Charcuterie Ideas and Guide

Wendy is an independent consultant with Pampered Chef. In this article she defines what Charcuterie is and how to make one this holiday season!

What is Pampered Chef?

Pampered Chef is a direct sales company and they have all kinds of kitchen products, recipes, cooking tips, seasoning spaces, and sauces to help you easily get a meal on the table.

You can only buy Pamper Chef products through a consultant so you won't be able to find one in any of the big box stores.

“We do not provide your groceries. You still have to go grocery shopping or do it online. However, we have all kitchen products to make it easier for you to get a meal on the table.”

Charcuterie

The holidays are coming up and Wendy found charcuterie as a super easy way to feed a crowd without worrying about whether or not you're gonna burn dinner.

You can prepare one, keep it in your refrigerator so that your kids have a snack when they get home from school, or you can have a snack if you're working from home. Ans it is a great way to serve as  an appetizer when you are having some company. 

What is charcuterie?

It originated in France and the original charcuterie focused on meats. If you look at the platter in the image below, you'll see there's some salami and some prosciutto.

You could do any kind of meat that you want. It has evolved over the years to include sweets, cheeses, fruits, and all kinds of other things to go along with it.

Look at some examples below.

 

Pro Tip: Choose a whole assortment of flavors and textures. You want to have something soft, something spicy, briny flavor, and then mix it all up.

Charcuterie is something for everyone. It is such a great lunch if you have kids because you can just basically put it all out there. Everybody picks what they like and sometimes the big kids are the same way as the little kid, and there’s no judgment there. 

Back in August, Wendy had a charcuterie class at her house, and below is the board that she had built.

Pro Tip: It doesn't matter what you use as your board. 

 

You will notice in the image above that Wendy has a Baked Brie in the small cast iron skillet and those are little mini skillets sized 5 ½ inches. They come as a set of two and they are the perfect size for an 8-ounce brie.

Pro Tip: You can make charcuterie as fancy or as simple as you want.

 

What do you drink with charcuterie?

• Champagne - it is a good pairing. It's crisp, it's light and it pretty much goes with everything that's on the platter.
• Wine - but you don't want a wine that has a high alcohol content. If you do a red, stick with a rose or a lighter red rather than a merlot or malbec, or cabernet is a lot heavier because the flavor of the red is going to overpower all of the other delicious flavors that you have on your table.

And just to throw a few more ideas out there for your holiday entertaining, you can do a cookie board, you can do any type of dessert board or hot chocolate board. You could do an ice cream topping board, and a bagel board with different kinds of cream cheese.

Here are a few products that will make it easier.

• Premium Charcuterie & Cheese Board Set (top left)
• a Lazy Susan type so people can spin it to get to what they want.
• comes with all the utensils and the little white bowls.
• Cheese Knife
• to either slice or plane your cheese
• Stoneware Small Serving Bowl Set
• beautiful stoneware entertaining platters
• 60% off for all of Wendy’s hosts this month
• Mini Cast Iron
• Perfect size to put on your charcuterie board

If you are interested in gathering some of your friends and having a Sips and Apps charcuterie party at your house, Wendy is happy to talk to you about that!

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

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