Want to take your charcuterie game to the next level? These individual charcuterie cups are easy to make and work for any kind of get-together, from showers and game day celebrations to holiday parties and beyond.
At any dinner party, you can always find me by the cheese. I live for a good charcuterie board, but one thing I don’t love is trying to dig into a beautiful, fully loaded spread to try and pile everything onto my small, unbalanced appetizer plate. Enter these individual charcuterie cups. Small but mighty, these portable cups hold a ton of food, and they’re easy to carry around during a party.
Easy Charcuterie Cups
You can easily customize your charcuterie cups with meats, cheeses, fruit, nuts, and lots of other tiny food objects. I found all the food ingredients for my cups at my local Trader Joe’s, then ordered the charcuterie paper cups and food picks from Amazon. I used two different food picks for these cups: traditional bamboo picks, then shorter picks with a cute gold ball at the end to add some height variance and style.
These cups take minutes to assemble and work for any party.
Ingredients for Making Charcuterie Cups
Meat Options
A traditional charcuterie board always includes cured meats, so be sure to add some to your cups. Some ideas include salami, pepperoni, and prosciutto.
Cheese Options
When choosing cheese for your individual charcuterie cups, look for non-crumbly cheese that won’t ooze or crumble all over the place. Some of my personal favorites for this include cheddar, gouda, asiago, and Manchego. You can also include some softer cheese options like brie or mozzarella. For my cups, I always make a little caprese food pick with a couple of cherry tomatoes and small mozzarella balls. Such a crowd-pleaser!
Fruit
The key to a great cheese board is to balance the savory flavors with some sweet items like fruit. Grab dried items like apricots or cranberries, or use fresh blackberries, raspberries, or strawberries.
Crackers
Be sure to add in a few crackers with your charcuterie cups. I like to put extra crackers out in case my guests want more, but some thin water crackers or cheese twists add a nice crunch to your cup’s assortment.
Extras to Add
You can really put anything in your individual charcuterie cups! The only real “rule” here is to keep things small and bite-size. Nuts, olives, mini pickles, baby carrots, and even mini chocolates would all work. I always love mixing salty and sweet, so I added a single chocolate-covered pretzel as a “dessert” to finish off my cups.
How to Make Individual Charcuterie Cups
Prep Your Ingredients
Instead of building each cup one by one, I find it a lot easier to prep and lay out everything first, like slicing any cheese or stacking things onto picks. Then you can easily take the items and place them one by one into the cups.
Presentation is Key
There’s an art to assembling a beautiful charcuterie board, so I like to carry that into these individual cups.
When assembling your ingredients, think about how they’ll look in that cute little cup. For meats, consider folding your and stacking multiple slices onto a single pick, or rolling a slice and sneaking it into an open gap.
I love using food picks to stack items that can be eaten together in one or two bites. Picks also make it easier for your guests to grab and enjoy, instead of just dumping everything into the cup. I used two different length picks in my cups to add some height difference. Shop the longer bamboo picks here and the shorter picks with the gold “pearls” here.
You can even add an herb sprig as the finishing garnish on your charcuterie cups!
Layer
Start with heavier items like nuts and fruit at the bottom of your cups, then put the more fragile things like cheese and fruit at the top.
Charcuterie Cup FAQs
How far in advance should I prep my charcuterie cups?
Whenever I’m hosting, I like to prep things as far in advance as possible. It helps relieve stress day off and just makes things easier. When it comes to prepping your charcuterie cups though, you don’t want to prep too far in advance. If you do, you risk your meat and cheese drying out. As a rule of thumb, try not to prep your cups more than two hours in advance so they stay fresh.
What’s the best way to store charcuterie cups?
Once you’ve prepped your charcuterie cups, simply store them in your refrigerator until you’re ready to serve them. This will keep them cold and fresh for your guests.
How long can charcuterie stay out?
To avoid your meats and cheeses from drying out, along with avoiding potential bacterial growth, your charcuterie cups shouldn’t sit out longer than four hours.
If your cups sit out longer than this, you’ll want to dispose of any leftovers.
