What causes frying something to be crispy as opposed to boiling it?
In: 2042
In addition to what others said, fried foods are usually battered, which adds to the crispness
Oil outputs a lot more heat and it is suddenly applied to the surface of the object. Water boiling takes a bit more of time to heat, to penetrate the core of whatever you are boiling ( like an egg ) . So the molecular changes are different. They switch different from one structure to another . Slow heating gives the molecules some time to organize better so it they form a more smooth surface. Strong heating, like oil is vs water in this case, is more chaotic at a molecular level so they have less time to organize and end up crystallizing ( which is not the most accurate term but I hope it helps in the visual understanding ) .
If you cook something in 100C oil it will also get soft instead of crispy. Ultimately it’s oils ability to get to higher temperatures that gives it the ability to make things crisp. If water could get to 350F you could probably also fry with it.
So, what would happen if I threw hard pasta (uncoated, of course) into an oil fryer?
Learned something new today! Thank you, OP, for the great question and thanks to all the people who replied!
Cooking things generally makes them crispy because the water is evaporated or boiled away (plus other things like carmelization), but when you boil something you’re essentially soaking it in water so any water lost from the food is replaced and then some.
Getting something crispy requires getting all the water out of it. By definition, you can’t get all the water out of something by cooking it in water. When water hits 100 C, it boils, but it will never get hotter than that. Oil will get hotter than 100 C, so it will make the water in the food boil out. When you are frying something, you are really just cooking all the water out of it.
It seems nobody mentioned the Maillard reaction. This is the process where food is browned and becomes crisp from cooking. This happens at around 140 C. Water boils at 100 C and will essentially ensure the food in the water can never get hot enough for this reaction unless all the water boils away. Olive oil boils at 180 C, so browning can happen easily.
Heat. Water can’t “burn” or even let things burn inside of it. Oil can get much hotter than water and can cause burning.
Heat breaks down molecules that we consider tough. Plant and animal cells, organic chemistry. This is why you can fry something and it will still turn out juicy inside.
The reason we put breading on things that we fry is to create an oil/water barrier. If you fry a naked piece of chicken the water will all evaporate out. The breading slows the water from steaming out.
Boiling in water saturates whatever you’re boiling with water. Frying something extracts the water out making it crispy.
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