What One Item Must Be Served With Charcuterie Platters Whenever Possible

When you’re at the top of your game as a party host, you know how to bring the big picture to life while attending to every last detail. Whether it’s the food, the coat check, or having extra ice, your visitors should be able to enjoy themselves and naturally follow your plans for the event. Because of this, you ought to accompany your meat and cheese platters with an empty pit bowl.

Presenting an empty bowl amidst the plentiful platters of fruit, cheese, antipasti, and sliced meats may seem redundant (or just plain wrong), but it’s the same concept as asking for an extra bowl when ordering spicy wings or mussels at a restaurant: You need a location to store the undesired trash. It allows for a more ordered experience overall and clears your plate of shells and bones so you can concentrate on the list of edible morsels that are now on the menu.

The pit bowl is more of a general wastebasket, though it can be used for olive pits. Plan for a little more room than you think you’ll need. It can be as little as a soup bowl, ramekin, or spice dish. During a party, unanticipated scraps like toothpicks or the pits, cores, stems, and hulls of stone fruits frequently appear. You run the chance of all of this trash winding up in weird locations, like rolled up in abandoned napkins on the window sill, end table, or on the bar, if you don’t provide this bowl along with your meat and cheese board. Some visitors may feel obligated to frequently visit the kitchen garbage, which makes them less at ease and, more significantly, obstructs your ability to prepare additional goodies.

The trash bowl will help you with cleanup later on while letting your companions continue their chats and keeping the plate looking nice. Without a pit basin, the worst thing that may happen is that guests might just leave the stems, rinds, or pits on the half-full board. Allow them to aid you.

Eat a little of the party food before your guests arrive to avoid confusion, and then add some pits or toothpicks in the bowl to indicate what it’s for. Throughout the celebration, discreetly swoop in with a new, empty dish and empty it.