Eli5: why boiling food makes it soggy but deep frying makes it crispy?
In: 6
Frying improperly can make food soggy, but normally we don’t add the food to the oil until the oil is very hot. That means that while the oil soaks a bit into the outside of the food, it quickly heats the surface of the food to boiling. The water in the food boils rapidly and turns to steam, which creates an outward pressure that doesn’t let the oil penetrate deeply into the food. Only the outside gets oily. That’s why it doesn’t get soggy.
It gets crispy because frying heats the surface of food to very high temperatures and pulls water out. Most foods get harder when cooked at high temperature as proteins stiffen and water is drawn out. (Most fried foods are also coated in batter that, like all breads and bread-related materials, hardens as it cooks.)
This doesn’t apply to boiling because the water in a boiling pot of water never rises above the boiling point, so water in the food boils only very slowly if at all. So the food absorbs, rather than gives up, water.
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