In today’s post: It’s so easy to make this American flag charcuterie board! Add your favorite meats, cheeses, and fruit for the perfect patriotic snack board.

Charcuterie boards are gorgeous – but they are also totally intimidating!! I don’t know what kind of cheese and meat to buy and how to slice it and position everything and make it look pretty! But I thought it would be fun to make a flag charcuterie board for the Fourth of July, so I figured out the easiest way to put one together. It turned out super cute AND I spent the whole time I was making it snacking on the ingredients – so it tastes pretty great too.

Charcuterie board in the shape of an American flag.

Ingredients

To make a flag charcuterie board, you’ll need items that are red, white, and blue. I wanted to keep this board simple and easy to put together, so these are all items you can find at any grocery store – no need to make a special trip to a gourmet market. My board includes:

Blueberries
Blackberries
Raspberries
Strawberries
Cherries
White Chocolate Flipz Pretzels
Cheese (pepperjack and swiss)
Pepperoni and Salami slices
Club Crackers

Berries, cheeese, crackers, pepperoni and salami, white chocolate pretzels, mini marshmallows.

More Ideas

You can use the same items I used, or substitute other foods of similar colors. Here are a few more ideas:

Red: Sliced red pepper, red (beet) crackers, or red corn tortilla chips
White: Mini marshmallows, sliced pound cake, popcorn, other light colored crackers
Blue: Blueberries are probably the best choice for the blue section, but you could mix in some purple grapes – or you could use blue tortilla chips instead

How to make a flag Charcuterie Board

This is super easy to put together! You don’t even need a fancy board to put everything on – just use a half sheet pan or cookie sheet. I like using the half sheet pans that come with lids because you can create the flag, then put the lid on it if you aren’t serving right away. However, I would try to put it together shortly before you plan to serve to make sure the cheese doesn’t dry out. Also, before beginning, be sure to wash and thoroughly dry all the fruit!

Plate of cheese, crackers, meat and fruit.

Slice and Layer Cheese

When building a flag charcuterie board, it’s easiest to begin with a stripe of cheese in the center of the board. The cheese that comes in small “cracker cuts” packages works really well here because it’s already cut into little squares. If you are using larger slices of cheese, cut them into uniform squares about 1.75 inches across. Then layer a row of cheese that goes all the way from the left to the right side of the cookie sheet, halfway down from the top.

Cookie sheet with row of cheese across it.

Reserve a couple slices of cheese to cut into stars. The easiest way to do this is with a small star cookie cutter. If you don’t have a star cookie cutter, you can print out a star shape, cut it out, and use that as a temple to cut a few stars from cheese (or you can skip this step).

Using small star cookie cutter to cut stars from cheese slices.

Add the Lower Stripes

Now that the cheese is marking the center of the board, you can add three more stripes below it. I used both pepperoni and salami (since salami is not very red on it’s own); Club crackers, and cherries to fill out the lower portion of the flag.

Bottom half of cookie sheet filled with cheese stripe, meat stripe, cracker stripe, cherries stripe.

Add the Upper Stripes

Now you can work upward, adding the rest of your stripes. I used strawberries, white chocolate pretzels, and raspberries. Remember to leave room for the blue portion of the flag.

Top right of cookie sheet filled with strawberries, white chocolate pretzels, raspberries.

Finish the Flag

Now you can finish the flag by filling in the blue section with blueberries. I tossed a few blackberries in as well to add a little interest. Top off the blue section with a few stars cut from cheese and the flag is ready to serve!

Let’s Make