Beginners Guide: How to be a Cheese Expert While Serving Charcuterie

Most people love cheese. That’s why when you are preparing to feed a group, you want to make sure there is enough for everyone. You don’t want to leave your guests hungry and wanting more, but you also don’t want to overbuy because, cheese is expensive . That’s why I did some research to share with you how to calculate the right amount of cheese for any event.

Caterers recommend 1-2 oz of cheese per serving for hors d’oeuvres and dessert trays. They recommend 3 – 6 oz if your tray is the main meal. If you are eating the main meal at lunch or dinner time, 6 oz is recommended. If you are eating at off peak times (brunch or afternoon), then reduce the serving size to 3 oz.

There is more to consider than just how many ounces of cheese to serve per serving. That is just the beginning step to building a successful food platter.

The following guide will provide you all the information you need to calculate how much cheese you need correctly and be the hero of your party.

How Many Ounces of Cheese will your guests eat?

This is the million dollar question. The amount of cheese your guests will eat depends on the meal course you are serving it in.

Appetizers/Hors d’oeuvres

The majority of food trays, like charcuterie boards, will be served as an appetizer course. Hors d’oeuvres are meant to get your guests mingling as well as tide them over until the main course is ready.

You don’t want them to get full off of the appetizer tray, which is why only 1- 2 oz of cheese is recommended. If your guests are heavy cheese eaters, calculate 2oz per serving. Use 1 -1/2 oz if they are a lighter crowd.

Appetizers should only reduce guests main course eating capacity by 10%.

Main Course

Sometimes, food platters are served as the main course. Food platters as a main course work well with events that are more casual and where sitting at a table doesn’t make sense. Events like super bowl parties, game nights and birthday parties are perfect venues for main course platters.

Because the main course should constitute 85% of your guests’ servings intake, calculate 3-6 oz of cheese per person, depending on the time of day you are serving the meal.

People are more hungry at lunch time and dinner time, so calculating closer to 6 oz of cheese per serving should be enough food.

When eating the main course at off hours, like brunch or in the afternoon, people are less hungry and will eat less. That’s why the recommended range starts at 3 oz for non traditional meal times.

Like with appetizers, you need to know the appetites of your guests to know which end of the recommend guideline to use. These are guidelines only.

Dessert Trays

By the time your guests get to the dessert tray, they will be pretty full from the first two courses. That is why caterers recommend 1 1/2-2 oz of cheese per serving at dessert.

How do you know what side of the recommended range to calculate with?

To make the best estimate of how many ounces to plan per serving, you have to consider who your guests are.

For example, if you are preparing an appetizer tray for guests with large appetites or a group that loves cheese, I would lean towards the higher end of the recommended serving size and use 2 oz instead of 1 oz.

However, if you know that some of your guests are not large cheese eaters (like most of my children) or maybe just light eaters in general, I would use the lower end of the recommendation to calculate the needed portions at 1- 1/2 oz.

You have to use your best judgement. Every situation is different.

How to calculate the total amount of servings needed

If you haven’t noticed already, I have been referencing ounces per serving, not ounces per person in this article. There is a specific reason for this. Adults and children eat different portion sizes. If you count a child as 1 person for food calculations, you will end up with too much food.

As a general rule, adults count as 1 serving and children count as 1/2 serving. (I count teenagers as an adult since they usually eat the same portion size as adults.)

Now that you understand the difference between ounces per serving and ounces per person, lets move on to the actual calculations. Don’t worry. It’s simple math.

Before you calculate the total amount of cheese you need, you have to figure out how many servings you need.

Remember,servings are different than number of guests. You may have 30 guests at your dinner party, but if 10 of those guests are children, then you only need 25 servings (10 children count as 5 adults, so 20+5=25).

To calculate how many ounces of cheese you need, use this basic formula:

(Total number of serving needed) x (number of oz per serving) = Total amount of ounces needed

For example: You are having a dinner party and plan on using a food platter, like a charcuterie board, as the main dish. The guest list consists of a pretty good variety of hearty eaters and light eaters. There are 12 adults and 8 children. You are serving dinner at 5pm.

