When it’s your turn to host for the holidays, despite all the planning, shopping, wrapping, prepping, and list making, there’s one timelessly easy way to please all your guests: snacks. But for those who take pride in their holiday hosting skills, you’re looking to do more than simply set out a plastic bowl full of salty chips for your guests to graze on. This isn’t Friday night poker—this is a special gathering of loved ones, and an extra-special spread is in order.
A holiday goat cheese and charcuterie board is the perfect festive fare, calling for casual snacking, palate-pleasing comfort foods, and exciting experimentation with new flavors. A thoughtfully crafted goat cheese and charcuterie board runs the gamut of textures and tastes, taking care of every peckish guest’s preference and adding aesthetic elevation to your seasonal scene.
But how to start? Well, building your board around impeccably fresh-tasting LaClare goat cheese is a surefire foundation for success. Our distinctly delicious array of flavors and styles makes for limitless combinations for cheese and charcuterie, as well as for pairing goat cheese with beer and wine.
While you can’t go wrong by serving LaClare cheeses, there are ways to go so right when it comes to considering your goat cheese and charcuterie board. Below are a few options to get your gears turning (and your mouth watering) as you imagine the possibilities for your holiday provisions.
Choosing Goat Cheese for Charcuterie Boards
When you’ve experienced our unrivaled goat cheese, it’s not uncommon to want to share your love of our chèvre and hard varieties. When you add goat cheese to your holiday charcuterie board, you’re giving family and friends a chance to enjoy the LaClare cheeses you love. Half the fun of hosting is introducing your guests to new tastes, and in this case, they can experience the difference between cow cheese and goat cheese.
Anything from our range of products can suit your holiday soiree, but we’ve highlighted five of our fresh-tasting goat cheeses for flavor and texture inspiration.
Original Goat Cheese: Our proprietary, award-winning chèvre can serve as something of a “safer” taste for the uninitiated, and as a more neutral yet refreshing flavor for goat cheese connoisseurs to enjoy on its own or combined with other treats. The pure white color will also work with any aesthetic choices you’ve made to stylize your board.
Chipotle Honey Goat Cheese: Smooth, spicy, smoky, and sweet, this chèvre ensures your charcuterie board is anything but boring. Plus, it adds a pleasantly piquant flavor to cater to your guests who go for a bit of heat.
Goat Cheddar Cheese: Offering one of our premier hard goat cheeses will offer a change of texture and, with the complex notes of our Goat Cheddar, incredibly elevated flavor. Its decadent depth is achieved through aging. We’ve placed our Goat Cheddar in the middle of this list precisely because it’s a perfect centerpiece for your holiday goat cheese and charcuterie board.
Rolled Cranberry Cinnamon Goat Cheese: Beyond the delectable combination of our fresh chèvre, warm cinnamon, and tart cranberry, this goat cheese also brightens up your holiday charcuterie board with brilliant color. Either this flavor or our creamy Rolled Blueberry Vanilla Goat Cheese would bring delightfully chewy dried fruit, adding an extra dimension of texture to your spread.
Mediterranean Goat Cheese: Round out your goat cheese and charcuterie board with the robust, refreshing flavor of our Mediterranean-inspired chèvre. This unique combination of olives, savory herbs, and spices makes an especially satisfying spread for pita bread.
Bonus: Another tempting option for adding an earthier flair to your fare would be our tangy, savory, always classy Truffle Goat Cheese.
Looking to pair some beverages with your goat cheese board? Check out five of our favorite beer and goat cheese pairings.
Choosing the Meats
With our goat cheese recommendations, we aimed to satisfy a broad range of tastes and textures of cheeses, as well as to complement other items on the charcuterie board. Such is also the case for the meat options we suggest:
Dry salami (simple and savory)
Dry chorizo (for spice)
Smoked bresaola (for smoky depth)
Prosciutto (for salty, almost sweetness)
Pâté (for texture and earthiness)
The Finishing Touches
With your main ingredients chosen, it’s time to bedeck your holiday board with edible vessels, flavorful accompaniments, and don’t forget the inedible decorations to make this work of art as tasteful as it is tasty.
Crackers, crostini, and flatbreads
Fruits (dried or fresh) and nuts
Olives and veggies (pickled or fresh)
Spreads such as fig, honey, or pepper jelly
Decorations like pieces of spruce, clusters of fresh cranberries, acorns, pinecones, or ornaments
How About the Rest of Your Holiday Menu?
The flavor extravaganza of a holiday goat cheese and charcuterie board is a fantastic way to please your family and friends. For the rest of your menu, check out this list of five popular goat cheese appetizers as well as our full libraries of goat cheese entrees, side dishes, and desserts.
With LaClare, it’s always easy to bring fresh home for the holidays. And, according to this MSN article, our products make it easy to give the gift of fresh, too!