Tips and Tricks for Plating and Presenting Your Meals to Elevate Your Home Dining Experience
No matter what you’re serving up to your guests, going the extra mile by presenting it with flourish enhances the experience. The first sense engaged with eating is through the eyes, and through creative food plating, you can elevate your dining experience.
Plating isn’t just for professional chefs. Home cooks should master these methods of food presentation too for creating memorable meals for any occasion.
The tips below will help you to master the art of food arrangement techniques for every course you serve, whether it’s a romantic dinner for two or a dinner party of ten.
Gather Inspiration
Every chef should start by planning the menu down to the last detail. Once you know what you’re making, you can focus on the appearance of your dish. Serving up a plate full of clutter never looks appealing, so consider your dinnerware and how you’ll arrange it.
You can flip through food magazines to get inspiration on the latest food plating techniques of high-end cuisine. Another trick is to sketch it out on paper first which will help you visualize what it will look like on your plate.
Simplicity Is Always Stylish
Whether you’re plating your appetizer or main dish, let one of the ingredients take center stage. Perhaps it will be your perfectly seared filet mignon or flaky seabass that you want to be the focal point of your dish. Keep it simple by cutting out the clutter and your guests will know what to focus on when they dig in for forkfuls of food.
Bring Balance to the Plate
In fine dining, you expect the food presented to you to not only look good but to taste good as well. Experiment with the flavor and texture combinations to create contrasts that pair well. A charcuterie board is an excellent example of balance as it combines rich meats, breads, crackers, and cheese that all have different textures. You’ll also see sweet options such as honeycomb, jam, or fresh fruits alongside savory options like nuts and olives. These elements all appeal to the taste buds in their own ways, both separately and as a whole to impact taste.
Think of your plate or charcuterie board as a blank canvas that you will paint with foods. The colors and shapes should all tell a story and invite your guests to dig in with gusto.
Balance in food plating can also be achieved by using separation techniques. You can put different components of your dish onto separate plates or serve a trio of sauces, dips, or flavor bites to entice everyone at the table. Overall though, function and flavor should always be at the forefront. When you have a hot element, consider adding something cold to the plate, or play on the textures with something crunchy and something soft to amuse the palate.
Plan Your Portions
Portions should be served so that they aren’t too large or too small. Thought must be put in with the right proportion of protein, starch, and a vegetable addition for proper nutrition. With classical food plating, chefs frame a plate like the face of a clock. In this way, the main ingredient or protein would reside between 3 and 9 o’clock while the starch is placed between 9 and 11 o’clock. As for your vegetable, you will want it to be positioned between 11 and 3 o’clock.
This rule of thirds works well for main dishes, though for an appetizer or dessert, it may be best to go with free form plating. This contemporary technique is more like creating an abstract work of art. You can splash or splatter sauces, or even use precise elements such as accent dots in even numbers or odd numbers, or swirls of sauce, then place the other elements, such as scallops, artistically across your plate.
Highlight Your Key Ingredient
Whether you’ve done the traditional food plating style, a free form plating method, or even created a landscape plating format out of your salad, the key ingredient should be highlighted. At a glance, your guests should know it is the focal point of this dish, which is why you’ll need to accentuate it with a garnish of raw herbs or sauces. Don’t forget the rule of balance – if you have a steak as your key ingredient, carrots and your potato dauphinoise stack should clearly take a backseat.
Make Your Plate Colorful
Colorful food plating starts with choosing the right dishes to complement your dish. White dishes are always popular in fine dining as they deliver on contrast for colorful creations, though don’t rule out other colors when plating your food. You want to plate your food in a way that everyone will pause to admire it, and capture a photo for social media to remember its beauty before digging in. If your dish is lacking in color, toss a fresh herb on the side of the plate or grab a squeeze bottle to drop in some sauce to brighten things up.
Don’t Be Afraid to Get Saucy
Dishes with sauces add more depth to your meal but they should look appealing. You can lightly drizzle them from a spoon onto your main ingredient, or pour it first before layering the focal point on top. Dots also look nice when you have thicker sauces. You can use a squeeze bottle to achieve this style and make precise dots along the side of the plate. Another way to employ that squeeze bottle is by making lines to unify your plated elements.
No matter which tool you use, always remember that food plating is an art form. When you keep this in mind, you can channel your inner artist and create beautiful, edible works of art through every course of your meal.
Keep the Right Equipment in Your Kitchen
You likely have plenty of spoons you can use to drizzle on sauces. But if you’re going to be plating food for an elegant dinner, it helps to have all the right equipment on hand. Here are some of the best ones to invest in to make food plating more seamless:
Sauce spoon: This type of spoon makes it easier for precision drizzles and swirls of sauces, smooth vegetable puree, and other additions.
Molds: Molds are excellent for creating shapes, such as with an ahi tuna and avocado stack.
Precision tongs: These allow you to pick up and manipulate the most delicate of items onto the plate.
Plating wedge: Wedges help you create phenomenal designs with sauces and purees on your plate canvas with greater ease.
Piping bags: You can use these to pipe on gels, creams, and purees as a lovely base for your ingredients.
Squeeze bottles: These are excellent for sauces, allowing you to add precision dots and lines.
Microplane: Dust on some imported truffles or ultra-fine shavings of parmesan.
Consider Timing
No matter how many courses you’re serving, you need to think about the amount of time it will take to plate them. If you’re serving 10 guests, you’re going to need help unless you want only one person at a time to enjoy their plate or have everyone eat a cold serving of something that was intended to be hot.
You’ll also want each dish to be consistent in appearance. This is why the head chef in a fine dining setting will set the layout for the final dish. The junior chefs as well as more senior chefs in the kitchen will be the ones to plate, following the example set by the head chef. A beautifully plated dish can be simple, so consider all the elements and how easy it is to replicate quickly so everyone is served each course at the right time.
Embrace Your Own Style
The most iconic chefs in the world all have a style that is their own. Maybe yours will involve a signature garnish or artistic drawing with sauce. Adding your own influence to your food plating techniques is like signing your name to your art. Don’t be afraid to let it shine and be creative when you serve up your best meals.
Try Something New
If you’re getting ready to host an elegant gathering, give your guests something splendid to start with. Rustic charcuterie boards are always a pleasure because they allow every guest to grab a bite and engage in conversation. If you need inspiration for your recipes, our editorial dishes will never let you down when searching for something new.
In fact, our Trio Cream Cheese Party Dips recipe makes for a fun and unique twist on the traditional charcuterie. Use your favorite wooden board as the canvas of this delightful recipe of dips that are all made from the same base for effortless, easy, and utterly delicious entertaining at home. Check out the recipe below!
