Festive dishes on the table should always be not only tasty, but also beautifully designed. First of all, it is nice and aesthetically pleasing. In addition, bright and beautiful dishes will be doubly appetizing, causing delight among guests. Today we will consider how to beautifully design a salad. Indeed, in this case it is possible to use not only greens, which has become a familiar thing for many. To prepare beautifully decorated holiday salads, you will need to show your own imagination and select products that suit your main course. Such work is a real art. However, decorating dishes at home is not such a difficult skill that every housewife can master.
Decorations
In order to beautifully arrange salads and slices, it is advisable to purchase special tools. They will make the decoration process easier and more interesting.
In the list of such tools are sharp knives and scissors, semicircular spoons-noisettes, pointed at the edges. You will also need devices that can easily cut the zest from citrus fruits, as well as cut the middle from apples and other products. It’s good if the hostess has at hand forms for cookies, a confectionery syringe with different nozzles and a brush. All these tools are enough to decorate salads with your own hands.
Rules for registration
Those who have not yet decided how to beautifully decorate the salad should bear in mind that the dish should not contain a large number of decorative elements. The process of decorating it, as a rule, is accompanied by the observance of the principle of minimalism.
You should also not show too violent imagination when preparing all the other dishes that will be on the festive table. Only the “highlight of the program” should look great. It is not worthwhile to distract the attention of those sitting at the table with the decor of other plates. This significantly reduces the effect of the presentation of the main dish. That is why salad bowls, in which decorated snacks are located, should not be bright either.
General recommendations
How to make tasty and beautifully decorated salads stand on the festive table? For this, there are general recommendations that as the fastest way involve finding the original capacity. It can be half of any vegetable, for example, pepper or zucchini. It is also worthwhile to decide on recipes in advance. Beautifully designed salads are obtained by themselves, if they contain ingredients with unusual combinations of shapes and colors. Such an appetizer will not require special decor. A simple and useful option used in the design of a portioned dish is cheese and meat cuts, which will be an excellent substrate for a salad slide.
Theme
The solution to the question “How to decorate a salad beautifully?”, In addition to fulfilling the above conditions, will require observing one more element. You must not forget about the occasion for which the dish is being prepared. It can be an anniversary or a wedding, the birth of a child or the celebration of the New Year. In this case, the decoration of the festive table must certainly adhere to the desired theme.
Well, maybe the question “How to decorate a salad beautifully?” Is asked by the hostess who decided to add variety to the everyday table? Then the decoration should consist in the selection of a more attractive, unusual dressing, in a new technology, according to which the ingredients are laid out. A good example is restaurant salads. Most often, they are deprived of bright decor, but in life and in the photo they look just great.
If Mimosa salad will be prepared for the festive table in honor of International Women's Day, then decorating it is better with a spring hint. For this, a sprig of lilac must be prepared from the appropriate ingredients. For it, crush the boiled egg protein on a coarse grater. One half of the prepared product must be mixed with a small amount of beet juice. Next, the protein is laid out on the surface of the salad in the form of white and purple flowers. You need to arrange them on a sprig of dill or parsley.
If during the design of the appetizer it is supposed to attract New Year's theme, then all the components of the dish should be selected in such a way that the almonds perfectly suit them in terms of taste. After preparing the holiday salad, it is laid out on a plate, giving the shape of a pine cone. The scales will be neatly laid out nuts. The finishing touch of such a dish will be a sprig of spruce.
For new year
The most universal idea for such a topic is to give the dish a Christmas tree shape. A similar option is even suitable for traditional Olivier. In order to beautifully decorate salads for the New Year in this way, it is not even necessary to use green. It is enough that the appetizer has a silhouette characteristic of the Christmas tree. But garlands made of corn and olives, in this case, will be a great addition.
How to beautifully decorate New Year's salads so that they also become an original element of table decoration? Culinary professionals suggest starting from the symbol of next year. For example, a salad made according to any recipe can be laid out in the form of a snake. Her scales are laid out with peas or thin semicircles of cucumber. In this case, grains of corn or olives serve as eyes.
Creating a dragon is similar to a snake. Only he will need a mustache from the branches of dill, and the leaves of Beijing cabbage are suitable for small wings.
Beautifully decorated salads for the New Year, the symbol of which will be the tiger, will also not be difficult. A circle with ears of grated carrots will make a muzzle. For the eyes, you can take egg whites and olives. A tongue will be a piece of boiled sausage. A paste with cucumbers and eggs can become the main one for such a salad.
