Date Night In: A Romantic Cheese & Charcuterie Board | Chef Sous Chef (2024)

When celebrating date night at home, we like to keep it simple yet equally special with meals that don’t take long to prep but are impactful enough to celebrate our relationship. Enter our Romantic Cheese and Charcuterie Board.

Philip and I are always looking for fun and fresh date nights. They allow us to spend time with one another and reconnect after a busy week. While we love going out, our preferred date night of choice is spent in the comfort of our own home. It starts in the kitchen and ends on the couch with a glass of wine a movie, and sometimes our Romantic Cheese and Charcuterie Board.

There's something special about feasting with our fingers, sharing a single plate, and creating personalized combinations of meats, cheeses, and accouterments, boasting quality cheeses and flavors we adore.

How to Assemble a Cheese and Charcuterie Board

The Best Cheese for a Charcuterie Board

When curating a board the most important thing is the variety of cheeses, textures, and flavors that anchor your platter. For our Romantic Cheese and Charcuterie Board, we opted for the classic trifecta of Double Crème White, medium Extra Creamy Danish Blue, and rich Cream Cheese with Chives.

Charcuterie Board Meats

Since we chose 3 cheeses we opted for 3 meats to go along with our Romantic Cheese and Charcuterie Board. We included a gentle prosciutto, a spicy chorizo, and a hot salami. Incorporating a little heat on your cheeseboard adds to the spark between you and your partner.

Crackers for Charcuterie

The vehicle in which the cheese and meat enter your mouth should not be an afterthought. The flavor, texture, and shape of a cracker are all important to how the rest of your ingredients taste. We chose a simple water cracker, a rosemary fig artisan cracker, and a toasted baguette for additional texture. With so many cracker options it’s best to choose your favorites, it is after all about you two tonight.

The Crudités

For our fruits and veggies, we chose ingredients that are known to spark romance between lovers. Pepperoncini, pickled asparagus, and olives are a must on any cheeseboard, but instead of grapes we chose the natural red heart-shaped strawberry, the delicate pink and purple sweetness of figs, and pomegranates, adding crunch and color to our board.

The Good Stuff

Dark chocolate, honeycomb, and rich nuts like almond and pistachio add luxury and decadence to your romantic board and pair beautifully with your selection of cheeses (because what’s a cheese and charcuterie board without nibbles and small bites between the cheese and meat?). Bonus: use these ingredients to fill the empty spaces on your board, it’ll help it look more robust and full.

The Spreads

The final addition to your board is the jellies and jams. Skipping traditional store-bought spreads, we cooked down cranberries with pomegranates and smeared it over our Double Crème White for a blast of fruit jam with every bite. Also, for added richness on our Romantic Cheese and Charcuterie Board, we pickled cherries and mashed them as a fruit compote pairing them perfectly with the Extra Creamy Danish Blue.

The Wine

Whenever Philip and I are grabbing a bottle of wine we always ask, so, where do we want to go tonight? Choosing a bottle of wine by its country of origin makes it more fun and secretly helps you prepare your cheeseboard with fun flavors that complement the wine and the country it’s from. For us, we hit the Vintage section of our local wine store and chose an Italian Chianti pairing perfectly with the cheese and romanticism of our board.

No matter what you put on your Romantic Cheese and Charcuterie board, as long as you prepare it with love, you'll be sure to have a memorable night in. Remember, if you can't cook you better know how to put together a great board.

Recipe Card