How to Use Deli Cold Cut Slices as a Flower (6 Steps)

Deli cold cut meat slices are commonly rolled into cylinders and arranged on a tray, but you can make flowers to turn standard lunch into food art. You can arrange several meat slices on a tray to make a meat flower bouquet, or use a few meat flowers to decorate a single-serving lunch plate. This type of decorative, fun food art is particularly common in bento lunchboxes. The most attractive meat flowers are made from ham because of the light pink color, but you can use any type of sliced meat, including turkey, bologna and even roast beef.

Things You'll Need

Cutting board
Knife
Green onion

Leaf lettuce
Cherry tomato or carrot

Instructions

Lay a piece of sliced deli meat on a cutting board. You can use round or square lunch meat, but square meat works best.
Cut a series of horizontal slits into the slice, leaving about a 1-inch margin on the sides. Make the slits between 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide, starting 1/8 to 1/4 inch from the top edge.
Fold the meat slice in half from side to side so the uncut 1-inch margins line up perfectly. Roll up the folded meat from the bottom edge to the top.
Hold the rolled meat by the 1-inch margin in one hand with the cut curled end facing upward. Spread out the thin, folded meat to give the appearance of petals. Tie the base of the flower together with a soft, flexible piece of green onion.
Roll large pieces of leaf lettuce to form cups. Place one meat flower inside each lettuce cup. The lettuce cups resemble leaves on a flower stem. Insert a cherry tomato or piece of carrot in the center of each meat flower to complete the flower design.
Arrange several of the meat flowers on a large platter if you're serving cold cuts to a crowd. Alternatively, place a few of the flowers on a small plate.

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