Cold cuts are one of the main dishes, without which no feast is complete. Most often, cold cuts consist of the following meat products: • Sausage; • Boiled pork; • Brisket; • Lard with layers; • Balyki; • Meat rolls, etc.
When we already know what we will cut onto the meat plate, then we next need to take care of decorating our meat slices.
To decorate cold cuts, it is better to use various herbs, vegetables, olives or black olives.
There is not much theory in the design of a meat plate, so let’s move straight to the examples.
Simple meat cutting
A meat plate can be beautiful and original, while being done very quickly and easily.
We cut three types of meat products onto a plate and decorate the dish with lettuce, parsley, and olives.
For beauty, you can sprinkle a little red pepper on the edge of the plate, as shown in the photo. This meat plate looks delicious!
What kind of dish to place the sausage slices on?
In this matter, you should be guided solely by the preferences of the hostess and the general style of the table. A win-win option is a completely transparent glass plate. A wooden board is perfect - but only a new, neat one, not cut with a knife. A multi-tiered dish would also be an excellent solution - you can put sausages on the bottom “floor”, cheese products above, and olives, gherkins or maybe sauces on the top.
The plate doesn't have to be round
Cold cuts with mustard
We cut three or more types of meat products onto a plate and decorate with herbs to your taste.
This could be green onions, parsley, cucumber, tomato or whatever you have on hand.
Then we fill the gravy boat with mustard and place it in the center or on the edge of the plate, as shown in the photo. Your unusual meat plate is ready!
How to make a rose from sausage
To make sausage circles, ham slices and noble jamon look exquisite, our expert, decorative cook Maria Bokalets spoke about the secrets of cutting and arranging them.
Fold the pieces in half and place them in a path. The folded edge of each subsequent slice should overlap the side with open edges.
Once the path is laid out, roll it up, starting from the open edge of the last slice.
Tie the bottom of the rolled roll with a green onion feather and trim the base evenly so that the sausage flower stands stable.
Place the rose in the center of the dish and fold back the outer petals so that they fall onto the plate, covering the base. Ruffle the inner petals of the rose to give the rose volume.
For a voluminous sausage rose you will need 18 thin slices of boiled sausage.
Sliced meat with horseradish
Also an unusual and tasty find would be cold cuts with horseradish.
To do this, cut several rolls onto a plate and decorate the dish with lettuce leaves. You can cut a flower from a carrot and place a gravy boat with horseradish in the center of the plate. To complete our composition, you can put an olive or an olive in a saucepan. This is the kind of meat cutting you can get.
Christmas tree
The Christmas tree cutting fits the New Year's table.
To create you will need:
- sausage 2 types;
- hard cheese;
- tomatoes (drops);
- parsley.
Instructions:
- A round plate is decorated with foil. You need to work carefully so that it does not tear, but completely envelops the bottom. You can tuck the ends down.
- We need to make the top of the tree. The tomato is cut in half. The corners of a slice of cheese are cut off to the same size, then they are folded and cut in half. These will be the details for the star on the Christmas tree.
- A star is laid out with cheese triangles, in the center of which half a tomato is placed.
- Next they are laid out in layers: cheese, cut into 2-2.5 cm squares, tomatoes, small bouquets of parsley, sausage. Then cheese, tomatoes, parsley and sausage are laid out again. This continues until the ingredients run out.
- To make the tree even, it should be trimmed with ordinary scissors.
The bottom of the slice can be decorated with olives or herbs.
Sliced meat with pomegranate
If you decide to prepare an unusual assortment of meats, then first take the meat products and cut them into a plate.
Then decorate the dish with greens and a sausage rose, which should be placed in the center of the plate. Add the pomegranate seeds at the very end, as they only serve as decoration. This meat plate will become an unusual highlight on your table!
The most win-win serving options
5: Homemade meat
This could be homemade sausage or salteson. It's difficult to cut them nicely. You can garnish the plate with a small bowl of horseradish or mustard placed in the center.
You can also decorate the plate using baked meat of different types - beef, pork, chicken and chicken.
Boiled tongue is also perfect for slicing - this offal is perfectly cut into thin slices.
