What Goes on a Spanish Charcuterie Board, and What It Costs a Head

A Spanish board is three things: ham, cured sausage and cheese. At our prices the cheese is the cheapest thing on it — $1.25 an ounce — and ready-to-plate bellota ham the dearest, at $20.00 to $21.33. Allow about 2 oz of ham, 1 oz of sausage and 1.5 oz of cheese a head, and the ham format decides the bill.

Everything below is priced from our own shelves and was re-read from the shop on 6 November 2026. Where a product does not declare its weight we have left the per-ounce column out rather than guess at it.

What actually goes on a Spanish board?

Three families, and they are not interchangeable:

• Ham — jamón, sliced paper-thin. Serrano from white-breed pigs, or Ibérico in one of its four graded forms. This is the centre of the board and the part people remember.
• Cured sausage — chorizo (the paprika one) and salchichón (the black-peppercorn one). Cut thick, across, with a kitchen knife.
• Cheese — sheep's milk Manchego, cow's milk Mahón, and the smoked sheep's milk cheeses of the north.

Olives, Marcona almonds and quince paste are the usual company. Bread, not crackers.

What does each thing cost per ounce?

This is the table that decides the board, sorted from cheapest ounce to dearest. Every figure is the shelf price divided by the weight the product itself declares.

What it is	Price	Weight	Per ounce
Mahón cheese, DO Menorca, 1 lb — cheese	$19.99	16 oz	$1.25
Manchego DOP whole wheel, 6.6 lb — cheese	$199	105.6 oz	$1.88
A Little Bit Of Spain — a whole board in one box	$129	51.95 oz itemised	$2.48
Salchichón Ibérico, whole 7 oz — sausage	$18.99	7 oz	$2.71
Chorizo Ibérico, whole 7 oz — sausage	$19.99	7 oz	$2.86
Salchichón + chorizo de bellota, two whole 1 lb sausages	$92	32 oz	$2.88
Chorizo de bellota, whole 1 lb — sausage, black seal	$49.99	16 oz	$3.12
Serrano jamón, whole bone-in, 16–18 lb — ham, carved by you	$499	131 servings of 1 oz	$3.81
USDA Organic chorizo de bellota, 7 oz — sausage	$39	7 oz	$5.57
Bites by Fermín — chorizo + salchichón + loin, three 1 oz packs	$19.99	3 oz	$6.66
Bites by Fermín — Serrano ham + Serrano loin, two 1 oz packs	$14.99	2 oz	$7.50
Fermín paleta de bellota, whole bone-in, 10–14 lb — ham, carved by you	$559	73 servings of 1 oz	$7.66
Bites by Fermín — Ibérico ham + Ibérico loin, two 1 oz packs	$16.99	2 oz	$8.50
Chorizo Ibérico, sliced, 2 oz × 4 packs — sausage, ready to plate	$67	8 oz	$8.38
Fermín ham de bellota, sliced, 2 oz × 4 packs — ham, ready to plate	$160	8 oz	$20.00
Hand Cut 5 Jotas paleta de bellota, 2.5 oz × 3 packs — ham, knife-cut	$160	7.5 oz	$21.33

Read the two ends of that table against each other: $1.25 an ounce at the top, $21.33 at the bottom. About seventeen times, on the same board — and both ends are things people actually put on one. That spread is why the ham decision is the only one worth agonising over.

Some board items are missing from that table on purpose: a few are sold by the piece at an approximate weight, and a few more declare weights we cannot reconcile against the contents they list. We would rather show a shorter table than a number we cannot stand behind.

How much do I put out per person?

We use 2 oz of ham, 1 oz of sausage and 1.5 oz of cheese a head for a board that is the centre of the evening rather than something before dinner. That is our own working assumption, not a rule — but it is the one every figure below is built on, so if you change it the arithmetic moves with you in a straight line.

What does a board for six actually cost?

Same portions, same three families, three different sets of choices from the table above.

