Instant noodles. Why do you think they're curly? Do they crimp them?
Crimp them?! Maybe that's the fashion!
These days we always seem to be in a hurry, and supermarkets are full of things to help us save time.
Oh!
But none of them would exist without some brain-busting, hi-tech stuff going on behind the scenes.
Why would you use a laser to grow veg?
Make it bigger? Killing the bugs off?
What, like a laser gun?
I'm going to reveal the secrets behind supermarket food
we take for granted by making them Food Factory style.
We've got used to having food that takes minutes, even seconds to prepare, but the science that makes
that food possible is all hidden away, and most of us wouldn't get the chance to see inside
a food factory, so I've set up my own supermarket production line
inside this barn to show you how it's done.
It may look as though it's full of junk,
but there's everything I need to discover the secrets of the foods we turn to when we're in a rush
and to uncover the technological tricks the food factories use to make our lives easier.
Take squirty cream. The cream you don't even have to whip.
But how much is in this can?
Which one of these jars do you think it will fill?
That one.
That one? I would say that one.
Probably...that one.
I know! Go on.
That one. Let's give it a go.
Do this one as well.. You said, "Which one?"
All three jugs are filled from this one can, so how do you think that's happened?
It's the aerosol, isn't it?
Hairspray? Hairspray!
You're not a million miles away.
Air? Air! Close.
So how do they get all that cream and gas in a squirty-cream can?
Well, I'm going to find out by making my own.
Here in the barn, I've got everything I need to go
back to basics and squeeze out the secrets of squirty cream.
Right, let's try this stuff.
'Squirty cream is made from whipping cream,
'and doing this fills it with loads of tiny air bubbles.'
# I say whip it! #
You can see it just starting to thicken. Just round there, look.
# Whip it good! #
So is this what's inside a can of squirty cream?
Now, I've got a glass here full of hand-whipped cream.
Now, if I pop that on a set of scales, that's 157g, OK.
Now, identical glass, and I'm going to fill it up with some of the squirty cream.
Get as much in there as possible, fill it right up.
Now, what does this say?
49.6g.
So the squirty cream is much lighter than the hand-whipped cream.
It must have less cream and loads more gas, and that means spoon for spoon it's got half the calories.
Right, I've got to build something that can get all that gas into my cream.
I need something that can stand up to a lot of pressure and squirt out cream.
I don't want the gas inside this extinguisher, just the canister.
I reckon that's empty now. Perfect.
# Pressure, pressure, step into the pressure dome... #
Taking a spanner to your own fire extinguisher at home
is not a great idea, as it might blow your head off,
so only go near one if your house is on fire.
Take that off.
Instead of beating air into the cream,
I'll try and make it light and airy by forcing in lots of gas.
That's why I need such a tough canister.
Now, this tube is going to dip into the cream that I'm going to put inside the canister.
I'll do it up nice and tight,
and once it's pressurised, the gas is going to force the cream out through this little hole here,
through this tube, and out of the nozzle on the end.
I'll force so much gas into the canister it'll be under a lot of pressure.
When the gas is released, it'll expand and should make
loads of tiny bubbles in the cream as it comes out.
Result.
Now, the cream in squirty cream isn't just cream.
It's contains all these ingredients as well. Right...
First up.
There's a sugary syrup
and a chemical called an emulsifier that stops the fat and the water separating.
Last up is the cream.
Right, put my cream mixture in.
It seems a bit weird, putting cream in a fire extinguisher.
I hope I don't have to put a fire out with it!
Right, now for the gas.
# Under pressure Pushing down on me... #
The job of the gas is to push out the cream and make all those bubbles.
It's not carbon dioxide, like you'd get in a fizzy drink, and it's not air either.
It's laughing gas. No, seriously, it's nitrous oxide.
It's the same stuff you get at the dentist or if you're having a baby.
Weird ingredient.
Weirdly enough, laughing gas is perfect for the job.
That's because nitrous oxide dissolves in fat, and my cream is full of fat - 35%, in fact.