The only drawback of this plate is that it turns out to be the least elegant due to the fact that baked meat or sausages are difficult to cut really thinly. You can do it differently: lay out a piece of baked meat along with a small knife. This way, all guests can cut off portions for themselves. You can place olives, lemon slices, and chopped vegetables along the edges of the plate.
4: Store-bought meat products
Slices of sausage or ham, thinly cut using a slicer, can be beautifully rolled into rolls, laid out in “stacks”... And, in fact, the job is done.
You can also use improvised materials. If the holiday table is not formal and the situation does not require displaying grandma's set, lay out the sausage on a rough wooden or stone plate. It will turn out crafty, but very appetizing. With beer or stronger men's drinks - that's what you need!
3: Meat (sausage) and cheese
Even if you just alternate cheese and sausage, laying them out in circles with a slight displacement of each next ball (by purchasing one type of such products), it will turn out beautifully.
And this is a more elegant design. But it’s also easy to repeat.
2: Combination with vegetables and herbs
Any greens will do. We have traditionally used dill and parsley for many years. But if they seem rustic to you, buy a salad, or better yet, arugula. Its spicy taste will perfectly complement any meat dishes.
It is advisable to decorate the cut vegetables beautifully. Ideally, using the carving technique. But you can simply cut cucumbers, sweet (or hot) peppers and tomatoes as thinly as possible.
Also, sour berries (cranberries), olives, and nuts are perfect for meat.
A special theme is pickled vegetables. If they are small, they can be put on skewers and “displayed” in the center of the dish in the form of a snack bouquet. Although, in principle, you can do this with fresh vegetables (whole or pieces).
And to prevent the vegetables from wilting while waiting to be served, you can lightly sprinkle them with olive oil.
And this is new, which is actually well-forgotten old: tomatoes, from the halves of which (as well as boiled eggs and dots of mayonnaise) cute fly agaric mushrooms are made.
By the way! Sometimes fruits are also placed on the meat plate - grapes, figs, thin triangles of orange or lemon, kiwi slices.
1: Beautiful shape
You can try to achieve certain shapes. For example, lay out products in the shape of a butterfly or a Christmas tree.
Or this cute bird.
Women at the table will appreciate a bouquet of sausage.
The most difficult thing about it is creating roses. But it only seems so. A detailed master class will teach you how to make such flowers in literally 5 minutes, to the delight of all guests:
Sliced meat in the shape of a fish
To prepare cold cuts in an unusual fish shape, you need to use patience and imagination.
We make the head from cheese, the eyes from a boiled egg, and the lips from a tomato. We carefully lay out the scales from various sausages, and make the fins from halves of tomatoes and cheese.
For the tail, take another sausage and carefully place everything on a plate. This fish-shaped cut of meat, like in the photo, will work for you too!
Useful tips
If you think that regular cutting is boring, here is a life hack on how to make the dish even more appetizing. Make ham rolls by filling the meat tubes with a paste of mayonnaise, eggs, cheese and garlic. To make the structure hold better, secure the seams with toothpicks, skewers or green onions.
Cheese balls sprinkled with herbs, chopped nuts or seasonings look great when paired with cold cuts. Placed in the center of the plate, they will liven up the appearance of your appetizer. Plus, it's also very tasty.
You can also make small canapes, but without bread, from only ham, boiled sausage, cheese, olives, cherry tomatoes.
To set a chic table at home, you don’t have to spend 24 hours at the stove. As you can see, the decoration of the table could well be sliced sausage. The serving photo, I hope, convinced you of this.
On this positive note, I bid you farewell. Happy upcoming holidays to you. Subscribe to the blog, leave comments, share links.
Cold cuts for beer
Now we will decorate a lazy meat plate for beer.
Cold cuts for beer are most often made with jamon, bastrum, smoked sausages and bacon. We prepare the assorted meats for beer: thinly cut the meat delicacies we need, place them evenly on a plate and complement the composition with parsley. Such a simple meat plate is simply created for lazy people.
What if you made a meat and cheese plate together?
Advice!
If you and your family are big connoisseurs of cheeses, and you really enjoy them (you like to eat cheese with wine, grapes, baguette, pear...), do not sin to put expensive cheeses on the same plate with sausages, even if we are talking about a cognac dry-cured stick for 1500 rubles or about jamon.
