How To Add Crunch To Food

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How Do you Add Texture To food?

Texture in food is important, adding crunch is an easy way to always elevate a dish. In this post we help you learn different delicious ways to add texture in your home cooking so you know what to add when “the dish is missing something crunchy”.

Why Is Texture In Food Important?

Ever had ice cream? Ever had ice cream with fresh roasted, caramelized nuts? The added crunch adds dimension, especially for savory foods. Imagine a Caesar salad without croutons, not the same thing right? Or how about an LT instead of a BLT, the bacon crunch (and bacon-ness) makes the difference.

Fly By Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp

Fly By Jing Chili Crisp adds crunch and spice to dishes in the form of tingling chili oil. Add texture to fried rice, scoop over soup or the crispy chili bits add texture to a piece of fish like halibut or sole.

Flock Foods Chicken Chips

A salad hack, crispy chicken chips can be used in a caesar or southwest salad, or use these chicken chips to add crunch to potato salad instead of bacon. 

Granola

Granola is often over looked as something that can be a crunchy salad topping. It is not just for the breakfast table, you can use savoury granola as a salad topper or instead of crackers on a soup.

Granola For Cooking:

Hudson Henry

Jamie's Fram

Crispy Jerky (or Biltong)

If you fry a bit of jerky in oil you get two things:

1. Meaty, umami jerky oil.

2. Crispy jerky that can be used on top of mac and cheese, eggs, or sprinkled over a salad as a keto replacement to bread crumbs.

We like Righteous Felon Jerky.

Bacon Jerky even comes "pre-crispified" and is great over a wedge salad.

Crispy Bacon or Crumbled Sausage

Old school but it works, crispy bacon strips for a wedge works great or use the crispy fried chorizo technique over nachos or queso.

Bacon We Recommend: Porter Road

Chorizo We Recommend: Aurelia's or Seemore Sausages

Fried Shallots

Thai or Vietnamese cuisine lends a lot of its addictiveness to big texture and crunch. One of the secrets to SE Asian cooking are these crispy fried onions.

Crispy Chicharron 

Crumbled Chicharron or pork rinds can be used for everything from pork rind schnitzel to chicharron coated croquettes. Crumbled fried pork skin is also great sprinkled over simple pastas to add texture. Think of adding crumbled chicharron to dishes like Spaghetti Aglio e Olio or Carbonara.

Our Favorite Pork Rind Bread Crumbs: Pork Panko

Nuts

Nuts are an obvious choice, don’t fuss too much about the type, any nut will work with most dishes. The key is to fresh toast nuts to release essential oils. We recommend roasting nuts in a little butter, honey and your favorite spice mix to take them to the next level.

Spice Mixes We Recommend:

Spicewalla or Spiceology.

Nuts We Recommend: The Fiddyment Farm Pistachios

Dukkah

Dukkah is a Middle Eastern method to add crunch, try Villa Jerada’s version, Dukkah is a perfect topping for a boiled egg or soft cheese, a delicious addition to hummus or looking to make canned soup taste better? Add a little Dukkah.

Conclusion:

Adding bite to a dish can make the difference between restaurant quality food and average home cooking. Try some of the ideas above. Once again having a moderately stocked pantry is going to help you cook better than an empty one. Grab a Mantry subscription or make sure you keep some of the items we listed above on hand to always be able to add crunch to your dishes.

Bonus Tip: Potato Chips on sandwiches, those who know, know.