How to Make a Colorful Crudités Platter
Updated: May 22, 2023
Turn veggies and dip into a striking crudités platter with our step-by-step guide.
Knowing how to build a crudités platter means you’ll never have to serve a simple tray of veggies and dip again. We’ll teach you how to build one and even how to say the French word, so you can impress your guests with a beautiful spread and the correct pronunciation.
What Is a Crudités Platter?
Pronounced “crew-di-tay,” a crudités platter is essentially an assortment of raw vegetables and dips served as an appetizer. From carrots to cauliflower, ranch to roasted red pepper hummus, you can include the veggies and spreads of your choice. Some home cooks blanch their vegetables before serving, but that’s a matter of personal preference.
A crudités platter is different from a charcuterie board, cheese board, and relish tray in the fact that it includes only veggies and dip, versus cured meats, crackers, cheese, and pickles.
How to Make a Crudités Platter
Foods to Include
Vegetables: Of course, there are plenty of green vegetables on our crudités platter. Asparagus, snap peas, broccolini, fresh green beans, zucchini, cucumber, and sliced green bell peppers make up the majority of the mix. We balanced out the green with its opposite color by including radishes, heirloom cherry tomatoes, and sliced red bell pepper. We couldn’t resist using unusually colorful veggies such as purple asparagus, purple cauliflower, and even a purple carrot amongst the orange, yellow, and white. Yellow squash stands out in a sea of red and green. The more color, the better!
Dips: It’s not a crudités platter without dip! We included three different veggie dip recipes: a creamy red pepper dip, a sour cream dill dip and a lime avocado hummus that looks like guac but isn’t.
Garnishes: Although the board is vibrant on its own, we went above and beyond by including sliced blood oranges and lemon wedges for even more color. Edible flowers are a pretty finishing touch that complements the other purple elements on the board.
How to Build a Crudités Platter
Taste of Home senior food stylist Shannon Norris loved the idea of the vegetables coming out from the center of the board, creating a flower-like look. The longer vegetables are most instrumental in creating that design—each is angled to point towards the center from all places on the platter.
Step 1: Begin the design with the longer vegetables
Start by putting the purple asparagus just below the center, and some broccolini just above it. Group the green beans, carrots and bell pepper slices together opposite the asparagus on the right side of the board.
Place the whole radishes just above the green beans, and put more purple asparagus above them.
Step 2: Fill in the bottom corners
In the bottom left corner, angle some rainbow carrots towards the center of the board, and to the right of the carrots, put a few wedges of cucumber and some purple cauliflowerets.
In the bottom right corner, angle some broccolini toward the middle. Above it, put a few snap peas in between the broccolini and the bunch of green beans, carrots and bell pepper slices.
Step 3: Take on the top corners
In the top left corner of the board, hang some asparagus off the corner, pointing toward the middle. To the left of the asparagus, put a few purple cauliflowerets; and on the right, a bunch of green beans parallel to the asparagus. Beneath the cauliflower, asparagus and green beans, put snap peas, sliced green and red bell peppers and cucumber wedges.
In the top right corner, put down more purple cauliflowerets and some rainbow carrots.
Step 4: Add the dips
Keeping the bowls away from the edges of the board draws the eye more naturally to the center, so make sure there are some veggies between the dips and the edge. Put the lime avocado hummus in the top right corner just beneath the purple cauliflower, touching the right edge of the cucumber wedges.
The sour cream dill dip fits just above the purple cauliflower in the lower third of the platter, touching the edge of the zucchini slices and the bell peppers on the right side.
We put the red pepper dip in a halved red bell pepper, which fits in perfectly between the broccolini and snap peas on the left side of the board.
Step 5: Add the lines of layered blood oranges, yellow squash and zucchini
Put layered lines of sliced blood oranges in the gap between the broccolini and the cauliflower in the bottom right corner, and a few slices near the top middle of the board.
There should be a slot in the middle of the board for a line of overlapping yellow squash, leading from the lime avocado hummus to the center.
Finally, put a row of overlapping zucchini slices just below the purple asparagus.
Step 6: Finish with the garnishes
Place lemon wedges in sporadic places for pops of yellow. Sprinkle the heirloom cherry tomatoes all over, including on top of the vegetables as well as onto the board itself. We also added a few extra radishes.
Tuck the edible flowers where they’ll sit up nicely. We put about 12 flowers on the spread.
Step 7: Serve
Serve the board with little snack plates, and put spoons in the dip bowls so people aren’t tempted to double dip. Encourage the brave to try the edible flowers.
Tips for Making a Crudités Platter
What else can you put on a crudités platter?
You can put any vegetable or dip of your choice on a crudités platter. Some other ideas include mini sweet peppers, baby carrots, celery and kohlrabi, and dips like tzatziki and caramelized onion dip.
How can you keep the vegetables fresh?
For the freshest vegetables, slice them right before putting them on the platter. However, you can slice them ahead of time and still keep them in tip top shape. Store the carrots in water, wrap cauliflower in a wet towel, and store the heirloom cherry tomatoes on the counter (not in the fridge!). Check out other tricks to keep vegetables and fruits fresh longer and more of our best vegetable storage tips.
Can you blanch the vegetables before putting them on a crudités platter?
You can, but you don’t have to. Follow our guide on how to blanch vegetables if you decide to go that route.
More Raw Vegetable Appetizers
