Hey all, I am an absolute pure beginner about serious plating, and this sub is amazing. I am well aware of a bunch of the issues this has (Messy sauce running, cheese is super messy, meat looks kinda bare here).
I'm a pretty good home cook, but terrible at plating, and specifically bad at even thinking about how a dish should look and feel on the plate. Things like how to cut / shape food for fancy plating is a huge black box for me.
What I don't know is what I should do to go about getting better. Recs for resources for where to learn some basics of serious plating? How do y'all get from beginner to intermediate in this world?
by Hefty_Sherbert_5578
9 Comments
The even number of items, the symmetry, the rectangle… it’s all killing me
As a pastry chef, Pinterest has saved my life. If you look up [food]+plated, you will usually find professionally plated dishes. Find the elements you like and modify them to your dish.
Anytime I’m doing r+d for a dessert, one of the first things I think about is the plate I’m going to use. What color offers the best contrast to the food? What shape? I find it a lot easier to work from there.
so close to being great. I’d recommend just straight lines of the sauce under the meat. 3 or 5 lines keeping the odd numbers. 3 gnocchi on one side, 4 on the other could look nice. Maybe a single dot for the sriracha on either side
The only real way to learn is to both look at lots of plates of food, (eat them if possible) and plate up lots of plates of food. There’s no secret, a lot of it is to do with trends (balsamic glaze zigzag is tacky now, but in the 90s it was all the rage)
The top of the tritip looks painfully dry and while covering components in sauce can be unappealing, in this case, glazing it and having your gnocchi in a shallow base of the sauce would be more effective.
I abhor putting green things on a plate just for the sake of it, but some color here would really make this dish more appealing.
[deleted]
Looks like some sort of chocolate cake dessert on first glance. I’m no expert yet, but I know the good stuff when I see it. Hope you find the tips you’re looking for!
I see a brownie with caramel sauce, nougat, and shaved coconut.
I would say worry less about plating and spend more time on making an actual dish that is more thought out. Plating is fun and all but it’s way more important to have food that is well planned.