6 Tips for Healthy Garnishing of Your Meals

To make a dish look appealing, its presentation plays a huge role. Visually attractive foods tend to appeal more to our taste buds too. The old saying “We first eat with our eyes” well sounds right to us now. The feeling of happiness and satisfaction envelopes us on eating this well presented healthy dish and before even eating, mere thought of visually appealing food creates a salivation in our mouth.

The garnish is the final finishing touch! It makes your dishes look even more appetizing and yummy.

Making food look as wonderful as it tastes is easy, if you add the right garnish. While parsley is a staple decoration, there’s so much more you can do to perk up your plating skills:

• Color and Texture

Choose a garnish that enhances the color and texture of the food it will accompany. For instance, use a bright-colored garnish with light-colored foods, or accent soft-textured food with a crisp garnish. For example, topping strawberry pieces on banana smoothie and garnishing healthy nachos chaat with capsicum or corn is a good choice.

• Size and pattern

Match the size of the garnish to the presentation. Make use of large garnishes on platters, and small ones on plates. Sometimes diced cucumber and tomato garnishing looks better on a papad while slightly bigger cubes of tomato and cucumbergoes well with a salad garnishing. Go for bright contrasting shades while choosing the plate and garnish. For a light-shaded dish, choose a bright plate. Is it is a smooth dessert, opt for some crispy garnish.

• Portion and serving size

It is important to keep in mind the portion size, you may like cheese more than veggies but that doesn’t mean you will add more amount of cheese on your pizza topping. Keep a check on the portion size of one serving and add the garnishing accordingly. Extra garnishing may not only add a difference to the taste but will also hamper the nutritional value of the dish.

• Healthy alternatives

The most common and healthiest garnish is chopped cilantro, it adds colors to your dish. Make sure that the garnishing is not that calorie dense and healthy. Try to add a variety of garnishing in every different recipe. From mint leaves in mojitos to fresh thyme in pastas, you can create your won healthy alternatives. Instead of going for whole cheese cube melting on that garlic bread, you could add half a slice or maybe a teaspoon of cottage cheese.

• Fresh and crisp:

Ensure that the presentation stays sharp and crisp before you serve it. Most of the times, we garnish and refrigerate just to later discover that the garnishing has gone soggy or has made the actual dish turn soggy. The non-defined shapes and patterns give a messy look to presentation. If you are using frostings, creams or chilled items, keep the temperature of the plate and surroundings in check to ensure it would not melt away.

• Craft your veggies

Fruit and veggie wedges are the most basic garnish you could serve with literally anything and not much effort goes with it. Go for olive skewers, peels and leafy vegetables placed in certain manner to make it look classy and elegant. Cutting onion in different shapes like onion rings garnishing looks marvellous on a biryani and diced onion and tomato looks great with garnishing of raita.

Over to you

Not to deny but the first impression of the dish is through its look and it is why we feel tempted to have it. What better than replacing your calorie dense options with these simple and regular food items! What better than garnishing your favourite food with keep calorie count and health benefits in mind!