Food & Cooking
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How To Achieve Perfect Crunchy, Crispy Foods

Roger T. Brown

Flavor is overrated. There—I said it. Sure, I want the food I eat to taste good, but that is the lowest possible bar I can set when cooking (for those wondering why they should listen to me—I’m a recipe developer by trade). Take scrambled eggs, for example. Other than burning them, it’s pretty hard to drastically alter their flavor. But we obviously know there is a difference between the eggs your parent made you as a kid before work and a carefully crafted French omelette, cooked and folded to perfection. That difference? Texture.

Whether you know it or not, you rely on the mouthfeel of a food just as much as its taste when determining its quality and level of deliciousness—I’m talking every single food you eat. In fact, I bet if you think of a food you really hate, I can almost guarantee your dislike stems

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Food & Cooking
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10 Foods With Serving Sizes That Are Way Smaller Than You Thought

Roger T. Brown

The serving sizes on packaged food items and in dietary manuals can seem like useful tools for anyone seeking to monitor their calorie intake or consumption of different proteins and vitamins. And, in many cases, they can guide you in the right direction.

However, it’s important to remember that serving sizes are sometimes misleading, and it’s very easy to misread and misinterpret these guidelines.

That’s why we asked a group of 10 nutritionists to share the food serving sizes that they most often see misunderstood, to give us a clearer view of food-related expectations vs. realities.

A package of ramen usually lists one serving as being just half of the "brick" of noodles.

A package of ramen usually lists one serving as being just half of the “brick” of noodles.

1. A single serving of instant ramen is only half of a ramen ‘brick’

A dietary staple for college students and anyone on a budget, instant ramen comes packaged in plastic-wrapped “bricks”

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Food & Cooking
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Young Singapore Chefs Serve Up Hope For Street Food’s Future

Roger T. Brown

After the pandemic torpedoed his chance to work at a Michelin-starred New York restaurant, Lim Wei Keat returned to his roots by becoming a Singapore street-food chef cooking local fare.

The 25-year-old is among a growing number of young street-food vendors — known as “hawkers” locally — fuelling hopes that a new generation will preserve the city-state’s culinary traditions.

Singapore is full of open-air food courts offering a wide variety of cuisines influenced by the Southeast Asian nation’s ethnic Chinese, Indian and Muslim populations.

Even after the city-state ballooned into an affluent financial hub, the hawker tradition lived on, and remains a central part of everyday life for many.

Singapore is full of open-air food courts offering a wide variety of cuisines influenced by the nation's ethnic Chinese, Indian and Muslim populations Singapore is full of open-air food courts offering a wide variety of cuisines influenced by the nation’s ethnic Chinese, Indian and Muslim populations Photo: AFP / Roslan RAHMAN

The United Nations recognised this tradition as “intangible cultural heritage” in December,

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Food & Cooking
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How Bad Are Fried Foods, Really?

Roger T. Brown


a sandwich and fries on a table

© Liudmyla Chuhunova/Shutterstock


Fried food may be crispy, crunchy, and delicious. But there are lots of reasons health experts aren’t exactly fans. And that’s putting it mildly.

Here’s the problem: When food goes into the frying pan it soaks up loads of oil, which happens to be pure fat. Considering that just one tablespoon of cooking oil contains 14 grams of fat and 120 calories, regularly nibbling on a handful of chips or fries can make weight management a challenge.

There are other concerns, too. Fried foods frequently travel with other less-than-healthy foods. (Chicken on a biscuit, anyone?) So you could be getting a double dose of fat, sodium, and refined carbs.

But do fried foods always spell trouble? “Fried foods are a very broad category, so their health impact may depend on lots of different factors,” says Julie Stefanski, RDN, a registered dietitian nutritionist and spokesperson for the

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