How to Make a New Year’s Charcuterie Board That Pairs Perfectly with Bubbly
Updated: Dec. 01, 2022
Ring in the new year with this posh New Year's Eve charcuterie board. Pop a bottle of champagne and you'll have everything you need to watch the ball drop!
New Year’s Eve is known for celebration, anticipation and, of course, champagne. No matter how you plan to celebrate, you’ll need some festive fare that pairs nicely with your glass(es) of bubbly. Whether you prepare a fancy New Year’s dinner or prefer to make a slew of New Year’s Eve party foods instead, our sophisticated spread will fit right in. Here’s how to make our New Year’s Eve charcuterie board, full of seafood, sweets and other striking appetizers.
How to Make a New Year’s Charcuterie Board
Foods to Include
Seafood: We included several types of seafood on our board to give it an upscale feel. Store-bought shrimp cocktail and smoked salmon with crostini, dill, cream cheese and capers are simple additions to the spread, and lobster tartlets take just 20 minutes to make at home ahead of time.
Sweets: In addition to the seafood, we wanted indulgent, one-bite chocolates on the board as well. Ferrero Rocher truffles add some shine, and chocolate and vanilla quadratini squares lend some visual texture and crunch.
Fruits, veggies and other snacks: Snacks like prosciutto-wrapped honeydew and cantaloupe, castelvetrano olives and shelled pistachios serve as a bridge between the seafood and the sweets.
Grape skewers and cheese sticks give the spread some height and dimension since we placed them in glasses to stand them up tall. Pastry-wrapped asparagus mirrors the length of the grape skewers and cheese sticks, balancing out the board.
Did you know that grapes are one of the New Year’s foods known to bring good luck? Each grape on the skewer represents one month of the year.
Drinks: Luckily, seafood, chocolate and the other items on our New Year’s Eve charcuterie board pair nicely with your choice of bubbles, whether you prefer to go with champagne, prosecco or even sparkling grape juice.
How to Build a NYE Board
We used a metal sheet pan instead of a regular charcuterie board. The rim keeps everything in place!
Step 1: Start at the top
Put the smoked salmon, crostini, cream cheese and dill on a small rectangular plate or platter that you can tuck into the corner of your sheet pan. Put the castelvetrano olives in a bowl next to it, and tuck the hot lobster tartlets into the other corner.
Step 2: Fill in the top third of the board
Fill a small bowl with the shrimp cocktail sauce, and place it below the lobster tartlets. Fill in the space between the smoked salmon and the cocktail sauce with the pastry-wrapped asparagus. Don’t be afraid to stack them up!
Step 3: Assemble the middle of the board
On the right side of the board, put the cold shrimp on a plate below the cocktail dip so that any juices won’t seep into the surrounding foods later on. Fill the left side up with prosciutto-wrapped honeydew and cantaloupe.
Step 4: Create some visual height
Grab some wooden or metal skewers and thread 12 grapes onto each one, one for every month of the new year. Fit as many as you can in a tall glass, and fill another glass with the twisted cheese sticks.
Step 5: Add some sweet and savory items
You can’t go from eating shrimp to chocolate, so we included a few items that could serve as a bridge between the seafood and the sweets. Place a bowl of shelled pistachios next to the grape skewers, and tuck some cheese slices on their side by the shrimp.
Step 6: Finish with the chocolates
Fit in as many chocolates as you can. The quadratini squares will fill in the gap between the grape skewers and cheese sticks and the edge of the sheet pan. Your favorite truffles as well as wrapped Ferrero Rocher chocolates can take up the rest of the space.
Step 7: Pop the bubbly and serve!
Providing individual champagne bottles means every one of your guests can have fun popping the cork. It could also save you a few glasses to wash later! Regardless, giving everyone their own bottle means that no one will get a flat drink.
We styled our New Year’s Eve charcuterie board with mini disco balls, confetti poppers and noisemakers. Gold-rimmed snack plates also make everyone’s snacks feel more on-theme even after they walk away from the spread.
New Year’s Eve Charcuterie Board Tips
Can you make a New Year’s charcuterie board ahead of time?
Luckily, most of the items on this board are store-bought or need no assembly, which makes this board so easy for any host to put together last minute. The two homemade items on the board—the wrapped asparagus and lobster tartlets—can both be prepped ahead and baked right before you plan to assemble the spread.
What else can you put on a New Year’s Eve charcuterie board?
You can put whatever you like on a New Year’s Eve charcuterie board. Pull some ideas from our collection of champagne food pairing ideas if you want to stay on theme, or get inspiration from our holiday cheese board, since the holidays aren’t over until the new year begins!
If you have children at your NYE gathering, consider making a hot chocolate board so they have a themed beverage to drink alongside the adults.
If you want to make a more literally themed board, consider spelling out “cheers,” “NYE” or the upcoming year in your choice of food. You could cut out the letters and numbers from cheese slices, assemble the food in the word you like, or use alphabet cookie cutters that spell out the word and fill them up with M&Ms.
More Charcuterie Boards For Entertaining
Originally Published: December 01, 2022