If you don’t intend to display a large number of salami and delicacies on the “meat plate”, or you don’t want to take up space on the table with such banal things as sausage, you can combine cold cuts and cheese. This is especially convenient if it stands in the center of the table - guests will not have to pass sausages and cheeses to each other - everything will be at the same distance from each family member.
If you are tired of the banal “rounds”, you can thinly cut the meat and sausages into circles, and then wrap them in a tube
. In turn, the tubes can be laid out in a circle, in a square, in a cascade, or in the shape of a flower.
Option for designing slices with tubes
As for cheese, small triangles will look great (it’s better to “pick up” a small neat piece several times than to bite a large chunk and put the rest on a plate) and cubes.
Lifehack for the thrifty!
Make 2 plates of slices. The first one contains expensive varieties of meat, dry-cured sausage and elite cheese (“Maasdam”, “Gouda”, “Dor Blue”, “Tilsiter”, “Edam”). And for the second place, send “cheese sausage”, processed cheese, “Russian”, “King Arthur”, “Dutch”, and from sausages choose half-smoked and boiled. This way you will impress the guests at the beginning of the dinner and will not fall flat on your face when drunk guests snack on whatever they can get their hands on.
Economical meat cutting
In order to make an economical version of cutting meat, you only need one type of sausage and a little imagination.
The meat slices are shaped from the middle. Take a piece of sausage and twist it in half, and do this with several slices.
Next we draw up the second row. We take the sausage and fold it in half; we do this with several slices of sausage until we close the circle.
We do the same with the third row, and at the end we decorate the dish with herbs. This is the kind of interesting and inexpensive meat plate you can get.
Meat cuts – there is room for your imagination! Don’t be afraid to experiment and then you will definitely succeed!
Sliced meats beautiful design - composition and design with photos
If you are going to serve several options for deli meats and sausages, then you can lay them out in a very original way. First of all, based on the shades and taste of the products.
Firstly , we lay out the slices of sausage, pre-thinly cut, in the form of a serpentine: in circles or in a spiral.
Secondly , you can use the principle of the rainbow - from the darkest to the lightest, or in reverse order.
Sausage is a malleable product from which you can even make flowers. The first slice must be rolled into a tube, and then petal after petal must be added to it in a spiral until we get a bud of the desired size.
The easiest way to sculpt a rose is to hold the flower petals together with a toothpick.
The next option is to form an original cut using a dough mold; a metal mold is perfect.
With its help, we give the thin slices the intended shape and lay them out in neat rows or collect them in a sofa.
If the sausage has a large diameter, then fold it in half and lay it out, setting it in one direction.
The gaps formed during laying out can be filled with slices of tomatoes or cucumbers.
There is an option for cones that will resemble calla lilies or other fantastic flowers, or you can simply twist classic tubes.
You can decorate one large flower. To do this, first place lettuce leaves on the dish.
Then slices that will play the role of petals, and in the center - a dark product (olives) or a light one (sauce).
Admire examples of original layouts that claim to be works of art:
Don't miss the most beautiful: Canapé recipes on skewers for the festive table
Get inspired by our small photo selection on the theme “Sliced Meat”
What if you want something more original?
You do the cutting every year and your household already knows what to expect? Surprise! There are several options for serving the same products, but not in the form of traditional cutting:
- Roll the filled rolls.
Cut the ham and other delicacies into thin wide slices, prepare the filling to your taste (this could be, for example, grated cheese with mayonnaise and garlic, grated cheese with walnuts and prunes, crab sticks with mayonnaise), tie with thin onion or a “lint” of smoked cheese braids.
Design option for ham rolls with filling
Design option for ham rolls with filling - Use canapé molds.
Make figures from cheese and sausage, “assemble” the snack on a toothpick or skewer. The set can be anything, for example, a piece of toast bread, sausage, cheese, olive.
Simple canapés for cold cuts
A more complex version of canapes - Assemble a Christmas tree from cuttings!
Yes, it’s very beautiful, it saves space and allows guests to easily remove slices, moving from the top to the “stump”.
