- So this is my IHOP confessional.
I've never eaten at IHOP before.
So here we are, for the first time.
Ordering the IHOP breakfast sampler combo.
But I do not feel like it looks like what's on the menu.
I think that I can do a pretty good job
of making it look more like the picture than what we got.
I'm a food stylist.
Consider me a makeup artist for food.
I take boring, everyday, average food
and make it look amazing.
I'm gonna show you how I food style
a classic IHOP breakfast plate
that you order in the restaurant.
And make it look commercial and photo ready.
(jazzy music)
Food ordered from an IHOP, brought to us here.
It's not quite what you see in the photo.
And that's okay.
It's just to eat.
But, if you look here, we've got brown
around the edges of the eggs.
Which is not always the most appealing.
The bacon's kinda flat, the sausage is a little sad.
The hash browns, I mean,
you really can't do wrong with hash browns.
They actually look really good.
And the pancakes, I was expecting them
to be bigger and fluffier.
All right, so first things first, bacon.
This is a sad, (sad music)
untextured, non-wavy piece of bacon.
Travesty to food styling.
Delicious, sure.
But that's not what we're here for.
We're here for visual.
In this particular instance we're looking for wavy,
crispy, golden-brown bacon.
There's only one way you can really achieve that.
So I'm just taking regular bacon.
Just working with one piece at a time.
The thing that's so important about these wire racks
is that the bars only go across one way.
They're not like a crosshatch.
And so this allows you to put the bacon
on the sheet pan and let it sink down in between
the grates on the wire rack.
Baking it in a oven on a rack
helps the bacon get super crispy and evenly cooked.
If you wanna take the time and do this at home,
your bacon would look so cute.
But you really shouldn't
because bacon's beautiful just like it is.
While the bacon's cooking, I'm gonna get all the other
meat ingredients ready for our IHOP sampler platter.
So the ham on the menu, it's a triangle shape.
It's also got a nice little brown edge around there.
It's definitely more of a triangle than I thought it was.
So now I'm gonna take the ham that I sliced,
and sausage links that are already prepared,
and brown them in the skillet.
I'm liking the way the ham's looking,
it's getting a really nice like brown crust on it.
I'm taking it off when it has
the color that I'm looking for.
My goal with the sausage is not only to cook it,
but just to make it look like it's fully brown
on the outside with just that signature line
of dark brown from where it touches the skillet.
They're doing a little dance, a little sausage dance.
(sizzling) These sausages look great.
There's that really nice caramelized line
down through the middle of the sausage.
They're holding their shape really nicely.
And, if I'm being honest with you, it smells delicious.
It makes me wanna eat some breakfast.
So here are the actual hash browns
that they prepare at an IHOP.
I think when I'm gonna cook my hash browns
I want them to be a little bit more of an organic shape.
Cooking some hash browns.
When I make potatoes for food styling
I like to make sure that there's a lot of oil
in the skillet and the skillet is really nice and hot.
So that way when I add the potatoes
they get a beautiful golden crust.
In order to shape my hash browns
I'm gonna lower them into the skillet
and put them in a mold.
The mold keeps the hash browns in an initial shape.
So that way, when I put them in,
they're not just gonna spread out everywhere.
I wanna have a nice thick layer of hash browns,
like in the picture.
Now that my hash browns have cooked a little bit,
they've got a really nice shape to them.
So I'm gonna take the mold out.
So that way, when I go to flip them over,
they will spread out a little bit.
Which is totally fine, that's what I want.
That's where the organic shape comes from.
And here we go.
Ready to flip.
It's hot.
(sizzling)
I feel okay.
I don't think it's as deeply golden as I would like.
Maybe I was being a little bit too impatient,
waiting on them to get crispy.
But I still think they look really good.
Comment below and tell me how you like your hash browns.
Hashtag Waffle House,
hashtag smothered, covered, and chopped.
This looks great, I'm super happy
with the way these hash browns look right now.
So I'm gonna transfer it to a tray,
and then we'll work on our final thing
before the beauty, frying eggs.
So on our IHOP breakfast platter
we have sunny-side up eggs.
Which is a very iconic egg to see in food photography.
I want my egg whites to be perfectly set,
and beautifully white.
With no extra color on the outside.
I'm gonna start by spraying my non-stick skillet
with a little bit of Pam.
And then I'm gonna wipe that Pam out.
Spraying the Pam and then wiping it out
is gonna allow my eggs to come clean out of the skillet.
I picked these eggs out specifically
because I know that the color of the yolk
is beautiful and bright.
The one thing that's really important
about cooking eggs for food styling
is controlling the heat.
The key to a perfect sunny-side up egg
is to just let 'em cook in the skillet.
Just let the heat do its job.
Right here you can see
the white is still a little undercooked.
We want that to be perfectly white and fully cooked.
But the yolks look beautiful.
The eggs are done, they look great.
Working with eggs is super tricky.
At any moment I could completely ruin it
by cracking the yolk,
and then I'd have to start all over again.
Hey, no pressure.
All right, it's time to build.
Everything looks really great.
And it's coming together really nicely.
Before I put anything on the plate,
I'm gonna give everything a nice loving coat of Pam spray.
Especially the hash browns and the meat,
since they were fried.
I want them to look crispy, juicy, and delicious.
So this reference photo is off of the IHOP website.
So that's the picture that I'm trying to replicate.
Start with the hash browns,
those are at the back of the plate.
So we'll get a really nice shot of this
beautiful crispy golden edge.
So then next I'm gonna add the eggs to the plate.
And I can see right here that the eggs are kind of
slumping down into the plate a little bit.
And that's because the plate has a edge on it.
I'm gonna take a piece of paper towel
and slide that underneath to kind of
bump them up a little bit.
So they don't have this edge right here.
I'm gonna add my ham pieces right here in the middle.
So I'm picking out the sausage
that has a nice clean caramelized line on the top.
But then it doesn't look like it's been too overcooked.
You can see here on some of these
that the skin gets a little wrinkly.
That's not what we wanna see.
We want a plump sausage.
And now we're gonna add our wavy, crispy bacon.
This bacon turned out so nice.
It looks beautiful.
The last thing we have to plate for the final beauty,
are the pancakes.
So these are the pancakes that I made,
and these are the pancakes that we got from IHOP.
When I see a stack of pancakes
most of the time they're thick,
they look fluffy, golden, and really inviting.
This guy, not so much.
So that is why I made my own pancakes.
As you can see here, this is the face of my pancake stack.
And what basically that means is that this is
the side that's facing the camera.
A little food stylist trick,
especially with a stack of pancakes,
I'm gonna cut a circle out of the inside of this
paper plate, and wedge it in between
the two slices of pancakes.
By doing this, it creates a little leverage
from the back of the pancake
so that it tilts forward towards the viewer.
You can have a stack of pancakes
without a good ole scoop of butter on top.
Especially not from IHOP.
So I'm using this cute little mini ice cream scoop.
I am so happy with the way this breakfast platter looks.
The last thing we need is a beauty shot
and an in process syrup pour.
We've got our clean, classic, white background.
Just like in the photo.
And now we're gonna do our iconic syrup pour.
(upbeat music)
So I got a little excited with the syrup,
so it's kinda flowed over the edge of this plate.
I'll have to clean that up.
Sometimes food styling is all trial and error.
You never really know what's gonna work
until it doesn't work.
This looks great.
I'm so happy with the way this breakfast platter turned out.
We got our iconic syrup pour,
even though it overflowed a little bit.
And it looks absolutely delicious.
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Comment below and let me know
what you wanna watch me style next.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)