Food stylists are incredible at what they do. There is so much that goes into making food look “camera ready.” If you ask me, food stylists are the unsung heros of food photography. On a commercial food photography shoot it takes a whole team of people to make a shoot go smoothly but as food bloggers, we are accustomed to doing it all on our own.

This post is dedicated to you. The ones who try to do it all. I must say, doing it all is difficult but we do it well, don’t we?

Below you’ll find 5 food styling tricks using everyday items that you likely already have lying around the house. You can use them to start building your food styling kit and on your food photography shoots each week. It’s amazing what you can do with a few household items!

#1 Cotton Balls to Create Steam

Have you ever wanted to mimic steam coming out of a mug or off of some food?

In the photo above I poured and re-poured hot water into the mug in the hopes that I would finally get steam rising out of it and get lucky by capturing it with my camera.

Every time I did this, it just wasn’t enough steam for my liking. The photo above is still one of my favorite photos  because of the roaring fire behind the mug. This photo still tells a story and I am 100% proud of it.

That being said, I wish the steam was more pronounced.

If I had known then, what I know now, I would have taken a few cotton balls, placed them in a cup of water, and microwaved them for about 1 minute.

Next, I would have strategically placed the cotton balls behind the mug. It should emit much stronger steam than the hot water alone and I would have been able to tell a visual story even more effectively.

You can do this with tampons if you so choose but I never wanted to waste them.

Cotton balls are probably hidden in your bathroom cabinet somewhere, right? 

If you find this still isn’t working, you may need to add more cotton balls. If it still isn’t working out, you could try a steamer if you have one for your laundry! 

#2 Fun Tak to Hold Items in Place

You remember hanging posters of teen idols on your walls with this stuff so your parents weren’t angry you put holes in their freshly painted walls, right?

No?

Just me?

Well instead of plastering your wall with Justin Timberlake, you can use it to hold various items in place during your food photography shoot.

In the photos above, I used the fun tack to hold the little red, white, and green, candy buttons in place on the red surface. They were rolling all over the place and getting stuck in the arms and legs of the gingerbread cookies.

Without the fun tak, I wouldn’t have been able to get that shot. While I prefer the shot of the cookies without the candy buttons, it might have needed to be there depending on the purpose of the shoot. 

This can be used for anything that isn’t cooperating or staying in place and you might already have it in a junk drawer somewhere.

Oh, you don’t have a junk drawer? Well, you can buy it then!

#3 Scotchguard on Pancakes (or Waffles, or French Toast!)

Scotchguard. Not something you really want to spray on your food, right? In the world of food styling, we aren’t concerned with the taste of the food as much as we are the presentation.

Enter stage right, Scotchguard!

The stuff you spray on your furniture or carpet so that if you do make a mess, your fabric is protected.

When you spray fabric protector on pancakes (or waffles! or french toast!) and then pour maple syrup on top, the syrup will take longer to sink into the pancakes.

This prolongs the shooting time and makes it easier for you to get the coveted pour shot, or hey, even the “hero” shot.

I hope this goes without saying: Don’t eat the pancakes when you’re done.

#4 Citric Acid & Water to Prevent Browning

Have you ever cut a piece of fruit in half and had it brown within five minutes? Yeah, me too.

We spend a lot of time setting up our shots. We have a lot to do to make sure that we are ready to shoot.

We have to make sure our batteries are charged, choose our props, choose our surfaces and backdrops, prep the food, set up our tripod, our lights, take some test shots, and prep some ingredients.

The list goes on.

Cutting an apple in half to add some dimension to your shot is not a bad idea. In fact, I fully support that idea! You might want to wait until you are almost ready to shoot.

That being said, even if you are a few minutes away from shooting, those apples will brown by the time you start or at the very least while you’re in the middle of your shoot.

After everything is over, you’ll take your memory card out of your camera, put it into your computer, import those photos into Lightroom and as you’re hitting the arrow key and culling your images you will see, clear as day, that those apples were …great looking,

…fine …still ok … and then suddenly … Brown and not as fresh looking as when you started out.

You finally nailed your composition and your apples are brown.

this reminds me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer quote from Season 4, Episode 9 “Something Blue.” A depressed Willow crashes Buffy and Riley’s picnic and says:

“Your apples are turning brown…the way they do.”

To which Riley replies: “Yeah, I guess they do that…”

Yeah, you guys! Apples turn brown! So the “holding technique” that food stylists use to hold sliced apples on a set is to soak them in a mixture of citric acid and water. You can also use lemon juice and water.

1 – 3 Tablespoons of citric acid or lemon juice in a cup of water should do the trick.

Just a quick PSA: Don’t lick your fingers after you’ve done this. It was a complete accident and it was disgusting. I do not recommend! 

Also just another quick warning: The citric acid stained my wood backdrop. It seems to have gone away after I scrubbed it. 

#5 Windex & Q-Tips for Splashes, Dust, and Fingerprints

Anything that splashes or sticks to the inside of a bowl, plate, or mug is the bane of my existence.

There have been too many times that I have ignored it while shooting and thought: “I can fix that later.”

Sure, I can fix it later. I can shoot everything “as is” and then open Photoshop after all is said and done and retouch my image. I can remove any spots that don’t belong with the spot healing tool or the clone stamp tool. No big deal. 

Actually, kind of a big deal. 

If I don’t have to do that as part of my post-processing, I’m happier because I just gained back some of my precious time. While cloning out some splashes of food may not be hard, it can take a while.

Maybe instead of sitting at my desk for an extra 30 minutes, I’ll go take a walk! (or a nap!)

So when you notice a bit of food on your plate or inside your bowl that you know you’ll probably try to remove later, just grab a Q-Tip and a small amount of Windex. Spray the Windex on the Q-Tip and wipe the splatter away.

You can do this with water instead of Windex but I always find that I just make it worse by spreading it around. The Windex helps make sure it is really clean.

There you have it! 5 simple food styling tricks using everyday items! I know you know this already, but, it is worth mentioning that if you use some of these tricks, your food might no longer be safe to eat.

Did you or have you tried any of these tricks? Maybe you plan to? Let me know in the comments or on Instagram!