10 rules of food styling — beautiful serving of dishes
We used to think that serving dishes is a high academic science in which rules and traditions mean a lot. To violate them in the process of absorbing perfectly decomposed food means to commit a crime against taste, to go against the principles of haute cuisine.
But imagine for a second that you can forget about the rules and serve food in such a way that its appearance will not cause confusion from ideality, but an incredible and irresistible desire to eat it. We decided to collect rules for the beautiful presentation of dishes that will help make them as beautiful as food can be attractive at all.
Any chef will tell you that the beauty of a dish lies in its conciseness. And it is impossible to achieve it using huge portions. Of course, a plate weighing a couple of kilograms will cause no less excitement, but in pursuit of aesthetics, it is worth cutting portions to a minimum. If necessary, it is better to serve an additional portion.
Our brain is so designed that it reacts more strongly to bright, contrasting colors than to monotonous shades or faded colors. The more contrasting the dish, the stronger our emotional interest and, as a result, appetite. To create a contrast, you can use unusual dishes, tablecloths, herbs and other products that, in your opinion, can become part of the taste and color palette of the ideal dish.
The perfect order in the styling of food is appropriate only in advertising, but to serve it on the table, you can add a little mouth-watering mess to the dish, which will only enhance the feeling of naturalness of the ingredients. Let the salad be cut too large, and the yolk oozes out of the scrambled eggs — all this is to your advantage.
The simpler and more minimalistic the plate and appliances, the more beautiful the food looks on them. This rule really works, so you should not chase complications in the dishes.
Understand which is the brightest component of the dish can become the main visual note of the serving, and bring it to the foreground. It is not necessary to bury the dish with sauce, lettuce leaves and other auxiliary elements.
The cooking process looks no less appetizing than the finished dish. Therefore, leave small strokes in order to perform them in front of consumers. For example, you can pour sauce on a dish right under the nose of an impatient guest. This will be a very strong incentive for appetite and just looks beautiful.
In general, such a move contradicts the laws of serving, but if you have a large plate and a small portion, the devices on the plate can add visual frames for the dish and become an additional decorative element.
A well-chosen and folded napkin can be an excellent contrast for a dish, giving it the necessary visual appeal.
Serve sandwiches directly on the cutting board, and drinks in jam jars - such experiments will have a beneficial effect on the perception of food and make the meal a real feast.
Squeezed lemon, greens torn by the hands, bread broken into uneven pieces — all this appeals to something hidden, to a time when it was not necessary to follow the laws of table etiquette and you could eat with your hands anything that caught the eye.