S2 E2: Crispy Issues: When Crunch Goes Wrong

In this episode, Rahul explores one of the most frustrating problems in food service: why crispy foods lose their crunch before they reach the customer. From soggy fries and limp fried chicken to delivery delays, coating issues, oil problems, and packaging challenges, this episode breaks down where crispiness disappears and why it matters for taste, consistency, and business. 

If your menu depends on texture, this conversation goes beyond the fryer and into the full system behind delivery, quality control, and repeat orders. You will learn why crispy food is not just a kitchen issue, but a business issue too.

Food Issues Solved! 

Transcript

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Culinary stories, real food issues which are solved. Welcome to the season 2 episode 1. Why your crispy food always dies in a delivery bag? And did your fries sign a secret contract with moisture? This is your host Rahul Shrivastab. You know what breaks my heart more than a burnt biryani is opening a delivery bag and finding that the fries feel like they have just come out of a steam room. Limp, tired, defeated. Like they gave up on their life on their way to your doorstep from the kitchen. I've been in professional kitchens for 24 years. I have fried chicken in Africa, made samosas in Middle East, and engineered coatings for a few of the big food companies. I am telling you the number one complaint which comes across every QSR, every cloud kitchen, and every delivery platform in the world is the same. My food tied soggy. I will again say, my food arrived soggy. Today we are going to solve this not with theories but with science, with stories, and with some fixes which you can actually use. So when we go and talk about this a little more in detail, you will really find that what are those anecdotes which you can utilize. Welcome, and before we dive into, I have a few books which I recommend to you for diving deeper beyond what I am going to tell you today. Welcome to the season 2 of Culinary Stories, Real Food Issues Which Are Solved. I'm your host, Rahul Shrivasta, a chef who has seen more fries die in delivery bag than the most of you have cooked in your lifetime. Before we dive in, three books that changed how I think about texture, about crunch, and food engineering. Number one is on food and cooking. This is by Harold Matke. The Bible of Food Science. If you want to understand why starches behave the way they do, you can start here. It's a good reference point for someone to learn. The second book is about the food lab by Kenzie Lopez. This man de-fried his way through hundreds and hundreds of experiments to find out the perfect fry. Brilliant, obsessive, and exactly the kind of crazy the food world needs. Third is coating technology handbook. This one is for food engineers who are listening. If you work in batters, breadings, this is your operating manual. I used principles from this book during my time working on coating systems, and that's the gold standard. Now let us get into why your crispy food is dying. What's the reason behind it? The science, why crispiness dies, is the main header of discussion today. Let me paint a small picture for you where you are seeing that you fry a small batch of French fries, they come out golden, crackling, and perfect. But what happens next? That crunch, it has come from somewhere, very specific. During frying, moisture escapes from inside of the potato. What is left behind is a brittle structure of tiny air pockets. That's your crunch, that's the magic. I will again repeat the brittle crunch full of tiny air pockets. That's the crunch. Now here is where the murder happens. The moment you put this perfect fries into a closed container or a sealed bag, a different story begins in the journey. The fries are still hot, they're still releasing steam, and that steam has nowhere to go. Eventually, this gets trapped inside the packaging, condenses on the wall and the lid, and drips right back onto your fries. You have basically put your fries into miniature sauna, not in the hotels, but in that plastic pouch or the packaging material which you have used. And nobody, nobody comes out of sauna looking crispy. At least I do not. Now, here's the food science, which is in much simpler words. When starch absorbs moisture, it swells. The swelling breaks the brittle airy structure that gave you the crunch. The absorbed starch, which had the moisture, now the moisture has escaped. Even the tiny amount of absorbed water makes a noticeable difference. Your fries go from crispy to chewy just under 10 minutes. By the time delivery riders reach your door, 20-30 minutes later, those fries have been sitting under their own steam, that steam bath and absorbing moisture just like a sponge in a water park. And it is not just the fries, it is fried chicken, fried samosas, fried spring rolls, fried pakola, fried onion, fish and chips, and anything with a crispy coating faces the same enemy that is its own trapped steam. Now, real stories from kitchen I would like to share, and these have come in from my experience. Let me tell you something about what I saw earlier in my career. I was working with many big chains. I was working with QSRs, I was working with food processors, and you know while you work with so many people around the globe, you are launching some kind of fried chicken or fried potatoes where marketing pushes their buttons, goes all out on influencer, billboards, and everything. Kitchen team had nailed the recipe. Juicy inside, crunchy outside, coating was holding beautiful taste of these different types of chickens. The launch day arrives, orders flood in, kitchen is firing all cylinders, chicken becomes the call of the day. It comes out perfect, crispy, crunchy, and then it goes into sealed styrofoam box, lid snapped shut, stuck inside the delivery bag, rider takes 25 minutes to reach the first customer. The customer opens the box, the coating gets peeled. Yes, that's a sad part. The chicken looks like it went through the car wash. The first Google review that night was one star. And I quote from the same coating came off like a sunburn. One star, not because the recipe was bad, not because the kitchen messed up, because no one tested what happens to the product after it leaves the kitchen. That's the blind spot. Kitchen thinks their job ends when the food leaves the pass. Pass is generally a terminology which is used, the counter or the kitchen counter. But the customer experience starts when the bag opens. Here is another one. So I have a lot of bag of stories to tell, and this is the second story which comes out. I was working on a coating formulation, a breading system for a major food company. We had developed this beautiful extra crispy layer, held