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.

Cooking techniques for crispiness

There are a number of techniques to achieve crispiness when cooking. Frying food can make it crispy, such seen in French fries. A breading coating using flour,

egg wash An egg wash is beaten eggs, sometimes mixed with another liquid such as water or milk, which is sometimes brushed onto the surface of a pastry before baking. Egg washes are also used as a step in the process of breading foods, providing a substra ...

, and

bread crumbs Bread crumbs or breadcrumbs (regional variants including breading and crispies) consist of crumbled bread of various dryness, sometimes with seasonings added, used for breading or crumbing foods, topping casseroles, stuffing poultry, thicken ...

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, 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 (Peking) 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 di ...

porchetta Porchetta () is a savory, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast of Italian culinary tradition. The carcass is deboned and spitted or roasted traditionally over wood for at least eight hours, fat and skin still on. In some traditions, porchetta ...

pernil Pernil (pernil asado, pernil al horno, roast pork butt) is a slow-roasted marinated pork leg or pork shoulder. In Latin American countries the dish is commonly shared during Christmas. It is a typically accompanied by arroz. The pork shoulder ...

. Crispiness is lost when food items are heated in the

microwave oven A microwave oven (commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce ...

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

References

Culinary terminology