My Artistry as an Edmonton Food Photographer

I have been photographing food commercially since 2022. As you can see from my food blog, my images have come a long way since 2010! I have been photographing restaurants for UberEats as an independent contractor for a US-based company. Photographing food feels like studying shapes and figuring out what the hero element is — as an Edmonton food photographer.

Back in 2016 and in 2017, I have had the pleasure to attend food blogging conferences hosted by Food Bloggers of Canada (FBC). I still have many friends who are food bloggers. In 2016 was when I got to meet and learn in person from Andrew Scrivani at the FBC Conference in Montreal — a long time food photographer for the New York Times since 2002. It was also the same workshop where I learned how to do food styling. It is not very common to find a photographer in Edmonton that is picky with food styling. Yes, attention to details is a must in photography.

Food styling is an essential skill to have. In a recent UberEats restaurant session, I was given a toasted BLT sandwich that lacked the height as they were placed side by side. So, I had to re-stack it. However, food styling is an additional service. I only provide complimentary food styling for certain packages. What I cover with food-styling is the colour psychology.

Colour Psychology in Food Photography

Red is the colour of passion. It helps increase the appetite. Finding colours to contrast your dish is equally important. Blue is often the colour of harmony in portraits — however, it is a colour to be used sparingly unless we paired it with brown-coloured foods like stew or chocolate. Blue is often a colour used when we are trying to go on a diet.

My Philosophy as an Edmonton Food Photographer

I would describe myself as an editorial lifestyle food photographer — as I do take a candid approach with other styles of photography too. This means, I would not use mashed potatoes to photograph ice cream. Integrity and candidness is important to me. However, I will use a steam iron to add steam for a bowl of noodle soup.

Just like wedding flat lays, knowing to work with levels is important. To show more of your ingredients in a curry or in a soup, lifting the ingredients by putting objects in the bowl will help your ingredients sit.

My goal is to not only create the photograph — it is to tantalize your audience’s senses — to evoke feelings. I want to create food photographs that resonates your brand and story.

At the end of the day, our eyes are hungrier than our bellies. We eat with our eyes. I know I do.

To reach me, you can connect with me via my Edmonton commercial photography website for a custom quote. The smallest starting investment starts at $1,200 and you would get photographs to update your menu with your brand identity in mind. Video content is an a la carte add-on; I collaborate closely with a videographer. For family portrait work, reach out via my Edmonton family photography website.

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Other ways to use this sauce: if you’ve got meat and veggies leftovers from the surf and turf platter, make a sandwich! The chipotle mayo and mustard together are amazing in sandwiches.

These meatballs are easy to prepare in the Instant Pot. If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can use the same recipe to cook this over stove top in a large pot or cook it for 6 hours on low in the slow cooker. Using the Instant Pot for this recipe is great as you can use the passive time to cook noodles or rice and prepare a salad as side dishes.

Recommended sauces

If you still want to make Instant Pot meatballs but cannot get to Jasper to get this delicious mustard, use a dijon mustard of your choice. It won’t be the same but it will be a decent substitute. For this recipe, I have used a Kansas style barbecue sauce. You can use any barbecue sauces that is on the sweet side for taste. Worchestershire sauce will enhance the flavour of the meatballs.

If you don’t have breadcrumbs on hand, take 5 to 6 slices of bread and use this breadcrumbs recipe. This recipe uses cooked bacon, but you can skip that if you aren’t a bacon fan. The bacon adds texture and saltiness to the meatballs, especially if you were to cook the bacon until it is crispy.

How to Prevent The Meatballs from Sticking in the Instant Pot

One thing I have learned from making this recipe is that you cannot pile the meatballs on top of one another. Of course I had pretty enough meatballs for the final photo, but I had my meatballs sticking to one another. Put a layer of tin foil between the meatballs and poke holes in the foil using a fork. I use the 6 qt Instant Pot. So, you might not run into piling your meatballs in the 8 qt Instant Pot.

Pressure cooking the meatballs results in juicy meatballs. If you have got a chance to try Fiddle River’s sauces, could you please tell me which is your favourite sauce in the comments?

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Pork Chops on sale? Pears on sale? Let’s make this fusion pork chop in the Instant Pot and make the pear dill sauce in a high powered blender like the Vitamix. Fusion because it has Southeast Asian flavours mixed with herbs (dill) and ketchup. This Instant Pot Pork Chop uses a sirloin pork chop cut, which means you do not have to pound it with a tenderizer. If your pork chop is of a thicker cut, definitely use some arm muscles and pound that pork, baby! 4 pieces of sirloin pork chops for $4.68. Now, that’s a steal. The nice thing about using the Instant Pot is that it turns cheap cuts of meat into a wonderful meal.

