Italian · Appetizer

Parmesan Crisps

One ingredient, five minutes: lacy cheese wafers for snacking, soups, and salad bragging rights.

12min
98kcal
9gprotein
Parmesan Crisps — Italian recipe, finished and plated
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Ingredients

Servings 4
  • 100 g Hard cheese
  • ¼ tsp Black pepper (optional)

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F) with a rack in the middle.
  2. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
  3. Grate the cheese finely into a bowl.
  4. Spoon the grated cheese into small flat mounds on the lined tray with space between them, and grind black pepper over if you like.
  5. Bake the mounds until melted, lacy, and golden, 5-6 minutes — watch them like a hawk, they burn fast.
  6. Cool the crisps on the tray for 2 minutes to firm up, then lift them off and serve (or drape over a rolling pin for tuiles, show-off).

Tap “Start cooking” for live timers that flag what to get ahead on while something simmers.

About Parmesan Crisps

Parmesan Crisps — the Italian frico in its simplest form — prove how little it takes to make something impressive: hard cheese grated into small mounds and baked until it melts, spreads, and turns lacy and golden. There's genuinely one ingredient (a grind of black pepper is optional), and the whole batch is done in a handful of minutes. As the cheese bakes, its fat renders and its proteins crisp into a brittle, savoury wafer with delicate holes throughout.

They taste intensely of the cheese — nutty, salty, and deeply umami — with a shatter that gives way to a fine crunch. Naturally low-carb and keto-friendly, they're endlessly useful: snapped over a bowl of soup, perched on a salad for texture, or eaten straight as a snack. The one caution is that they go from golden to burnt in seconds, so they demand a close watch in the last minute of baking. For a bit of theatre, drape the just-baked, still-pliable rounds over a rolling pin to set them into curved tuiles.

Parmesan Crisps: frequently asked questions

How many calories are in Parmesan Crisps?

A serving has about 98 calories — 9g protein, 0.8g carbs, 6.3g fat, 0g fiber. Figures are estimated from the ingredient amounts and will shift with your portions and brands.

Is Parmesan Crisps gluten-free?

Based on its ingredients, Parmesan Crisps has no gluten-containing components, so it's naturally gluten-free — as always, check that any packaged ingredients you use are certified gluten-free to be safe.

Do I need every ingredient to make Parmesan Crisps?

The core ingredients are essential, but you can leave out black pepper — it's optional and mainly there for extra flavor or finish.

How many servings does Parmesan Crisps make?

This recipe makes 4 servings. In the app you can scale it up or down and the ingredient amounts adjust automatically.