The Genius Trick For Uniformly Dicing Cheese For A Charcuterie Board
Creating the perfect charcuterie board is truly an art form. Charcuterie, per The Organic Kitchen, is how the French prepared and preserved their cured meats. The charcuterie board, a bit of a modern invention, incorporates meats, along with pate, assorted cheeses — brie, gouda, and cheddar — crackers, foie gras, fruit, nuts, spreads, and dips to form flavorful combinations that are both savory and sweet. They are quite delish and great for nibbling and noshing. Over the past few years, charcuterie boards have become all the rage, with 2020 seeing a marked uptick in their popularity, according Food Business News. Scott Bridi, founder of Brooklyn Cured, told the online publication, "The colors, textures, and artistic compositions possible with meats, cheeses, fruits, pickles, and crackers are engaging new customers."
But putting together one of these babies for a large crowd can be overwhelming to say the least. After all, charcuterie boards are all about presentation and your artistic skill arranging all those meats and cheeses in the perfect manner must be pleasing to the eye and tempting to the palate. One job that always takes a lot of TLC to ensure there is uniformity come when dicing up the cheese. Luckily, there is a genius hack to help eliminate some of that prep when you are cubing cheese — and it involves something you probably already have in your kitchen.
A cooling rack is your secret weapon
To cube or dice cheese in a uniformed manner for your charcuterie board (while saving time to enjoy your feast and company), just pull out a cooling rack — the very one you use to make your cookies for the holiday season. You can place the cooling rack directly over a bowl, place the cheese block of your choice on top, and press down. The resulting cheese chunks will all be the same size. Cuisine at Home shares the added bonus that this will also make cleanup much easier, especially you use a nonstick rack. It's that simple! But there are a couple of caveats that involve how dense the cheese is.
Vivian Chan, the recipe tester in the test kitchen for Food Network, demonstrates this technique in a YouTube video as she makes an egg salad and uses her handy dandy cooling rack to dice everything from the eggs to the feta cheese. As you will notice, this method works best for softer cheeses. Of course, the harder the cheese, the more muscle it might require, but the result will be uniformed cubed or diced cheese (and arms of steel as a side benefit). So, the next time you are making up your charcuterie board, try this hack for cutting up your cheese and enjoy!