up for 8 minutes under the heat lamp. We were very proud. Just out, gun's full blazing. And then someone said, Let us test it in an actual delivery condition. So we packed it into a standard delivery container, put it in a thermal bag, you know, just like that. Pizza Hut Domino's have those bags or the swiggian summer's in India. We put that bag in the back of the bike and drove it for 20 minutes in circle around our RD center. When we opened it, the coating had basically surrendered. Hands up, it had gone from crispy warrior to a soggy surrender. In the time it takes to watch one YouTube reel. 20 minutes gone, and that's how the scene was. That day taught me something. In food product development, the real test is not your lab, it is not the testing of your bench. The real test is on the back of the delivery rider. In the traffic of New Delhi, in the traffic of Bangalore, in the traffic of Chennai, and in the moist conditions of Mumbai at 8 pm on a Friday night. If your product survives that, congratulations, you have built something real. And one more story, because this one is actually a funny one. I knew a restaurant owner who is based out of somewhere in India was so frustrated with soli fries in delivery that he started putting a small card in every delivery bag. What did the card say? For the best results, open the box immediately, let the fries breathe for 30 seconds before eating. I will repeat, for the best results, open the box immediately and let the fries breathe for 30 seconds before eating. You know what happened? Customers started posting the card on Instagram. Some loved it, some say, Why should I have to do the surgery on my fries before eating them? Why did he do that? And one customer wrote back, if my fries needed CPR, maybe just make better fries. If my fries needed CPR, maybe just make better fries. So what are the stories and what are the learnings which we are getting? He meant well, that owner. But the lesson is clear. The solution cannot be a notice card, it had to be built into the product and the packaging. And we will deep dive and understand these scenarios even more. Try to understand why our food is getting soggy. How to stop it? What are the real life solutions? So pick up that pen and paper or the scribbling pad which is lying nearby to you. And we will start talking about some pointers which you can make a note or later on a mental note eventually. So, how do you actually fix this? I have seen people try everything, I have tried everything myself. Let me give you what actually works. Solution 1. Vented packaging. When we say vented packaging, of course you are compromising in terms of the temperature of the product, but this is the single biggest game changer. Your packaging needs to let the steam escape and not to trap it. In 2005, a company called Sabet won a QSR Packaging Innovation Award for their twist and crispy container. It had a lid you can twist to vent for crispy items or seal for saucy items. The vent mode keeps the food crispy for up to 40 minutes, that is longer than most of the delivery windows. If you are a QSR operator or a cloud kitchen owner, listen to this. Look at your packaging right now. If it is fully sealed with no vents, you are basically steaming your own product. Punch holes, add some vents, use micro-fluted corrugated containers with perforations. I will repeat again, use micro flute corrugated containers with perforations. This one change will improve your food rating more than any recipe tweak. Solution 2. Engineered coatings. Very important. Lanveston, one of the biggest potato processors in the world, developed the fry line crispy on delivery back in 2018. You know what that punch line meant? Crispy on delivery? The batter uses a blend of cornstarch, potato starch, and some modified starches designed to hold the crunch for at least 30 minutes in an open or a vented package. Again, the packaging comes here. Since then, the fries and delivery orders in the US jumped from 6.8% to nearly 15% of all restaurant delivery orders. And that's the power of food engineering. If you are making your own fried products, think about your coating. Are you using straight flour dredger or something else? Add some rice flour, add some constarch to your mix. Consider double dredging technique flour, wet, dry, rest, and then fry. I'll repeat flour, wet, dry, rest and then fry. The extra layer creates a stronger and moisture-resistant crust. Solution 3. Separate your components. This sounds very basic, but most QSRs do not do it. Pack your crispy items separately from the sauces, from your wet items, from your hot gradients. This is very very important. You know, the moment the hot curry sits next to the fried food in the same closed space, the steam from the curry attacks the crust. Separate some with some compartments, separate containers if needed. Your cost might go up slightly. Your reviews will also go up massively. Cost going higher versus the reviews going up massively. What is your choice? Solution 4. The moisture barrier at the bottom. That's again a very important part. Put a textured liner or small absorbent pad at the bottom of your fry container. This pulls condensation away from the food. That small absorbent pad which you had put is taking the hit. Some containers now come with a rigid bottom that elevate the food above the collected moisture. Simple, effective, almost nobody uses it in India. Very few players are putting their hands around it. Solution 5. Test your product in delivery conditions and not in your kitchen. Because that's the real life scenario test. Cook it, pack it, drive it for 25 minutes, open it and eat it. That's where the real test of the scenario is. If you would not pay money for what you have just opened, your customer will not either. So these are very very important parts of the same game which we are playing. Fun facts! This is a crispy addition. I hope you will like this more. So we just now spoke about five points. Quick fun facts before we wrap up are as follow. Fact 1. The puffiness inside the bag of chips that is not air, that is nitrogen gas, flushed into a bag to prevent the chips from absorbing moisture and going stale. Your chip bag is basically a tiny size lamp. Fact two reports say one in four food delivery orders admit to sneaking food from customer orders. So if fries are not just fighting moisture, they are also fighting theft and double theft. Next is about fact three. Domino's once ran an ad saying that they would not add fries to delivery menus because fries get soggy in transit. Instead, they introduce loaded tots which hold up better. When even a pizza giant admits defeat to soggy fry, you know what? This is a serious problem. Your challenge this week. Thank you for your time, and I will see you on the next podcast soon.