How To: How Plating Can Make a Meal Taste Better
If you want to make a good meal taste even better, consider how you plate it. Here are some plating tips and tricks that can improve your dish’s flavor.
How Plating Can Make a Meal Taste Better
The most important part of a good meal is the taste, but how you plate a meal and set the scene in which you eat can greatly impact your enjoyment of the meal.
Beautiful plating and scenery can improve the mood and make the food taste even better. Here’s how:
Creating a Scene
Plating is about setting expectations for the meal. People develop certain opinions depending on the setting, and good plating can help set the right expectations for your meal.
From soft lighting to minimal distractions, there’s a lot you can do to improve a food’s flavor. Knowing the best pairings for your food can help create a premium experience. For example, knowing the best wine to pair with a halibut can make a dish shine.
Stylized Dishes
Selecting the dish the food sits on, and the surrounding utensils, is important. People generally like to pair round, light-colored dishes with sweeter foods as they seem to bring out delicate flavors.
Dark-colored, square, or rectangular dishes pair well with savory foods for a similar reason. This plating method is an important part of making a meal taste better.
Music and Mood
Eating picnic food in a dark, indoor place isn’t as good as eating it outside in the sun. Some basic tricks to establishing a mood are to focus on lighting and recreate the natural lighting of wherever you would normally eat the food you are serving.
Additionally, try to match the music to the meal’s tone to increase the positive vibes.
Feast for the Eyes
Sight is a major part of enjoying a meal, and it’s easy to tell this when you see something unappetizing. No one wants to eat something that looks gross, but everyone wants to eat something that looks wonderful.
Try to neatly plate your food, so the plate frames it instead of distracting the eyes. This plating decision will help you set good expectations for your food.
While plating isn’t necessary for a good meal, you can make the food taste better with just a few edits to your plating and table setting.
Dimming the lights and switching out the plates can make a huge difference and impress you and your guests.
Recipes to Try:
- Dinner Ideas: Easy to Make Peas and Asparagus Pasta Recipe
- Easy to Make Recipe: Potato, Butternut Squash, and Cauliflower Curry
- How to Make a Moreish Maori Boil Up Recipe
Stacey is a Southern girl with a taste for travel, thriving on the discovery of the world through food. After spending many years traveling and living overseas, she’s now back home in her beloved deep south enjoying life with her three little ones and loving the adventure. She’s a food stylist and food photographer, as well as, the creative behind Little Figgy Food, where she loves to inspire others to try new flavors and foodie techniques.
