A delicious meal appeals to more of your senses than just smell and taste. It must also appeal to the eye. Imagine sitting down at a restaurant, and in front of you is a beautifully plated dish, thoughtfully laid out and presented.
A perfectly plated dish can upgrade your meal immensely. Through the strategic placing of ingredients, you will automatically view the meal as a high-value. You’re also more likely to enjoy the taste and hold a higher opinion of the meal.
Plating is both an art and a science. Chefs and cooking enthusiasts must explore their creativity and play with color and texture while placing foods to create a visual appeal.
So, how do you create the perfect plate to present your food?
Start with a Canvas
To begin, you must start with a canvas, or in this case, a dish. While you may be tempted to pull any old plate from your cabinet, there is more to it than that.
You’ll want to consider the size, shape, and color of the plate you’ll use. Typically, chefs use white dishes because they contrast nicely with food. However, other colored plates can work very well, depending on the color of the food presented.
Your plate’s size should be large enough so your meal doesn’t crowd the plate, yet small enough to make the portion sizes look fairly filling but not too small. Pick a plate that’s too large, and your meal will seem insufficient. Pick a plate that’s too small, and your meal will seem like too much.
Lastly, the shape of your canvas can drastically affect the presentation of your meal. A good rule of thumb is to choose a figure that matches the food you’re serving. For example, a square plate for lasagna or a round plate for pancakes are great choices.
The Perfect Placement
Now that you have your canvas, it’s time to make some art. The placement of your ingredients is crucial. This is where scientific facts come in to create aesthetically pleasing dishes.
THE CLOCK GUIDELINES
Pretend your plate is a clock. Imagine the numbers along the edges to help guide where you should place certain foods. By following these rules, your meal will be evenly plated.
- Between 12 and 3, you should plate your vegetables.
- Between 3 and 9 is where your meat will sit.
- Between 9 and 12, you’ll present any starches included in the meal.
STAY SYMMETRICAL
According to science, people find things that are symmetrical more attractive than asymmetrical. Use this principle to your advantage and make sure that your plate boasts symmetry.
UTILIZE WHITE SPACE
Don’t underestimate the power of using white space on your dish. To create the perfect plate, spread out your food and leave parts of the dish empty. This will make your meal look cleaner, more elegant, and overall more professional.
MOIST INGREDIENTS FIRST
Creating the perfect plate means paying attention to every detail. This also applies to what foods to present first.
Place moist ingredients, such as mashed potatoes or purees, on the dish before other elements. You can then place the rest of your meal on top of or beside these moist ingredients to keep them from shifting and ruining your perfect plate.
ALWAYS USE ODD NUMBERS
When serving individual foods, always plate them in odd numbers. While we recommended staying symmetrical with the entire presentation, the human brain finds odd numbers more pleasing than even numbers.
For example, if you’re serving ravioli, plate five instead of four or six to achieve the perfect plate.
The Details
To achieve a well-plated dish, you must pay attention to the details. Your guests may not notice these intricate details, but these little considerations make a world of difference if ignored.
HEIGHT
The plate itself may be a flat canvas, but that doesn’t mean that the food should just lay there. Create some height on the plate to add visual interest. No need to build a “food tower.” Instead, a simple layering approach can create some height and elegance.
Many chefs like to start with a sauce as the base of their plate. Then they may add a stable element atop the sauce, like a puree or mash. Protein or vegetables can be nestled on top. This simple layering creates visual interest and ensures that each bite contains a bit of everything — sauce, puree, and protein.
With a pasta dish, home chefs can build height by “twirling” it onto the plate or bowl with tongs. This simple trick makes a simple bowl of spaghetti look high-end.
COLOR
It’s time to bring back those memories of elementary school art class and the color wheel. When creating the perfect plate, use complementary colors. A colorful, bright meal will look more attractive and taste better than a dull, colorless dish.
Create a focal point and add a burst of color. You can use herbs, vegetables, or fruit as accent colors if the main dish seems a little bland. Lastly, utilize your white space by adding some color to pull the entire meal together.
TEXTURE
A variety of textures on your plate will help present your meal attractively. Accentuate the different textures used through strategic placement.
For example, if serving creamy mashed potatoes, add sprinkled chives to create more depth and add another texture. You can do the same with meat by adding crushed nuts on top.
CREATE TASTEFUL BITES
While getting caught up in the perfect plate principles of food presentation, you can’t forget that your meal still has to taste good. Amplify the flavors in your meal with careful arrangements on the plate. You want the ingredients to go well together when someone takes a bite.
This thoughtful placement will give your guests a delightful flavor experience while adding another sense of beauty to your plate.
The Tools
How do professional chefs create perfect dots of sauces on the plate, or spread a sauce so precisely?
They use the right tools!
- Squeeze bottles with narrow tips make it easy to add light strings of sauce across the dish. They also let chefs squeeze tiny dots of sauces in perfect patterns.
- An offset spatula or precision tongs will let you place items on the plate without disturbing that delicate stack of veggies.
- When it’s time to serve a puree or mousse, you’ll rarely see a chef use a spoon. Instead, a piping bag lets them squeeze these thick mashes.
- A food-specific paint brush allows chefs to add streaks of color to the plate. And silicone plating wedges with ridges on the end can create patterns in a sauce with a simple swipe.
Spoons and Tweezers Shaping Tools Food-Safe Brushes
The Final Touches
You have your ingredients flawlessly placed on your dish to accentuate colors and texture and to amplify the flavors, but you aren’t done just yet! To achieve the perfect plate, you must consider some final touches.
DRIZZLE YOUR SAUCES
Remember the importance of little details? Now it really shows when you simply drizzle sauce over your plate and pull it all together.
Think of your squeeze bottle as your paintbrush, adding the final touches to your canvas. Add accent dots to the white space, drizzle your sauce across the food, outline a ring on the plate’s outer edges, or create a unique design.
Let your inner artist shine through!
THOUGHTFUL GARNISHES
Adding a garnish to your plate can be a complete game-changer. However, you must be careful and strategic when using them. Beginning cooks tend to overdo it with garnishes.
While it’s a great way to add some more color and texture to the plate, they should be ingredients that will go well with your meal. You’ll want to avoid garnishes with a strong, overpowering smell, so as not to ruin the main dish.
A QUICK TOUCH UP
They say a messy cook is a great cook. Unfortunately, that does not apply to perfect plating.
Before serving your dish, take a napkin to clean up any splotches or smears that may have accidentally shown up. Once you have cleaned up with crisp edges, you will have created the perfect plate using food presentation principles
How about plating salads?
It is more challenging to plate a beautiful salad than entree or dessert. However, there are some simple rules to follow (that are very similar to the general rules listed above).
- Look at the plate or bowl as a picture frame. Select the right dish for the portion size. Keep the salad off the rim.
- Maintain a good balance of colors. Dress up plain iceberg lettuce with shredded carrots or red cabbage, another colored vegetable, or darker greens. Remember: three colors is usually enough. Too many colors makes the plate look disorganized, messy, and unappealing.
- Height makes a salad more attractive. Ingredients that are mounded on a plate are more interesting and appealing than if they are spread flat. Place tomato or fruit wedges so that they overlap or lean on each other.
- Always cut the vegetables uniformly.
- Make sure every ingredient can be easily identified. Cut every ingredient large enough so that the guest can recognize them immediately. Use bite-sized pieces unless the food item can be cut with a FORK.
- Finely chop items used as seasoning, such as onions or fresh herbs.
- Keep the arrangement of ingredients simple. Using too many ingredients in an effort to make a salad “fancy” usually ends up mudding the flavors and making the whole plate look amateurish.