Instant Pot Pork Chops Boneless with Pear Dill Sauce for a weeknight meal

Since this was actually created on a weeknight, it had to be fast. I left the pear peels on. I didn’t want chunky pears. I had figure the best way to make the pear sauce was to puree it into a barbecue sauce that does not have vinegar in it. Since pears have natural acid, I did not think that it required any vinegar for the sauce. No pears? Use apples! There was also no fancy camera used — just the cell phone. I am an internal auditor by day; food blogger in my spare time. Two hungry children. Can this meal be done around half an hour or under 40 minutes?

How long does the Instant Pork Chops Recipe take?

The sauce took two minutes from prep to finish. I marinated the pork chops for two to 5 minutes while cleaning up the kitchen. The pork chops probably could have benefited from a longer marinating time; so with advanced planning, you can marinate the pork chops the night before. Make sure you reserve the pear sauce to put on afterwards. Do not add the rest of the sauce to pressure cook in the Instant Pot without thinning it down with a liquid. (I have tried that with pasta sauce from scratch by adding tomato paste and let’s just say that it was a mess to clean up when it started ‘exploding’.) The 6 quart Instant Pot fits two sirloin pork chops when sauteing. It takes about 3 minutes to brown each side. So, that is 12 minutes of browning time. The amount of time to cook pork chop is 8 minutes with a 10 minute wait before instant pressure release. So, it takes about 40 minutes in total, which isn’t bad. It is enough time for you to prepare salads, rice or any other canned vegetables as sides. I always call it a success when you don’t resort to ordering out when pressed for time on a weeknight. For another weeknight recipe, check out: Instant Pot Braised Chicken.

What herbs do I add to pork chops?

Dill is a great flavour enhancer to pork chops. If you don’t have fresh or dried dill, use parsley, rosemary, savory, thyme or fennel. Possibilities are endless!

If you are looking for a pureed food for babies with dill, this is a great recipe: ground beef puree with apple sauce.

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I used drumsticks because it was on sale, but you can also use any other chicken parts like bone-in chicken thighs. You can pick boneless meat, but make sure that the skin is on for full flavour. For skin-on boneless chicken thighs, pressure cook for 8 minutes instead of the 10 in the recipe. The chicken is actually pressure cooked for a total of 12 minutes; the last one to two minutes are for adding vegetables. One minute for al-dente vegetables; I find 2 minutes is just right.

How to adapt the Instant Pot braised chicken recipe to suit your taste

My mom does not add sugar to her chicken; the sugar is optional if you are watching your sugar intake or calories. You can skip the sauteing step if you are on a time crunch even though it won’t be braising at that point. Braising is sauteing at a high heat before cooking in liquids.

The truth is, there is no “real recipe” when it comes to making this dish. As my mom says, “agak-agak” (Approximate in Malay). You can adapt how much dark soy sauce and spices to put. You can add white pepper or black pepper – this is optional. No Chinese 5-spice? No problem: use fresh or powdered ginger, garlic and soy sauce. There are so many combinations for this Chinese braised chicken recipe. For this recipe, I didn’t add any pepper but my mom usually adds pepper. You can also customize the veggies used in this recipe. Got dried shiitake mushrooms? Soak them and add them to the recipe when adding vegetables. Use what you have got on hand. Follow the Instant Pot directions and you can tweak vegetables to use whatever is in season.

For the dark soy sauce, I used the Amoy brand. You definitely do not want to use kicap manis (Sweet dark soy sauce). It is far more viscous than regular dark soy sauce. This is the only caution I would use for substituting ingredients. If you wanted to plan ahead, marinate your chicken overnight in the fridge. I did this recipe without marinating ahead and it turned out just fine.

The trick of this recipe is knowing when to start cooking your rice: start your rice the moment you finish putting your ingredients in the Instant Pot or your stove top pot. Start rinsing your jasmine rice in water and save that water for your outdoor garden. Per cup of rice, use the same cup volume of water. I cook my rice in a rice cooker since you can set and forget it. The rice cooker takes about 20 minutes to cook. The dish was ready about the same amount of time, including the 5 minute instant pressure release.

The trick of weeknight cooking is to make enough, so that you have leftovers for work the next day! If you wanted to sneak 2 more chicken drumsticks in this recipe, go for it! Oh, and there’s no need to be Julia Child and paper towel dry each drumstick before marinating them. We are marinating them in soy sauce after all.

Thicken the sauce with a cornstarch & cold water slurry. That braised dark soy sauce is delicious when served over rice. The Chinese 5-spice is the star spice in this dish.

Other one-pot weeknight meals under 40 minutes:
Make the yellow curry paste on a weekend and make this Yellow Curry Chicken (or tofu). This recipe does not do well in the Instant Pot as it gets soup-y. You need to cook the coconut milk without a lid on.
This weeknight Instant Pot beef curry takes 41 minutes in total, but is worth the extra minute.

If you are new to using the Instant Pot, Instant Pot has great tips for beginners.

To save this recipe on Pinterest, click on the following pin.

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