13 Plating Tricks To Add Personality To Your Meals

The art of food plating is more important than you think. A skilled, mindful presentation is so powerful, in fact, that it can positively affect our perception of flavor. Whether you're a home cook looking to impress your dinner guests or an aspiring food photographer looking to capture the perfect shot, knowing how to plate your food can take your meals to the next level. It's no secret that professional chefs have an arsenal of plating tricks that can turn a simple dish into a thing of beauty, capable of setting the tone of the whole meal. Fortunately, you don't have to be one of them to create beautiful and Instagram-worthy plates.

With the right approach, you can add flair to your meals, making them not only delicious but visually appealing, as well. So, get ready to explore the secrets of professional chefs and master the plating techniques that will help you elevate your presentation. From employing color theory and optical illusions to your benefit to using the right tools to create patterns, height, and visual accents with precision, there are tips for everyone looking to add more personality to their everyday meals.

Any food professional worth their salt will tell you that in order to plate like a pro, you'll need to pay attention to the dishes you're using. First of all, consider the size of the plate. Some chefs, including Jet Tila, believe that a smaller plate with an indent in the center can help you pack the food more tightly, building it up instead of spreading it around to create a more polished look. This is where the Delboeuf illusion comes into play: An equally sized portion of food will look bigger or smaller, depending on the size of the plate and how much negative space surrounds it.

Pairing the right plate color with the food you're serving is just as important. You don't want the plate itself to look too busy or, on the contrary, visually merge with the food. What you do want is a sense of contrast: red foods on a white plate, yellow foods on a blue one, and so on. You can still add a visually interesting layer by stacking your neutral serving plate on top of a charger plate of a contrasting color. Finally, when in doubt, go for the round white plate, as it is the universal canvas that contrasts and frames most foods well.

Mouthfeel, as well as our expectations of it based on visual cues, plays an essential role in our perception of flavor. Celebrity chefs are well aware of this: For example, Padma Lakshmi adds texture to sautéed zucchini with a generous sprinkle of pomegranate seeds. Their firm, juicy texture and bright flavor contrast the soft consistency and mild flavor of the cooked vegetables, in addition to adding a vibrant visual note to the dish. But the good news is that you don't have to be an experienced chef to create satisfying textural combinations.

One simple yet powerful way to create more depth in a dish is to add a crunchy topping. Be it some seasoned breadcrumbs on top of creamy pasta, fried leek greens in a soup, or toasted nuts over a smoothie bowl, an element that can act as "sonic seasoning" while we're eating has been proven to enhance our perception of the dish. Next, we have smooth, silky elements, such as puréed vegetables and legumes or thick creamy sauces, which can act as a neutral binding base. Finally, some chewy ingredients, such as roasted veggies, fresh bread, or sun-dried tomatoes, will round up the basic triad of textures.

There is no denying that the overall color palette can make or break a dish. While the taste of the food remains the same, science says the color impacts your perception of it. Of course, the shades of plates and cutlery are important, as they create context, but so are the dish's own hues. So when designing your dish's color scheme, borrow techniques used by designers, food photographers, and stylists. Most of them rely on the principles of color theory.

Using complementary colors, which would be at the opposite ends of the color wheel, such as red and green, can create a striking visual effect that enhances the contrast. For example, garnish a dish with a bright red sauce with green herbs for a bold presentation. In comparison, plating food in a monochromatic color scheme that uses various shades of the same color can create a sense of harmony and balance. You can achieve this by plating creamy pasta or mashed potatoes with vegan gravy on a beige ceramic plate. If you want to spice it up a little, pairing analogous colors (neighbors on the color wheel) will create a more exciting yet relaxed feel: Think lentil curry served with a side of greens and tomatoes.

Considering we typically see our food not as an Instagram flat-lay but as a three-dimensional item, thinking vertically instead of horizontally when plating your food won't hurt. That doesn't mean you need to build a Jenga tower on your plate, but adopting some stacking techniques can definitely improve your presentation.

That's where the stacking approach comes in: By layering the components of a dish on top of one another, you give it a more dynamic, captivating feel. Just think about how much more appetizing a little mountain of spaghetti looks compared to when it's scattered around flatly. Some dishes, like 100-layer root vegetable gratin or fried potato stacks, can naturally create a sense of elevation. Others, like salads, can be shaped into a little tower using a ring mold. Additionally, flat ingredients, like cucumber ribbons, can be rolled and stacked vertically.

Of course, horizontal stacking is also possible: You can always arrange slices of vegetables or protein with a slight overlap in a row instead of a column. An advanced version of this is scaling, which involves placing foods cut in similar shapes over each other to imitate a fish scale pattern. As long as you consider the balance and proportion of the dish, applying this technique should lead to visually harmonious results.

Using an uneven number of elements on the plate, also known as the rule of odds, creates a more interesting presentation. This works especially well with fancy appetizers and other individual foods. The human brain tends to perceive odd numbers as more pleasing and interesting than even numbers, which can feel static or monotonous. Keeping this in mind when plating food can help to create a captivating composition and make the dish look more dynamic.

The way you apply this rule can vary. For example, you can arrange three components on a plate, such as starch, protein, and greens. Alternatively, you can mix three or five different colors (don't forget to apply the color theory here, though). Another way to use this principle is to arrange components in a way that would create an odd number of points and angles, such as a triangle or a star. However, it's important to use odd numbers in moderation and not to overcrowd the plate, as this can create a cluttered and unappetizing appearance. Instead, you could mentally divide the plate into three parts and leave ⅓ or ⅔ empty.

Garnishes are like the makeup of a dish — whether it's edible flowers, chives, micro greens, sesame seeds, or powdered sugar, these finishing touches will give your plate a more polished look. They can add flavor, texture, and color and help tie everything together. When it comes to the choice of garnish, take Kristen Kish's advice: Pick ingredients that are not only visually appealing but match the theme and flavors of the dish.

As a home cook, you can use restaurant techniques in your own kitchen by investing in a garnishing kit that includes plating tools like tongs, brushes, and squeeze bottles. However, to make your dishes look like they were prepared by a professional chef, don't overdo the extra elements — you want harmony, not cacophony. Moreover, garnishes should be functional and not merely a decoration: If you add a lemon wedge, it must make sense for the eater to squeeze it over their food. In the end, the art of garnishing encompasses most of the principles discussed in this article: Playing with colors and textures, creating patterns, height, and visual accents, and going for asymmetrical, lively placement in odd numbers.