FOOD STYLING TIPS:

STYLING SALADS
Essential Questions
1. What are the challenges that you may encounter in styling
Salad?
2. How can you style Salad for the Camera?
3. Why is it important to know the advantages of styling
Salad?
Academic Vocabulary
• Sea of Greens
• Vessel
• Component
• Prominent
• Visual Interest
• Showcase
 There are three keys to
making your salads stand out
on camera:
o start with the best
HOW DO I MAKE MY ingredients
SALAD STAND OUT? o choose the best serving dish
or vessel
o go easy with the dressing
These tips will help your salad
stand out in a sea of greens
USE THE BEST INGREDIENTS

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 The first step in styling a salad
starts when you're shopping for
the ingredients. Styling a salad
requires that each component
USE THE BEST INGREDIENTS
looks its best. You want to go
through all the elements of
your salad and ensure the ones
that will be prominent on
camera are the best of the
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bunch.
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PLACING THE INGRED

 PLACING THE INGREDIENTS
From there, the next step is to
layer in the ingredients from
largest to smallest. Large lettuce
leaves are the first to go down and
then the last are small finishing
components.
As you place the components, do
so deliberately in such a way that
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each element is visible. This may

mean alternating components.
 CREATE VISUAL INTEREST WITH
SHAPES

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 CREATE VISUAL INTEREST WITH
SHAPES

Also consider slicing each

component differently. For example,
instead of cutting tomatoes,
cucumbers and peppers all into little
cubes, try slicing the tomatoes into
large wedges, the cucumbers into
ribbons and the peppers into long
strips.  The variety creates visual
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interest in the salad.

 As a final note on ingredients,
make sure to have some extra that
you can use to style outside the
plate. Once you have your salad
HOLD BACK A plated you may wish to style the
FEW EXTRAS shot with a board of partially cut
tomatoes, for example, or some
leftover herb stems. Holding back
some of the special components of
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the salad puts the focus on them.

WHAT'S THE BEST
SERVING DISH TO
SHOWCASE A SALAD?
AVOID USING A SALAD BOWL WHEN
STYLING A SALAD FOR THE CAMERA
The second technique that helps your salad
shine is to actually get it out of the salad
bowl.
A bowl's great for tossing the salad or for
serving up the family on a busy weeknight,
but it does nothing to highlight all the
beautiful components. The problem with a
bowl is three-fold.
First,  most often what happens is all the heavy items
end up falling to the bottom, which means the ratio of
lighter components (like greens) to heavier components
(like tomatoes or nuts) is unbalanced.
Second, rarely is the bowl heaping so there's not a lot of
room for layers and height. If you think of a bowl of
popcorn, there's a heaping mound that builds up above
the rim of the bowl. With the rare exception of
something like a very hearty potato salad, a bowl doesn't
highlight the best parts of a typical green salad.
And finally, the high sides of a bowl are going to cast
shadows onto the salad, making it difficult to light.
WHAT'S THE BEST SERVING DISH FOR A
SALAD?

The best
vessel for a
salad is a plate
or very
shallow bowl
with a slight
lip or edge.
In the case of a salad with a lot of greens, you
want to layer your ingredients. Start with the
greens first, then layer on each additional
component in an intentional manner. What
makes a salad pop is being able to reveal all
the different elements: the vegetables,
cheeses, nuts, seed, herbs, et cetera.
Using a plate or shallow bowl allows you to
play with different light sources without
having to deal with heavy shadows.
 WHAT ABOUT THE SALAD DRESSING?
The third and probably most important component to
styling a salad is the dressing, or rather lack of dressing.
How much dressing you apply and when can make or break
your shot.
PRO TIP: I always suggest capturing some shots with the
dressing on the side to begin.
Dressing wilts more delicate greens quickly. By having it on
the side you have more time to play around with styling the
shot. A small dish, mason jar, gravy boat or even egg cup can
be cute vessels for a dressing shot.
OTHER TYPES OF SALADS
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OTHER TYPES
OF SALADS
Finally, a note about other salads, often means lighter,
greens-prominent salads, it's worth mentioning the
styling of denser salads like egg, chicken, potato or tuna.
The challenge with these salads is that they tend to lack
texture or colour. There's a “mushiness” to them that can
make them difficult to style. The key to making these
salads look as tasty as they are lies in focusing on the
serving dishes and adding colour.
Most of these salads are served on greens or breads. In
this case, ensure that when you apply tuna salad, for
instance, to bread you don't spread it quite to the edges.
Rather, ensure some bread is showing through.
 Or if you're serving a dense salad without
a vessel, make sure it's is heavily
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garnished with greens or the scene is
propped with some of the whole
ingredients on the side.