Hi I'm James Briscione the Director of Culinary
Development here at the Institute of Culinary
Education. And while mastering flavor is paramount,
we also teach our students that how food is
plated and what it's plated on can be just
as important as how it tastes. Especially
these days with Instagram and social media,
there's an expectation that food is visually
inspiring and exciting as well. I'm going
to show you the five tools for foolproof plating.
You might be surprised that you already have
a lot these tools in your own kitchen.
The most essential plating tool is a good
large spoon. This is great for placement of
larger objects and of course dropping sauces
and purées onto the plate. Most often
you're going to see it used for creating that
great spread on the plate.
A small offset spatula can be used a lot like
a spoon, it's great for very fine placement
of smaller objects, and can also be used to
spread purées across the plate. We use the
edge of that spatula. With your offset is
that you're going to get a beautiful, dramatic
spread, much wider than you're going to get
with a spoon.
A squeeze bottle is for thicker sauces and
purées and this can create a more controlled
or fine line. So we can do anything from a
line, to dots and lots of other shapes in
between. Really any design you want happens
with a squeeze bottle.
A ring mold can be used for punching out shapes,
but it's also great for creating height on
a plate and for stacking. Say if you have
like a little beet salad like this. We spoon
that into the ring mold. Build up a nice tall
presentation. And when the ring mold is removed,
you'll preserve that height and keep that
nice shape.
Tweezers are great for fine tuning, say if
a piece of onion jumps out of your ring mold,
you can get it right back in place. Or, really
delicate placement of little things like
microgreens. And they can pull fresh greens
from the stem. Little leaves like this can
sometimes stick to your fingers if you try
to place them by hand. Dropping these with
a pair of tweezers is going to make sure they
go exactly where you want them to be.
And of course you want to have a towel to erase
any mistakes or remove any fingerprints or
smudges from the edge of the plate. Beautiful
plate always goes out clean.
