Today we’re going to talk about plating techniques made easy for cooks at home, and I’ll give you some different ideas for dishes – you can serve your courses on unusual things. I’ll tell you how to make it look extra special without a huge amount of hassle, how to elevate your fancy meal or your tasting menu meal if you’re having one. I think it’s a lot of fun to try elegant plating. You don’t have to do it every time, but it’s certainly fun to do it some of the time.
Starting with a plan is very important. Before placing any food on whatever dish you’re using, think about what’s the star; what’s the main ingredient you want to highlight? Think about the balance of colors. Do you have some greens – some bright vegetables, or some sauces for contrasting color to lift it, so that it’s not all brown? Also think about portion sizes. Usually less is more – less than we’re accustomed to doing. Leave some empty space on the plate. It adds to the elegance, and somehow it makes it more appetizing, and it doesn’t feel overwhelming to the person eating it.
When you’re choosing what plates or dishes to use, you need to think carefully about what will go with that particular course or ingredient. Using plain white plates is often a good idea because it really makes the food colors pop. If you do use a different color or texture, then think carefully about how it’ll work and how it’ll look.
Pick the right size of plate. You don’t want it to be too big, because then your plate looks empty, or too small, because then your plate looks crowded. Shape also matters. There are classic looks with round plates, and more modern looks would have square, unusual shapes. So, choosing your plates carefully is an important second step.
Then thirdly, think about what tools you can use; ones that are easy to set up at home. If there are items that are hard to place, and you don’t want to drop them, you could use tongs or chopsticks to place them on the plate. Big spoons are great for swishes or sauce smears or dots, although then your dots won’t be as precise. If you want precise dots, then a squeeze bottle works well, or even a plastic bag with a corner cut off like you would use for piping icing. That works well for putting sauces on the plate.
Ring molds sometimes work well – those metal ring molds, or even just cookie cutters – for stacking rice or mashed potatoes. Sometimes if you have a few items like protein and a vegetable or a starch, then you can layer and stack them.
This brings us to point number five, which is to layer and stack your items. This gives your dish height and depth. Stack your proteins on the top of the grains or the vegetables. You can lean some things against each other if they’re small. Use your mashed vegetables or purees as a base, or smear it on the side and use your grains like rice as the base. Then put something on top of that, like the sauce dripped over the edge, or some little microgreens for extra height.
Number six – add a focus point. This would be the main item, perhaps slightly off center, and the other things lift it or point towards it. Sauce dripping off or the edge of it often highlights that particular ingredient.
Point number seven is to add your sauce with style. You can drizzle with a spoon – zigzagging it on the plate, dabbing it in a curve or a line, swishing out your puree using the back of the spoon, or pressing and swiping it. There are lots of things you can do with the sauce. You can make little dots with the squeeze bottle around the edge – maybe you can put single dots in between little colorful items that you’ve placed in a pattern on the side of the plate separate to the main part of the dish.
Number eight – when you’re thinking about color and texture, contrast is key. We’ve already mentioned that you should have something that pops on a white plate – maybe red cherry tomatoes, chopped herbs, little tiny onions, or dabs of brightly colored sauce. Then you should add something crunchy like toasted nuts or ground up croutons sprinkled on – something that brings that nice contrast to the texture.
Number nine – garnish in a way that’s smart and elegant, and don’t do it too much. Just use a tiny little bit of microgreens, a little bit of citrus zest, lemon or orange, or some finely chopped herbs. Use a couple of slices of orange, or perhaps some sliced chilies – just one or two elements, very minimal, works. Don’t have too much on the plate.
Number ten – always clean your plate. Wipe the edges before serving just to make sure there’s no smudges. Everything that’s there should be there, and you don’t want anything there by accident.
Now let’s talk about some unusual ways to dish up or items to use. Your dishes, plates, and glass jars can be different to usual, and you can use things that you wouldn’t expect to use for serving food. Here are some unusual ways to serve small courses.
You could use large soup spoons – Chinese soup ladles, tasting spoons, or anything that’s big enough – to serve a single bite on. You could have a small side plate with a large spoon, and your little bite of food inside the spoon. A little bit of tuna salad, some mousse, some little roasted potatoes with a bit of sauce drizzled over, a couple of tiny pieces of steak – all kinds of things can go on the spoon. It’ll be a very tiny amount. Do you remember the first course of a chef’s tasting menu? It’s the amuse-bouche, which means the amusement; the course that amuses you. It’s just a tiny little starter, like canapé style starters.
