As a food product business owner, one needs to give consumers products and recipes in a way that depicts business’s earnestness and dedication. Gen Z is obsessed with watching food videos on Instagram reels, which is why food enthusiasts have become better photographers and videographers alongside just being good chefs. Compared to the let’s say makeup or clothing industry where a lot of time is spent on the models, food styling has also become a thing today. Your food has to be as glamorous as all the other products in the market if you want your business to grow good.
So how does one style food? Food stylists are special creative people, who have hell loads of tricks on their sleeves to suggest whenever they see a dish. These people may belong to diverse backgrounds and can specialize in one or more food styling skills. Everyday, they spend time on the internet just looking at food pictures and videos to create their own food creativity scenarios. Today, there are even food styling courses given online. Food stylists may or may not have gone to a formal culinary school but they have learned plating and styling hacks and combined it with their camera hobbies.
It is so much fun to discover food styling tools as it gives you a little peek behind the kitchen counter and into a food styling studio!
Electric charcoal starters are used generally to light up charcoal for the grill without lighter fluid. But they are perfect for creating grill lines on the food. Real grillz cannot give the effect indoors so for styling purposes, it is smart to use an electric charcoal starter to make those lines and give a peak-summer BBQ look to the food.
Fake ice is an edible food styling item that makes cold items look frosty and refreshing. It does not melt as quickly as the real ice, giving you much time to shoot what you cooked with heart. There are three kinds of fake ice used; hard plastic square ice cube, prop ice and a silicon-based clear brick that is firm but squishy and can break into natural-looking crushed iced pieces.
They look like real ice coming out of a bag of ice or the refrigerator. The best part is it can be reused. Fake ice crystals are also used at times. They are powdered products that can be added to the water to look like gelatinous crystals. They are added on can exteriors, bottles or other packaged products that can be dressed as super chilled.
Heat guns are small handheld tools that can do big things. They are often used in construction processes for removing wallpapers and loosening other kinds of adhesives or bend plastic. They come with the property of being very hot (Upto 700 degree Fahrenheit) so they can provide heat blast directly. In a food studio, a heat gun is used to melt cheese, melt butter on the corn on the cob or mashed potatoes and remove any wax traces on the chocolate. This makes cookies look extra-luscious. Furthermore, a heat gun also brown something like a mini torch. Heat gun can also cause motion or waves so it is used to move any liquid in a bowl or a tray.
Paint brush is a tool of an artist and every cook is an artist working with the art of food. Paint brushes are as handy in cooking as they are in painting. They can be used to add olive or vegetable oil on something to give them sheen or gloss. They are also literally used to paint a fruit with edible fruit color for a better ripe color effect. Food stylists use paint brush to brush cherry juice onto steak in order to make it appear medium rare.
Fake ice cream is an edible food item that is used to decorate food. Using a fake food item that is edible is still better than using something that is inedible like glue. Food stylists realize the importance of having everything edible used as an accessory even when it comes to styling food for the sake of photography purposes instead of chemicals and non-edible substances. It also makes food styling a natural process in comparison to how they do it for the sake of soul advertising. You should only take pride in yourself as a food stylist if you are able to style real recipes with real stuff.
Food waste is automatically reduced if you are styling food with everything edible. Fake ice cream is made from icing, powdered sugar, cornstarch and flour. It is named fake because it is not the real ice cream, yet all its ingredients are edible so eating it is not so much of a problem. Fake ice cream for styling purposes can be prepared at home. It has an amazing texture and can be reused. Obviously as a stylist you will never use fake ice cream to style or substitute a real ice cream. Fake ice creams work best with desserts like pieces of a pie or cake. It comes with an added advantage of not melting under hot lights while the food is photographed.
Tiny and delicate garnishes on food dishes are done with tweezers. They are small but very important food styling tools in the kitchen. Just like tongs provide an extension to the hands, tweezers are an extension of the fingers, moving with dexterity, precision and deftness. If you want any food item to be placed perfectly on the dish plate, tweezers are your thing! With tweezers you can carefully layer the ingredients into a sandwich, reposition a flavor cue such as peppercorn or fresh herbs and place crumbs.
These are some of the styling tools that can help you create perfect looking food at home. Now you can be an amazing chef as well as an Instagram sensation because you can photograph your food good for marketing on social media without giving out too many secrets. If you are looking for a professional culinary brand for food styling purposes, Goody Professional should be on your mind. In order to explore more picture-perfect food recipes, log on to goodycs.com/en.
