deplete.

What type of board do I use to make a vegan charcuterie board?

There are endless possibilities here. The main thing used are various wooden cutting boards, which you likely may already have on hand. Slate boards are also sometimes used; however, they are less common than wooden cutting boards.

If you don’t have either, another option would be to use a baking sheet that you likely already have hanging around the house.

How should I start arranging stuff on a vegan charcuterie board?

We always suggest starting with the bigger items. Typically this is the vegan cheese blocks or wheels.

After that, anything that you are putting in a jar or bowl should go on your board.

Then, you can spend time arranging anything else that you have to put onto your board.

What brands are you using the the photos?

For the vegan meats, we are using Yves and Tofurkey.

For the hummus and jams, we are using ones from Aldi

There is also Treeline cheese in there as a spread which we highly recommend doing.

For the other cheeses, we have Violife Epic Smoked Cheddar block, Miyokos Mozzarella wheel, and Good Planet American slices.

All of the crackers and produce came from our local Aldi.

What are other tips for building a vegan charcuterie board?

Beyond the tips above, there are a few other tips that we have that we think we will really help you take your vegan charcuterie board to the next level.

• Spread out your colors
  • Try to have a variety of colors – usually it’s easy to get greens, oranges, red, and purples on a platter. Try to focus here on balancing out the color varieties and spread them across the platter so the same color isn’t all centralized into one area of the board.
• Be patient
  • Don’t try to rush this. Really take your time and slice things or arrange them in a way that really make them pop.
• Less is More
  • Don’t try to put everything you can possibly think of on a board. Sure there’s easily 20 different kinds of nuts at the grocery store but that doesn’t mean you should put all of them on your board. Try to stick to 4-5 ideas and 1-2 of each of those ideas. We recommend, especially for your first boards, to not go over 15 different items, but ideally 10-12. You want to keep it simple but also very interesting.
• Try to have an even playing field
  • No we aren’t talking about dating here. You don’t want one thing towering something else. Try to keep everything relatively low. Nothing higher than 4 inches or so.
• Add some character
  • If you notice in the photos, we’ve added some rosemary and thyme sprigs. There are some peppercorns. Additionally, we left the grapes on the vine and bought cherry tomatoes still on the vine. This all adds to depth and bringing character to live on the board and really just helps to make it pop.
• Stick to mostly your favorite things
  • There are so many things that you can add but at the end of the day, whatever is left over stays at your home more often than not. Knowing that, try to pick things that you love and realize that you can’t please everyone. Don’t like pecans? Don’t add them. Don’t like grapes? Don’t add them. It’s really that easy.

One of the biggest tips is to just go for it. You can always rewind and remove something even if you are more than halfway through. Don’t be scared to just really go for it and get creative.

Let’s see your creations!
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