Now, if I squeeze about 15 party balloons' worth of gas in here, it should give me the right pressure.
Fingers crossed.
Just about ready.
I've got one more valve
before I start to pressurise my squirty cream,
so I'm hoping it's going to work.
What I don't want to happen is this to go bang and explode and I wake up covered in cream.
OK, here we go.
Oh! Hear it hiss, it made me jump then!
OK. Now, that's all that laughing gas being forced into my canister, so if I give it a little
shake in there, because I want all that gas to dissolve into my cream.
Here we go, right.
I'll leave that for a few minutes just to pressurise.
# Stand back... #
There's now five times as much pressure in the canister as there is in a tractor tyre.
Right, let's give this whipper a whirl.
Now, I've got all my cakes and my buns here, all they need is a bit of cream.
Now, fingers crossed...
This could be fantastic, or it could be a disaster.
Who first? Let's try these buns. A bit of a shake... Right.
Oop!
I reckon that was a bit heavy handed, that one.
A little bit more on here. That's it. Oh, no!
If this was a cake shop, I'd definitely be sacked.
A little bit on the apple pie, there we are. A bit more control.
On the tart... The problem is I can't release it.
Obviously, I've made a mess there.
I think there's a little bit too much cream there, I reckon.
I need a little bit more control.
Another shake... Yeah.
Oh, look at that, that's the real deal.
That's it, much better.
Now, it looks great, nice and fluffy, lots of ridges, but what about the taste?
Now, it's got to be nice and light and fluffy.
Oh, it's really lovely and sweet, and it's got that wonderful texture,
really lots and lots of air bubbles, and it disappears on your tongue.
Amazing. Do you know what? I reckon that's a good job.
All I need to do is shrink that down for the supermarket, but one last thing.
Perfect.
'My very own squirty cream.'
Later on, we made up another batch of squirty cream to the same recipe.
Would it whip them up into a frenzy down on my farm?
That's better. Try one of those scones there.
It's delicious. Is it like the normal instant whipped cream?
Definitely better. Good! Very milky. Really light and fluffy as well.
It's real cream. Do you like that? Mmm! I don't usually like squirty cream.
This hasn't got the metallic taste.
Would you buy it? If it was smaller!
You wouldn't get that in the trolley!
Rice is one of the most popular foods in the world, and we eat over
a million tonnes a day, but did you know that rice can pack a nasty punch?
Do you reckon it's OK to eat leftover rice?
Er... Yeah, why not?
No. Yes. I would say no. I would say there's a chance you could get quite poorly.
You are right, it can be a problem, it can be a problem.
That's because cooled rice can contain a toxin that reheating won't destroy.
It's all to do with bacteria that are very common in rice.
Now, when cooked rice cools, the bacteria can produce a toxin that can make you sick.
But supermarkets are full of products that contain cooked rice,
so how can they guarantee that they're safe to eat?
Don't have a clue. Do they cook it before and it's only half cooked?
Maybe they do some sort of pasteurisation. Add something to it?
To get to the bottom of this one, you need to get to know the enemy.
It's too dangerous for me to take out of the lab, but this is what it looks like.
It's a type of bacteria called bacillus cereus.
If you eat rice soon after you cook it, there's nothing to worry about.
It's when cooked rice cools down slowly at room temperature
that the bacteria get the chance to multiply and make the toxin.
Once the toxin is in the rice, it doesn't matter how much you heat it,
it's not going away, and if you eat it, you're going to feel really rough.
So if you're producing precooked rice on an industrial scale, you've got a bacillus serious problem.
1,500 tonnes of rice arrives in this factory every week.
To find out how they beat the alien invader,
I'll have to boldly go.
When it comes to precooked microwave rice, things become a little bit space age.
So beam me up.
And it starts before I even get on the factory floor. Straight through?
No, no, you've got to wait a few seconds.
Factory manager Tim McEwan takes the threat of any invading
bacteria so seriously that everyone who comes in here is decontaminated.