For birthday
The central dish of such a holiday can be different, but if they are served with a salad, then its design should be more catchy and bright than other dishes, even a cake. How to achieve this effect? Professionals recommend trying to start off from that time of year when the birthday boy was born. For autumn, yellow-red tones should be selected, for winter - white-blue, etc.
If the child's birthday is celebrated, then it is worth taking into account his interests and individual preferences. It is believed that this option will be a win-win.
You can decorate salads for children in several ways:
- Giving a snack an unusual shape. The ingredients included in the dish are stacked in such a way that the “sculpture” of the typewriter, teddy bear, bunny, etc. is obtained on the plate. But it is worth keeping in mind that this method of decoration is suitable only for those salads in which there is a connecting element in the form of mayonnaise or sour cream. In other words, the dish should be thick and dense in consistency. Otherwise, the figure will fall apart very quickly.
- Creating a salad on the picture. Get involved and write masterpieces is not necessary. It is enough to portray a simple sun. Bright and small flowers will attract the attention of the child. No less interesting will be the display of the characters of your favorite cartoon.
- Using surround decor. To create various figures you will have to pre-train. Portion salads can be decorated with boats of peppers, zucchini or cucumbers, supplemented with cheese plates on a toothpick. They will become real ships, ready for departure on a long voyage.
If the holiday salad is intended for a woman, especially for the anniversary table, then you can try decorating it in the form of a large bouquet.
What flowers in this case to choose to create a picture? Everything will depend on the taste of the birthday girl and the possibilities of the chef. For example, tulips and gerberas are laid out faster and easier. But lilies have to tinker.
Use of dyes
Anyone who professionally knows the culinary art is sure that salads can be brightly and interestingly represented with the help of any product, from cucumbers to smoked sausages. You can create an original decoration even if the recipe contains only raw beets, onions and vegetable oil. To give the dish an original look, you need only a little free time, a grain of skill and a bit of imagination. Particular attention should be paid to dyes, which can be obtained from simple products.
- red color gives cranberries, cranberries, pomegranate seeds and tomatoes;
- raspberry color is obtained using beets;
- for oranges take oranges, sea buckthorn, as well as carrot juice;
- yellow color is obtained when using egg yolk, saffron, corn;
- blue will give red cabbage juice;
- green is obtained by using spinach;
- for black use olives.
Decoration of vegetable salads
In what cases is it worth using one of the design options? Decoration for appetizers prepared from vegetables should be present only on salads that can hold their shape for a long time. These are, as a rule, dishes whose ingredients have not undergone heat treatment. They are decorated with figurines carved from vegetables. Such details are laid out on a plate in a predetermined or arbitrary order. Classic, simpler jewelry options may also occur, for example:
- inscriptions or "cobwebs" with sour cream or mayonnaise;
- bunches or twigs of greenery;
- quarters or halves of olives;
- fat-free sausage, boiled meat, grated cheese;
- egg crumbs or chips.
Decoration with nuts
The hostesses especially appreciate this option for its simplicity. Even with basic sprinkling of already prepared salad with crushed nuts, it becomes attractive and mouth-watering. And when thinking over the idea of using the shape of the nuclei, you can create a whole picture.
So, a classic of the genre is a winter salad, which is decorated with walnuts. An ideal simple option is to arrange sesame seeds on diet snacks that contain only greens. It should be borne in mind that the nuts for decorating the salad are pre-fried.
Egg decoration
A similar decorative idea is very popular. However, for its implementation, you will need to prepare the eggs in such a way that the yolk does not begin to fall apart during work. Professionals in this case recommend:
- Before cooking, put the eggs in cold water so that it completely covers them;
- wait for the moment of boiling;
- count nine minutes;
- take out the eggs and cool them quickly.
In this case, bouquets or single flowers located on the surface of the snack will serve as decoration. To create them, the egg will need to be cut longitudinally, placing the resulting oval halves in the right direction, giving the drawing the desired shape. You can also make petals from slices. To obtain them, eggs are cut vertically, dividing into plates with a thickness of 0.4 to 0.7 mm.
Simple jewelry is created with the help of a yolk, turned into crumbs. It is perfect for sprinkling the entire surface of a snack.
After removing the yolk from the egg, a long half of the protein may well turn into a boat. A toothpick is placed in it, on which a bent circle of cucumber, a plate of cheese or red fish is strung. This will allow you to get the perfect little boat.
Original design
In addition to the methods listed above, there are a number of unusual options that will interestingly decorate the festive dish.
