Dinner Boards: How to Slay Casual Get-Togethers

Dinner boards are the latest party trick; everyone wants one, but I’ve found that not many people know how to make one. It’s the easiest way to impress your friends, and trick people into thinking you put tons of work into your get-together, when in reality, you can throw things you already have in your pantry onto a board and call it a day. It's all about the presentation..

You can make any array of foods into a cute board and display even the easiest dinners in a super impressive way. There's of course the classic charcuterie board: cheeses and meats, fruits and veggies, usually paired with a few jams or dipping sauces; but there's also things like desert boards, or make your own pizza boards, or chicken nugget and fry boards. 

My point is, making a board is more about the way you display your snacks, and less about following specific cheese and meat pairing rules. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

All decorative dinner boards start the same way. I like to follow three main steps when undertaking a dinner board. 

Firstly, I create a grocery list- this is important because, if you're anything like me, you get too excited in the store and leave with everything but the stuff you needed. I usually start with my main board additions and work from there. For example, for a traditional charcuterie board, I would begin my list by picking which meats and cheeses my friends or houseguests like best, and begin to choose produce, crunchy snacks, and dips from there. 

The same goes with dinner boards such as build-your-own-pizza or taco night; I decide which ingredients are the nonnegotiables and plan from there. You can't have pizza night without crusts, taco night without taco shells, charcuterie without cheese, and so on. 

After I've made my list (and bought all my ingredients for the night), I begin preparing all my board’s additives, this could mean washing and cutting produce, folding meats, preparing crispy taco shells, or rolling out pizza crust. This step is important because it gives you a clear idea of how much you’ll need to include on your board, firstly, and secondly makes your life much easier as you're building. 

Lastly is assembly. This is entirely up for creative interpretation. For example, I personally do not like to have my crunchy vessels on the same board as my snacks (i.e crackers on the same board as cheese, taco shells with lettuce and tomato, etc.). My roommate really loves to have everything in small dishes and then place those on the board, whereas I prefer the look and functionality of small piles on a large board. This is your space for free reign. You're allowed to create half a board, and decide you hate it and start over. You're allowed to start with things in dishes and decide you hate how it looks. You are the Van Gogh here, go off. 

Generally, it's easiest to start with your dips, followed by your larger choices (meats, cheeses, and produce), and finish with your smaller accutroments (olives, mixed nuts, pickles). As a rule of thumb, mirror your board on either end; meaning, wherever you put a stack of something, put a mirrored stack on the opposite side of the board as well. People tend to only eat from what's right in front of them, and if you've created an unbalanced board, they may end up missing out on all of the goodness on the other end of the board. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve called this process “dinner board making” because you can truly follow these steps with any food and you'll always wind up with a beautiful dinner. 

I love doing these types of arrangements for Sunday dinner, because it impresses your friends and creates an easy cleanup situation. Instead of having a messy table and a million dishes to pass around, arranging toppings and sauce choices on a flat cutting board keeps everything central to the table, and allows everyone to take all of the toppings into account when making their important pizza-building decisions. 

I’ve followed these steps on Taco Night, with Chinese Take out, and even with a huge array of chicken nuggets… if there's food, there's a board that can be made

Once you’ve mastered the art of dinner board building you have creative freedom to assemble any dinner on a cutting board. Mastering the art of charcuterie board making is one of the best hostess tips to know, because as you’ve seen, you can put literally anything on a cutting board and it's instantly that much more beautiful. Creating special nights for those you love doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming- taking the time to show you care will always be priceless.