It's bizarre! We're blowing air on you to try and take any loose fibres off the outside of your clothing.
We could end up with curly hair, couldn't we? That's right!
Yep, that's straight through now.
Finally, we're in! This isn't outer space, but you know what?
It really does look space age.
'And it needs to be space age to beat the bacillus cereus bacteria that's so common in raw rice.'
Right, this is what I don't understand.
I've been told if you reheat rice, it can make you sick, it can make you have food poisoning.
That's right. We stop that happening by sterilising the rice
with lots and lots of hot steam, and that kills the bacteria before they can make a toxin and makes you ill.
The uncooked rice is steamed way above boiling point to kill off the bacteria,
and no bacteria means no toxin.
You wouldn't be able to do this at home, then?
Absolutely not, the temperatures we reach are far greater than you can do at home.
But that hot steam cooks the rice as well. No, no, there's no cooking occurs here.
This is just about sterilisation, this part of the process.
So, once all the bacteria that could make you ill are destroyed,
the rice is then cooked just the same way as you would at home, but on a vast scale.
Then it goes into a sealed room to be packed in sterile conditions,
or so Tim tells me - he's not letting me anywhere near it.
You're not going in there. What, even if I put two masks on?
No, no! Now the rice is cooked and sterilised,
we've got to make sure we don't contaminate it.
So what happens?
We seal the packets, and we inject nitrogen gas into them.
Nitrogen makes up more than three quarters of the air we breathe, but it's the final blow to the bacteria.
Nitrogen gas makes it difficult for the bacteria to grow.
But you told me you'd got rid of all the bacteria.
That's right, but this is a failsafe, we've got to be doubly sure.
The reason precooked rice products are safe to eat isn't the cooking or the reheating.
It's all the other things they do in the factory that beat the bacteria that produce the toxin.
This means we can eat rice straight from the microwave.
The things they do to make our lives easier are out of this world.
Noodles have been around for thousands of years,
but instant noodles are a 20th century invention.
But what makes them instant?
It is probably some chemical. I don't know.
Perhaps it's because they're not too solid.
What is it that allows them to cook so quickly?
Because they're so small, they're thin.
So is their shape important?
And what have the factory done to them to make them zero effort for us in the kitchen?
To find out, I'm going to make my own.
Instant noodles look easy, but they're not.
If this is going to work, I'm really going to have to use my noodle.
Today my specialist subject is instant noodles.
Noodles date back to over 4,000 years to ancient China.
To this day, the ingredients are still basically flour, water,
which I'll mix into a dough, and a little bit of salt.
But the water is special.
The lake water in ancient China was rich in minerals.
To create the same effect, I'm adding sodium carbonate, also known
as old fashioned washing soda, once used to make soap lather up.
This gives the noodles a firm texture and a bit of bite when they're cooked.
A bit sticky now.
What I've got here looks more like an accident in a mop factory
than some noodles, but help is at hand.
Here's some top noodle knowledge, this is the Asian Noodle Technology Bulletin.
It is a real document, and apparently all I need now is some rolling equipment.
Right... Time of truth.
Put the dough in the mangle
and slowly feed it through.
Here we go. Oh, it's coming through.
Not looking like noodles yet.
It's more looking like it's been run over by a steamroller.
The dough is made all stretchy because of a protein in flour called gluten.
Now, the gluten in the dough is being affected by the minerals I put in the water,
and that's stopping the dough becoming too loose and baggy.
'And I certainly don't want a baggy dough, that would be a nightmare to roll out.
'A firm smooth dough is what I'm after.'
I'm getting quite good at this. I might put my pants through in a minute!
Right, look at that!
That started off as just that lump of fairly dry dough.
That's not bad. I could turn that into a belt or something.
Great.
But now, how to turn what looks like normal dough into instant noodles,
and it's got more to do with coiffure than cheffery.
I'm going to give the dough a cut and wave.
Mm-hmm...
