Crispiness or crispness is one of the most common food texture attributes. Crispiness refers to a hard food that emits a sound upon fracturing. Foods described as crisp tend not to show signs of deformation prior to fracture. Crispiness and crunchiness are often used interchangeably, however crispiness tends to be associated with a higher pitched sound, while crunchiness is associated with lower pitched sounds; however, this type of level of heating in cooking generally has a soft tender inside left after heating.

Cooking techniques for crispiness

There are a number of techniques to achieve crispiness when cooking.

Frying Frying is the cooking of food in cooking oil, oil or another fat. Similar to sautéing, pan-fried foods are generally turned over once or twice during cooking to make sure that the food is evenly cooked, using tongs or a spatula, whilst sautéed ...

food can make it crispy, such as seen in

french fries French fries, or simply fries, also known as chips, and finger chips (Indian English), are '' batonnet'' or '' julienne''-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin. They are prepared by cutting potatoes into even strips, drying them, and f ...

. A breading coating using

flour Flour is a powder made by Mill (grinding), grinding raw grains, List of root vegetables, roots, beans, Nut (fruit), nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredie ...

, egg wash, and

bread crumbs Breadcrumbs are a culinary ingredient consisting of flour or crumbled bread of varying dryness, sometimes with seasonings added. They are used for a variety of purposes, including breading or crumbing foods before frying (such as breaded cut ...

will provide a layer of crispiness.{{cite book, author=Editors, America's Test Kitchen , title=The Science of Good Cooking, publisher=

America's Test Kitchen ''America's Test Kitchen'' (originally ''America's Test Kitchen from Cook's Illustrated Magazine'') is a half-hour long American cooking show broadcast by public television stations and Create and distributed by American Public Television. Orig ...

, 2012 , page=152f , isbn=978-1-933615-98-1, year=2012 Baking and roasting impart crispiness, as well, as noted in the skin of

Peking duck Peking duck is a dish from Beijing that has been prepared since the Imperial era. The meat is characterized by its thin, crispy skin, with authentic versions of the dish serving mostly the skin and little meat, sliced in front of the diners by ...

, porchetta or pernil. Crispiness is lost when food items are heated in the

microwave oven A microwave oven, or simply microwave, is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces Dipole#Molecular dipoles, polar molecules in the food to rotate and ...

as microwaves heat water within the food that then makes the food margins soggy.

References

Culinary terminology