Human beings are sickos for crispy things, aren’t we? We’re so accustomed to the compulsive munchability of chips, crackers, fried chicken, and puff pastry we don’t even think about it. Once you pop, yadda yadda. You know the rest.
As Epi contributor Eleanor Morgan recently recounted, some researchers believe our brains are literally programmed to love the sounds of crispy foods as they shatter between our teeth—perhaps because humans once regularly subsisted on insects, and the satisfying crackle of a locust’s crispy exoskeleton was forever imprinted on the most primordial parts of our gustatory cortex.
And if our yen for crispy foods is as old as humankind itself, our obsession with making foods even crispier is hardly more recent. Ancient Canaanites and Greeks discovered that they could cook their food in cauldrons of hot oil to make them crispy, and even Apicius was making fried chicken way the hell back in the first century AD. In contemporary times, restaurants and industrial food manufacturers alike deploy a range of starches, both simple and modified, to improve crispiness. Sublimely crispy Korean fried chicken often relies on potato starch, while a box of store-bought crackers might include a modified starch made from waxy corn to give them a light, airy crispness.
Those modified starches don’t usually appear in the average home kitchen, but that’s not because they’re difficult to use or source. In fact, one such product, EverCrisp, is a batter booster made for pro and home cooks alike. The packaging boldly guarantees “to keep fried foods crispy for 3 hours and 47 minutes.” To use it, all you need to do is replace 20% of the flour in any batter you’re making with EverCrisp. Presto, crispo.
EverCrisp Breader & Batter Boost
But what exactly is this stuff? EverCrisp’s packaging lists only one ingredient: wheat dextrin, a type of carbohydrate derived from wheat starch. While wheat dextrin occurs naturally (it’s partly responsible for the browning of a bread’s crust in the oven), the packaged version is produced through industrial means. In one typical process, manufacturers separate the wheat gluten from starch—thus dividing the two main components of wheat flour—and the leftover starch is then sprayed with an acid solution, suspended in water, and roasted until dry, at which point it becomes pure wheat dextrin. (Note that dextrin from corn, potato, and other starch sources also exists but behaves differently from wheat dextrin.)
Food manufacturers discovered many years ago that wheat dextrin can make fried foods crispier—and remain crispier longer—than those made with most conventional flours alone. In a 2003 study published in the journal Food Hydrocolloids, for example, researchers compared the effects of both wheat dextrin and dried egg on batters for fried foods. “Dextrin produced a batter coating with a crispier, more fragile texture, and this crispness was retained longer than in the case of the egg-containing batters,” they wrote.
If you happen to glance at the nutrition facts on the back of a packet of EverCrisp, you’ll notice it contains a lot of fiber. (As in one quarter cup of EverCrisp contains 17 grams of fiber, or about 68% of your daily suggested intake.) Because of this, wheat dextrin is also commonly found in fiber supplements such as Benefiber.