There's no such thing as a noodle barber, but these fellas do need to go through a cutting machine.
I reckon an office shredder will do the job.
Now, I've heard about office pranks where they've shredded the boss's tie but never noodles.
Oh-ho-ho, there we go!
Now, believe it or not, this is exactly what happens in the factory.
Obviously, they don't use an office shredder and an aquarium,
but you see the noodles now are starting to curl up.
That's exactly what I want.
Right, wow! They look brilliant.
Really noodly, but obviously they're a long way from being instant yet, because they're raw.
There's a big innovation still to come before they're instant noodles.
But first they need to be pre-cooked, and that's done
with steam, so I'm going to knock up an industrial-size noodle cooker.
Right, needs soldering.
I'll pump steam along these copper pipes into this plastic container which will hold the noodles.
And my cooker will be powered with steam from what else? Wallpaper strippers!
A bizarre set of tools, I know, but it might just work.
Right, time to cook my noodles.
It's a bit like a sauna now, isn't it? Right.
Now, the hot steam...should cook the noodles and set them in a nice wavy shape.
The great thing about cooking them with stream rather than boiling
is it keep the noodles as dry as possible.
Right, lid on. In the factory, they only take about three minutes.
# I got.. Sss-steam heat
# I got... Sss-steam heat... #
Right, let's have a look at the noodles.
They look lovely and cooked.
Now, let's pick one up.
Yeah, look at that. The heat has set that nice curly noodly shape there.
It's al been very traditional. There's nothing new about steamed noodles,
but what I've got to do next is probably the greatest innovations in noodle history.
Any guesses? I'll come back to that in just an instant.
When you think of innovation, you wouldn't think that this is high on the list, but when you're growing
millions of lettuces every week, you'd want all the hi-tech help that you could get your hands on.
Especially when it comes to the great British weather.
It can go from rain to snow to beautiful sunshine in the blink of an eye.
These lettuces have a lot to put up with.
Giving them a helping hand is Peter Sargeant.
He produces 2.8 million iceberg lettuces a week and supplies major supermarkets.
It's lovely and warm.
If I was a lettuce, I'd never want to leave.
Over their lifetime in here, we try to reduce the temperature so we're preparing them for the life outside.
We'll start planting at the end of February.
The conditions are pretty awful in the fields.
If I was outside in February, I probably wouldn't survive either.
# What a beautiful day... #
When the lettuces are big enough and brave enough to
face the weather outside, they're planted in the fields.
Peter's next big problem is rain,
but he's got some technological wizardry to make sure his lettuces get just the right amount of water.
How can you control the weather? You can't do a rain dance and make it rain.
No, but we can make sure we've got enough water available to the crop.
Peter can control how much water there is underneath his fields
so his lettuce are always getting just what they need.
Irrigation ditches around each field are connected to over 150 miles of underground pipes.
They take water straight to the plants' roots,
and Peter can even control the water level in each individual field.
To see where the water level is, we dig a hole such as this, Jimmy.
This one's dry because it's just been freshly planted.
Once we've finished planting, we'll start raising the water level.
So time to turn the water on.
# I don't care what the weatherman says
# When the weatherman says it's raining... #
So these are drainage ditches where you hold all the water?
That's right, Jimmy. All we need to do is lower this pipe here.
That lets water out from that system into this system.
Are you sure? I don't want to flood all your farm!
No, I think you'll be OK. Yeah? OK.
So this way round? Right, here we go.
And out comes the water. That's right.
And now that water is on its way to the field that we saw earlier.
Yes, it is, but that field will take quite a long time to fill,
so we'll go and have a look at another field. OK.
# I don't care how the weatherman points
# When the weatherman points to gloomy... #
Peter, this hole is completely different.
Yes, and we can see the water level on this stick.
So you've raised that water level up.
We've raised up the water in the ditches,
and that's raised the level of water in the field.
But Peter's watering system only works if his fields are dead flat.
Do you come along with a spirit level and make sure?
