I got a comment on one of my mini cooking posts recently on where to get the food necessary for doing your own mini cooking. Once I also discovered a similar question in my blog searches a few times I thought it was time to do a formal post on the matter.
If you haven’t yet, also be sure to check out:
Now, I haven’t discussed real mini food previously, because the fact of the matter is that mini chefs use real full size food for the post part. A pinch of flour and sugar for cake, milk carefully dripped into a smaller container, a tiny pinch of ground beef for meatballs, etc. Before filming their videos, they simply pair off tiny portions of exactly what would go into a full size recipe.
There are a few items however you can buy smaller varieties of – say a cherry or grape tomato. Or lesser known, a quail egg, rather than one from a chicken, a shallot in place of a red onion.
For things like peppers, chicken breast, and the majority of other meats and vegetables, cut off slivers and shaped pieces before you begin filming, rather than including the whole large item.
The tiny food containers you see mini chefs using, they’ve likely made themselves, printing and cutting out labels from the internet, and creating the containers out of thin cardboard or cardstock.
Just a quick warning that I’ve included in my previous posts – As with any cooking, in any scale, you need to use supplies that are safe to cook with. Dollhouse miniature kitchen supplies you buy from the miniature sections of shops have a coating that will bubble and release fumes if exposed to heat. Be sure to use cookware that is uncoated metal, safe to use ceramic cookware, or uncoated cast iron. If you mini cook with the incense or antique variety that can be found in the first post listed above, the cast iron and metal accessories that come with them are made to be exposed to heat and therefore will be safe for your mini cooking.
Here’s a chart that may help you find your small food alternatives.
| Recipe Calls for | Small Alternative |
| Dry Baking Ingredients | Use small pinches of standard items |
| Egg | Quail Egg |
| Fish | Anchovy, Sardine, and any other small, sometimes canned variety |
| Liquids | Use a medicine dropper to fill a small container |
| Meat, Cheese, Fruit & Vegetables | Pinch or cut off bits of full size items |
| Mushrooms | Enoki or White Beach (Shimeji) |
| Onion | Shallot (Baby or Pearl), or the tiny core of a red onion |
| Pasta | Pastina, Orzo, or broken Angel Hair or rice noodles |
| Shrimp | Extra small shrimp |
| Tomato | Grape Tomato |
Anything else you’d like added to the chart above? Let me know in a comment below and I’ll do my best to get it on the list.
Leave a Reply