Solution: Because you are serving food at dinner time, you would use the higher end of the recommended 3-6 oz of cheese per serving. You might consider calculating using 5oz per serving because you have a mix of eaters, opting not to calculate servings based on 6 oz because some of your guests are light eaters.

12 adults + 8 children (1/2 serving each) = 16 total servings

(Total number of serving needed) x (# oz per serving) = Total amount of ounces needed

16 servings x 5 oz/serving = 80 oz total

For this example, you would need 80 ounces of cheese total.

How many types of cheese do you include

Now that you know how many ounces total that you need, the next question is, how many varieties of cheese should you put on your board?

The industry standard is 3-5 varieties (including different textures, densities and flavor profiles), depending on the size of your platter. Most caterers use 3-4 types.

If you were making a small cheese board, you would probably only want 3 types of cheese. You don’t want to overwhelm your guests. However for a larger board, I would provide 4-5 different options.

If you divide the total amount of ounces by the number of varieties of cheese being used, you know how many ounces of each type of cheese you will need.

Continuing with our example above:

If you need 80 oz of cheese for your main course charcuterie board, you would want 16-20 oz of each type of cheese (assuming you choose 4-5 varieties).

80 oz/4 varieties = 20 oz per cheese type

80 oz/5 varieties =16 oz per cheese type

Since cheese is typically packaged in 16 oz portions, if you want to make things nice and even, you could opt for 5 cheese varieties, at 16 oz each. This would minimize waste but would not leave you with any extra.

However, if you choose to error on the safe side and have extra servings, you could do 20 oz of 4 cheese varieties, and have plenty of extras in case guests want more.

What types of cheese varieties are there?

For a complete guide on the 6 types of cheese varieties listed below, with more in depth information and pictures, check out my article, THE BEST TYPES OF CHEESE TO PUT ON A CHARCUTERIE BOARD.

Here is a basic overview.

I have broken down cheeses into 6 main categories: classic, hard (firm), semi-hard, soft, crumbly and flavored.

Classic cheeses are your typical prepackaged cheese that most people are familiar with eating.

ex) Cheddar, Mozerella, Monterey Jack and Colby.

Hard or Firm cheeses have the lowest moisture content, therefore they are the driest and hardest of all the varieties. They are also aged the longest.

ex) Manchego, Provolone and Parmesean

Semi-hard Cheeses have a slightly higher moisture level than hard cheeses and are a bit more spongy.

ex) Gouda, Edam and Cheddar

Soft Cheeses have the highest moisture content and are creamy or melty inside.

ex) Brie or Camembert

Crumbly Cheeses are just that, crumbly. The majority of them are blue cheeses so they are very strong in flavor. You either love or hate crumbly cheeses. There is not much middle ground.

Not all crumbly cheeses are blue cheeses. Stilton has a blue and non blue version.

ex) Roquefort, Stilton, and Gargonzola

Flavored cheeses are the fun and interesting ones. These are cheese that have been infused with fruits, herbs or spices. They may be smoked as well.

ex) Wensleydale with Cranberries or Blueberries, Pepper Jack, and Smoked Gouda

Which of the 6 Varieties of Cheese Should You Choose?

The way I see it, this decision is based on 3 factors.

1. What type of foods do your guests prefer? If you guest are down to earth, home cookin’ type of people or you are feeding children, then you may want to stick with more traditional types of cheese like cheddar, mozarella and provolone. If you guests are more fancy eaters, then you can throw in some fun, more exotic types like brie, gargonzola and manchego.

2. What is the overall flavor profile of the event? If you are having a superbowl party, I’d stick to traditional cheese varieties. If you are cooking a high end cuisine, then obviously a higher end cheese pallet is the best choice.

3. How much do you want to spend? If cost is an issue, again, choose the more traditional cheeses. If you are willing to splurge a little than go crazy with the more expensive, rare cheeses.

Below is a chart for your reference, laying out a basic guide to each cheese type, the size of packaging they are sold in, how much they cost per package and how much they cost per ounce. This quick guide will give you a better idea of what direction you want to go in when choosing the varieties of cheese for your platter.

How Big Is a Serving Size of Each Type of Cheese