No, not quite, we use lasers.
That's a bit hi-tech, are you just showing off?!
No, no, no, it's common practice for levelling out roadways, and we use the lasers to transmit
a signal to this tractor and buckets behind us, and that will enable us to
pick up soil from the high spots and drop it in the low spots.
It'll be level within about sort of four centimetres.
Can I get them on my lawn at home? I've got a few bumps.
It might make a bit of a mess!
That leaves one last piece of top technology - a factory on wheels.
As it rolls across the fields, the lettuces get picked and packed ready for the supermarket.
An iceberg might seem like the simplest part of the salad, but to grow it on a supermarket
scale requires a few hi-tech tricks, all to let us have a little bit of lettuce!
Back at the barn, I'm making noodles.
So far, I've made traditional noodles the traditional way by steam
cooking them, but now it's time to turn them into instant noodles.
When instant noodles were invented, finding a way to dry out or dehydrate the cooked noodles
but still allowing the customer to rehydrate them quickly at home proved to be very difficult.
Then just over 50 years ago, this man, Momofuku Ando, hit on the idea
of flash frying the cooked noodles to get rid of the water, a genius moment that made him very rich.
His company is now worth over £2.5bn.
I'm going to put my noodles in these little baskets here.
Nice curly shapes, nice little twirls.
It looks like some sort of desk tidy, where you put all your
waste elastic bands, look at that. Right, into the hot oil.
That lovely sizzling sound.
You can see all these bubbles coming out and they're frying away.
All the water is being forced out by the hot oil.
And all the water deep inside the noodles is getting pushed out.
So after frying, hopefully, if I've got it all right, they should be nice and crispy.
Let's have a look at these guys.
Now, perfect shape to them, but they're all spilling out.
They look like some angry octopus.
Look at that. Still a little bit hot.
That's all right. They're hard, it's worked.
Most of that moisture has been forced out by that hot fat, and I'm
left with quite a curvy, twiddly little noodle that is...crispy.
So in theory all I have to do is add hot water, and I've got my instant noodles.
But are my homemade noodles anything like the ones you get in the supermarket?
If I magnify these shop-bought noodles,
you can see that flash frying has done something wholly unusual to the surface.
There's lots and lots of tiny holes, and that's where
all the water has been forced out when they've been fried.
Those holes are really useful, because it lets the water out
but also it allows the water back in when you cook them at home.
So hopefully my noodles should have those type of holes.
Let's have a look.
Hoo-hoo!
It looks like a monster.
Look at that, that's amazing. My holes are massive and there's
lots of them, which is brilliant, there's a huge one there.
Brilliant.
My noodles have that classic noodle shape, which allows the water
to move all around the noodles, but also when they're cooking, they don't all clump together.
In with my noodles...
But plain noodles taste... Well, plain, so I need to add some dried
vegetables and bits of soya with the same texture as meat.
A few dried peas...
In goes some powdered chicken flavouring and a bit of colouring. Next, hot water.
It seems a bit crazy, I've done all this work to get the moisture out just to put it back in again.
Right, I suddenly feel like a student again.
A quick stir and four minutes later...
Here we go. It's a big curly one.
HE CHUCKLES
Well, that's half soft... and half crunchy.
Just the way I like them.
And in terms of being really instant, well, I'm a bit slow, but you know what? That's worked.
There we go, my very own instant noodles.
Later on, we made up another batch to the same recipe.
Would my instant snack be an instant hit down on the farm?
Have a delve in. Oh, it's horrible!
It's a bit of an acquired taste(!)
But these brave tasters aren't really my target audience.
What I need are some experienced noodle eaters, like these students. There we go. Have a taste.
I'd only eat that if I hadn't eaten for a few days and I was desperate!
So you wouldn't buy this in a shop, then? No way.
Ah, well, not an instant hit, then.
From laser lettuces to space age rice, it seems
that our food has gone hi-tech, but it means food factories have to work harder so we don't have to,
and I'm not going to argue with that.
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