Board	Ham, 2 oz	Sausage, 1 oz	Cheese, 1.5 oz	Per head	Six heads
You carve, Serrano whole Serrano leg · salchichón 7 oz · Mahón	$7.62	$2.71	$1.88	$12.21	$73.23
You carve, bellota whole paleta de bellota · chorizo de bellota 1 lb · Manchego DOP	$15.32	$3.12	$2.82	$21.26	$127.56
Nothing to carve sliced bellota ham · sliced chorizo · Mahón	$40.00	$8.38	$1.88	$50.26	$301.53

More than four times the money for the same six people, and the cheese line barely moves. One caveat that belongs in large type: the first two rows price the ham out of a whole piece, so they only hold if you use the whole piece. A 16–18 lb Serrano leg carries about 131 servings and one board for six uses twelve of them — the other 119 are either more boards or a leg you did not need. The third row buys exactly what the board eats and nothing more.

And a whole leg needs equipment: a stand and a long blade come to $88 in this shop, bought once. Spread over the 131 servings of the Serrano that is about $0.67 a serving, which puts the first row's ham at $4.48 an ounce instead of $3.81 the first time you do it. How to carve a whole jamón is the tools, the first cut and which piece is cheapest to learn on.

Why is the ham the expensive part?

Because with a pack you are buying somebody else's knife work, and on these shelves that is what the price gap measures. The same Fermín acorn-fed ham is $7.66 an ounce as a whole bone-in shoulder and $20.00 an ounce in 2 oz packs. Against the Serrano leg at $3.81, the sliced bellota is 5.25 times the price per ounce — and part of that is grade, not format, because Serrano and bellota are different animals. Bellota vs cebo de campo vs Serrano separates the two effects, and is a whole jamón cheaper than sliced? runs the format question on its own.

The sausages do not behave that way nearly as sharply. Whole, the Fermín ones sit between $2.71 and $3.12 an ounce — the USDA Organic bellota chorizo at $5.57 is the outlier — and sliced into 2 oz packs the chorizo goes to $8.38. Chorizo vs salchichón is where to settle which of the two to put on the board, and what the choice costs by the ounce.

Which cheese should I put on it?

Two do most of the work on a Spanish board, and they are at opposite ends of the milk:

• Manchego DOP, $199 for a 6.6 lb wheel ($1.88 an ounce). Sheep's milk from La Mancha, 12 months, firm and ivory inside with the zigzag pleita pattern on the rind. The wheel is a commitment; it is in the table because it is the only Manchego we stock that declares its weight, and so the only one we can price by the ounce.
• Mahón, $19.99 a pound ($1.25 an ounce). DO cow's milk from Menorca, four months, orange rind, creamy with a nutty finish. It is the cheapest ounce in this table and the easiest size to buy for one evening.

The rest of the range, including the smoked sheep's milk cheeses, is in cheese.

Can I buy the whole board in one box?

Yes. A Little Bit Of Spain is $129 and itemises 51.95 oz across eight things: Serrano 3.5 oz, Palacios chorizo 7.9 oz, three cheeses at 8 oz each, anchovy-stuffed olives 12.35 oz, Marcona almonds 4.2 oz, and quince paste. That is $2.48 an ounce for the box as weighed, which lands it third-cheapest in the table above — below every sausage on it.

The honest caveat: the 51.95 oz is not 51.95 oz of ham. The ham in it is 3.5 oz, and most of the weight is cheese, olives and almonds. Judge the box on being a board in one parcel, which it is, and not on its price per ounce of jamón. Its own page notes that the cheese selection varies with what is in the case.

What if I only want to taste first?

Bites by Fermín is the smallest way in: 1 oz packs, three combinations, $14.99 to $19.99. Per ounce it is dear — $6.66 to $8.50 — and that is the right trade when what you are buying is the answer to “do I like this” rather than the ham for an evening.

If you are feeding a specific number of people rather than building a board, how much jamón do I need? takes a guest count and turns it into a piece and a price. If what you want is the ham on its own, every whole piece we carry is in all hams, and the cured range is in charcuterie.

We are a Spanish delicatessen at 1400 20th Street, Miami Beach, FL 33139 · (786) 400-8379 · info@barcelonetamarket.com. We do not publish which pieces are on the counter on a given day, so call and ask before you drive over.