You slave away in the kitchen for hours to make that perfect dish, and it even tastes great but doesn’t look too pretty; which is why your family winces when they see it. More often than not, we judge a book by its cover when it comes to food. Here are some garnishing tips and tricks to make your food look as good as it tastes (also, you can stick it to your cheeky lil brother who said your pasta looked ugly).
Contrasting colors:
This mostly applies to salads, but can be worked into other kinds of cuisine as well. Use materials of a contrasting color when garnishing salads. Making a tuna salad? Toss in some bell peppers and olives to liven it up.
Ice cream garnishing:
Everyone loves ice cream but sometimes it can get deformed due to the heat. Amp up your ice cream game by adding in wafers, chocolate chips, sprinkles or sliced strawberries. Use waffle/chocolate bowls instead of crockery. Don’t have a scooper? Use a spoon to carefully shave off the top layer and make it round. Plain old ice cream served in those quintessentially typical mini bowls is so nostalgically refreshing.
Interesting shapes:
Who needs sliced cucumbers and radishes when you can have funky shaped ones instead? As complicated as it sounds, it’s pretty easy to achieve. Press an appropriately sized cookie cutter onto a vegetable. Once the cookie cutter has indented its shape deep enough, take it out and slice the vegetable. Voila! You’ve got fancy butterfly shaped cucumbers rather than boring, round ones.
Coffee garnishing:
This is incredibly easy to do and will make your coffee look very appealing. Remember those stencils you had as a kid? Now is the time to put them to good use. Hold the stencil over your coffee and lightly sprinkle some cocoa or cinnamon powder to stencil the design onto your coffee foam.
Contributed by: Ameera Mehmood.
