Vegan charcuterie boards are a celebration of how easy it is to be vegan today! It’s possible to pop to your local supermarket and get all the necessary ingredients to make an extra special board just like ours. Charcuterie boards are the perfect starter or sharing platter to mark special moments, which means Christmas is a great opportunity to get creative in the kitchen and make your own festive vegan sharing platter!
START WITH THE BOARD
The beginning of any vegan charcuterie board starts with the board itself. You can make yours any size you’d like although, for the best results, you’ll want to fill your board to the brim, so the size of your board will be your guide to how many it feeds. We found a regular wooden cutting board (like this one from Ikea) is great for 2-3 people, so for 4-6, you could get your hands on a larger cutting board or make 2 regular sized ones.
VEGAN MEAT
There are lots of different vegan meats available now, but for a beard like this, we’ve found that the deli slices from Squeaky Bean are by far the best. They have a great, strong flavour which means they can contend with other flavours on the board. We recently reviewed a selection of their new range in this blog post, including the NYC Deli Pastrami and Italian Deli Ham. Take each slice and gently fold it over a few times to make the “ribbons” you see on our board.
VEGAN CHEESE
Vegan cheese comes in so many different shapes and sizes, and also a wide range of prices. Although the more expensive artisanal vegan cheeses are delicious, a simple supermarket vegan cream cheese and hard cheese are all you need. Our local Sainsbury’s stocks their own brand vegan soft cheese, as well as the Applewood Vegan Smoky Cheese Alternative. If you can’t find the Applewood smoky cheese, Violife makes an excellent Epic Mature Cheddar Flavour Block.
VEGAN CRACKERS & BREADSTICKS
A fancy cracker goes a long way! Although Jacob’s cream crackers are vegan, we think trying to find something with a more rustic look really adds to the vegan charcuterie board. We love these Crosta & Mollica Black Olive Grissinis as well as the more affordable Sainsbury’s Salt & Pepper Crackers.
CONDIMENTS AND DIPS
A great way to add a festive flair to your board is through using a festive chutney, something like apple and fig or cranberry chutney. You could also add some extra dips to your board. We included some black olive tapenade since it goes so well with the deli slices and the bread sticks.
FRUITS AND NUTS
Fruits and nuts like grapes, figs, and almonds are always delicious with vegan cheese. They’re also a useful way to fill little gaps on the board! To keep with the festive theme, we chose to add in some cranberries, walnuts, and oranges. Apples are another fruit that would go well on a board like this. If you do go with apples, squeeze a bit of lemon juice on the cut apples to keep them from oxidising and going brown.
EXTRA BITS
I don’t think any board is complete without olives. Since we’ve already got black olive tapenade, we decided with green herby olives. Herbs are also a great way to add decoration to your vegan charcuterie board. Try popping on some rosemary as we have, or maybe some fresh oregano. Anything leafy and green will work perfectly.
PLATING IT UP
When putting it all together, cut each element into bite-size pieces so that it’s easy to share. To get the best looking board, try and mix smaller and larger elements together and spread things out across the whole board. Little bowls are great for keeping dips in, and also a good way to create sections, like with our olives and almonds. The best way to do it is to just get stuck in! You probably won’t get it perfect the first time, so have fun and get creative with moving elements about.
Luckily for us, We have a large supermarket around the corner from where we live. It’s a well-stocked Sainsbury’s and they’ve got a decent range of vegan products which means we could put this board together without visiting speciality delis! If you’re not as lucky with your local shops as we are, you could always order online from places like fauxmagerie or the vegan kind supermarket.
A festive board like this would make a great sharing platter as a mid-afternoon snack, but it also makes a perfect starter. They’re much simpler to make than you’d think since there really isn’t any complex cooking, just chopping and preparation. For the little effort, they take to plan and make, these boards are a great way to impress!
If you had your own vegan charcuterie board, we’d love to know how you got on! Write a comment, like, or share this recipe with your friends.