Meat and Cheese Board

The meat and cheese board: the perfect meal?

There may be nothing better than a meat and cheese board. Because, really, what else do you need? A great meat and cheese platter is a sumptuous sprawl of meats, olives, pickles, jams, and spreads, dried and fresh fruits, salted and candied nuts, bread and crackers, mustards and, last but not least, several of your favorite cheeses. Honestly, it's hard for us to think of any food that beats a meat and cheese board. Then again, it's just plain hard to think about anything when you've got cheese on the mind.

In Wisconsin, we like our meat and cheese board with three or four award-winning Wisconsin cheeses – everything from chunks of gouda or cheddar blue to slices of Emmentaler or havarti to spoonfuls of burrata or mascarpone. Because when there's Wisconsin cheese on the meat and cheese board, we know everything will be perfect.

Go ahead and browse our website to find a great meat and cheese platter idea or scroll down for some useful tips on creating your own charcuterie recipe.

How to build a great meat and cheese board

An epic meat and cheese board starts with the cheese, naturally. For a well-rounded selection, you'll want a range of tastes and textures, from hard to soft and from creamy to crumbly. (Be sure to let the cheese come to room temperature before serving, and slice the harder cheeses ahead of time to make it easier for guests to grab a bite.) Some of our favorites include:

• Hard cheeses: aged cheddar, aged gouda, parmesan or romano
• Soft cheeses: stracchino, quark or cream cheese
• Semi-firm: Cupola or muenster
• Crumbly cheeses: Ricotta salata, feta or cotija (an amazing Mexican cheese)
• Spreadable cheese – burrata, brie or mascarpone
• Blue cheese: marbled jack, gorgonzola, cheddar blue or Dunbarton Blue

When choosing meats, you'll want a couple of selections from each style of preparation.

• Whole-muscle cuts – these are meats preserved whole and usually sliced paper-thin, such as prosciutto, speck, and Jamón Iberico.
• Cured sausages – these hard sausages are a heartier selection that contrasts nicely with the thinly sliced cuts. Try Spanish chorizo, salami or a spicy soppressata.
• Patés or terrines – these soft meat spreads add textural variety. Think chicken liver pate, duck liver moose or salmon rillettes.

You'll need breads for your meat and cheese board that provide surfaces and texture. Baguette slices, toasted crostini, and a selection of crackers are all great ideas.

Then there are all the extras: sliced apples, dried figs, fresh grapes, fig jam, red pepper jelly, honey, and chocolate pieces provide sweetness. Roasted red peppers, olives, artichokes, and pickles add salt and brine. And pistachios, cashews, Marcona almonds, and candied hazelnuts provide some crunch.

In Wisconsin, it's a cheese and meat board.

Here in Wisconsin, we know that cheese is the real star of a meat and cheese platter. After all, you can only sample so much salami or soppressata before your taste buds crave the tangy, nutty taste of cheese. And when you've got Wisconsin cheese on your meat and cheese board, you can be sure the flavor is firing on all cylinders. That's because Wisconsin produces the tastiest, most award-winning, highest-quality cheese in the universe.

How is that possible, you ask? Maybe it's because we produce more flavors, varieties, and styles than anywhere else in the world. Or because 90% of the milk made in our bounteous dairyland is dedicated to making cheese. Or because we have the only Master Cheesemaker program in the world outside of the one in Switzerland. Or maybe our 1,200 licensed cheesemakers just really know what they're doing.

That's what happens when you've been obsessively making cheese for 175 years. That's what happens when a whole state dreams in cheese.