- The use of jelly. Ingredients are poured into them so that the frozen salad can be cut and laid out in portions. Jelly is sometimes used to create dense figures. They decorate the dish.
- The use of ice. The hostess can make a bowl by freezing water with pieces of vegetables in it. A salad is placed in such a container.
Figured cutting
Often in restaurants festive dishes are decorated with carving. This is a curly cut of fruits, vegetables, sausages or cheese. At home, carving allows not only to get a beautiful dish, but also to have a good time. For the manufacture of such jewelry you will need sharp knives of several sizes. As one of the options can be considered the use of boiled sausage. It is cut into thin circles, each of which must be bent in half. Such blanks are stacked on top of each other with an indent of 0.5 cm until the bouquet is completely formed.
The second option involves the use of cucumber. It is cut with a vegetable peeler into flexible and long layers. A blooming bud is formed from such details.
Fur coat salad decoration
This is one of the favorite snacks of our people, consisting of affordable and simple ingredients. Their combination gives a gentle and unique taste. The question "How to beautifully design a salad" Herring under a fur coat "?" Often faces the hostesses. After all, this dish can be seen on almost every festive table. They love the Fur Coat salad on weekdays. His presence on its own can cause a person to feel joy and triumph. The salad was supposedly given its original name due to the fact that the fish in it is covered with many layers of vegetables and mayonnaise.
The following question is quite relevant: “How to beautifully decorate the Fur coat salad?”. After all, the same dish present at every holiday can become quite boring.
So how to beautifully decorate the salad “Under the fur coat”? For example, a dish can be shaped like a fish. However, it does not have to resemble herring. Any fish, even childishly funny, can cause a smile and joy. To create it, salad on a plate is already laid out in advance in the form of an oval with a tail. All the details of the fish are made from improvised materials, which are trimmed vegetables, herbs, olives, onion rings and mayonnaise, with the help of which a certain pattern is applied.
Still how beautifully to decorate the Fur coat salad? One of the most unusual variations will be serving a popular snack in the form of a roll. It is prepared from standard components, stacking layers in a plastic wrap in the reverse order. After that, the contents are twisted using a film in the form of a roll. Such a salad is cleaned in the refrigerator and, after hardening, spread on a plate.
Dressing Olivier Salad
This dish can also be often seen on our holiday tables. The taste of Olivier salad, like "Fur Coats", certainly causes the most pleasant associations. However, no matter how beloved this appetizer is, its classic presentation in the form of an ordinary pile is uninteresting and boring.
How to decorate a salad Olivier? You can decorate such a dish with slices made of fresh cucumber, the taste of which goes well with this vegetable in both salty and pickled forms. For their preparation, a well-sharpened knife is used. They cut a cucumber along. The resulting slices are laid out in a fan, in the form of curls or quilling. You can decorate Olivier salad with potato chips. This product will also be relevant, as the recipe contains boiled potatoes.
Salads with crab sticks
Snacks, one of the ingredients of which was this product, have gained considerable popularity in our country. And today, the hostess is preparing a salad with crab sticks for any feast. Why is this product so loved by Russian chefs? Yes, because dishes with its use are prepared easily and quickly. At the same time, an appetizer certainly turns out to be very tasty.
Consider the recipe (with photo) of beautifully decorated salads from this product beloved by our compatriots:
- With pineapples. To make such a salad, you will need a relatively small set of products. It includes 370 grams of canned pineapple, 200 grams of crab sticks, 200 to 300 g of cheese, 4 or 5 tbsp. tablespoons of raw rice, as well as one onion and 250 grams of mayonnaise. How is such a salad prepared? Pre-boiled rice. For this, cereals are dipped in salted water. Pineapples are not chopped too finely. Crab sticks are crushed, giving them the shape of small cubes. Cheese grated. Chop the onion finely. All ingredients are mixed and seasoned with mayonnaise. How to decorate a crab salad? You can do this using a wide variety of options. One of them involves giving the appetizer a crab shape. In this case, you can not add chopsticks to the salad so that there are not too many of them in the finished dish (at your discretion).
- With garlic. To prepare such a salad, you need to take two large tomatoes, one pack of crab sticks, several cloves of garlic and mayonnaise. How is such an appetizer prepared? The sticks are diced. Chopped tomatoes. Garlic is passed through a press. The ingredients are mixed and seasoned with mayonnaise. . , , , , .
A beautiful decoration of salads will certainly become a real decoration of any holiday table. Recipe (you can familiarize yourself with the photo above), suitable for taste and theme, each housewife will be able to choose at their discretion.