You can buy things like little tiles or marble boards, which work well for cheese, charcuterie, or plated desserts. On slate, you can write in chalk, which is very cool – then you could label what the course is.
Another idea is to use any glass jars or glasses. You can use tiny mason jars to serve something in. You could use a little side plate and a tiny mason jar, and the person can tip the salad out of the jar ready to eat. You can use little shot glasses for tiny portions of soup, especially cold soup, or you can have a layered dip in something like a small glass jar. There’s the cucumber yogurt soup, or anything that you want a tiny little portion of. We’ve got some lovely little white bowls with handles. They’re the shape of a fondue pot, but they’re small and white, and they’re great for sauces to dip into, olive oil and balsamic, a tiny little bit of soup, or a little bit of crab salad.
Hollowed out citrus is always lovely, especially to serve a jelly or something in. If you cut a big orange in half, and then you make the jelly and let it sit the half orange mold, and then cut it in half, you’ve got a quarter slice with the jelly inside. You can do custards and mousses in that kind of citrus, or sorbet.
Any tiny little containers that you have, for example shot glasses, like we said before, you can use those to serve your palate cleanser, which is a tiny bit of sorbet. You would use a very small ice cream scoop, scoop a little bit of sorbet, and put it into a little shot glass, and then put a slice of lemon in it, something that looks elegant.
You can serve food on small wooden cutting boards. Often picnic sets have cute little cheese boards that you could use to serve small bites like crostini, little mini sliders, or some kind of toasted bread.
Large oyster or clam shells are great to serve food on, maybe a dollop of something. You even get those mini cast iron skillets or mini baking dishes, which are great for an individual portion of a hot food, like a little lasagna. The bonus is that it keeps your food warm. Those are fun.
Then if you’re serving something like a burger without the bun, or some kind of chicken salad, you can use a large cabbage leaf or a large leaf of butter lettuce to hold it. It looks very nice, and you can eat it as well. Using lettuce leaves as a serving bowl works well. You can even use chilled river stones. You can serve your oyster, scallop, or other single item on top of one of those. For ice beds, have a flattish bowl or dish with a whole lot of shaved or crushed ice inside, and then put your item, your clams or your oysters if you have those fancy things at home, on top of the ice.
Here are a few other unusual ideas. You can do a hanging skewer like they do with empanadas, or do a skewer over a glass. You just take a small skewer – not quite a toothpick size, perhaps a little bigger – and then you put it over your glass, and on it will be something like grilled shrimp, different bits of cheese, or fruit cubes in a fruit kebab, grapes, et cetera. It’s just suspended over the glass, and it looks elegant.
You can serve your condiments or your appetizer on a wooden spoon, if you have a mini paddle or spoon. You can use paper cones or cones made out of napkins to put a few odd items in, things like a little bit of candy or some M&Ms, or you could put some nuts or some sort of trail mix in this elegant little cone that you’ve made.
Next time, on Wednesday, I’m gonna talk about some specific food, and give you ideas of how to plate it, but for today, just think about what is doable, but still makes the meal elegant and fun. The most important thing is that you and your family enjoy yourselves doing this. It’s not to add to your workload; it’s not to make it more complicated at all.
Sometimes when you’re planning with your kids, as I said in the previous episode, you can draw an idea of how you want it to look on your plate. I’m sure a child would love to try this. You say, “Okay, you’re going to have a few slices of steak, you’re going to have some mashed potato, and you’re going to have a few green beans on the side, plus some sauce, so draw an idea for how to plate it.” Then they’ll draw it, and know how to plate it when it’s their turn.
One other technique that’s really fun is using small glass dishes to serve a layered dessert. We like to serve a shrimp cocktail in a glass dish. You’d put some lettuce on the bottom, then the shrimp, and then your sauce on top with a little garnish. If you want to use one of these dishes for a dessert, then you can decorate them in advance.
What you do is put some sugar and a tiny bit of food coloring, maybe pink or green, in a bowl. Then you cut a slice or wedge of citrus, lemon or orange, and you use that to go around the top of the glass, the tiny little rim at the very top of the glass, to moisten it. That’s going to make it slightly sticky, and then you can dip it into the sugar. Lift it up, and then when it dries, you have your decorated glass, and it looks really nice. You can leave out the food coloring, especially if you feel it’s going to make a big mess or it’s going to make it too wet. You can just use plain white sugar or less processed caramel colored sugar, but whatever you use, it looks very elegant, and it’s great for serving a drink or a dessert. I hope you get to try some plating techniques, and on Wednesday we’ll talk about some specific examples of them, and about how you can do mocktails elegantly as well.
