Food Styling
Food stylists and photographers use many tricks to make food look delicious for advertisements and cookbooks. For example, milk on cereal could be white glue. That way the cereal doesn’t get soggy. They may put some lemon juice on a banana to so that it doesn’t get brown. “Food is basically like cut flowers,” says food stylist Lisa Cherkasky. “It’s amazing how fast it dries up and shrinks.”
Here are some secrets of food styling
Nice Ice
The ice that you see on advertisements is really a plastic block. The great-looking cherry juice is really red food colouring mixed with water.
Chicken with Paper Stuffing
This chicken is only partly cooked. If you cook the chicken too much its skin would get wrinkly and burned. To give it that wonderful look, the food stylist painted the bird with a special brown mixture. To keep it big and fat, the chicken is stuffed with paper towels.
Waterproof Bread
They use a special spray on bread. That spray is normally used for protecting car seats from water and sun. Stylists use the spray to keep the bread from drying out.
Stylist’s Toolbox
Food stylists know all sorts of tricks to make food look yummy. But they also have tools that they use all the time.
Here are two of them:
• Superglue: Great for patching skin on a chicken or holding together a pile of nuts.
• Tweezers: To rearrange sesame seeds on bread or place rice on a plate.