Whether you like a korma, a jalfrezi or a vindaloo,
curry is our unofficial national dish.
Over our lifetime,
we will each spend over £30,000 feeding this spicy habit.
Tonight, we are taking you inside one of the UK's largest
cooking sauce factories.
The team that work here churn out more than 50 million jars
every year.
'I'm Gregg Wallace...'
Whoa!
I actually wasn't aware that there was that much yoghurt in the world.
'..and I'm sniffing out...' That smells good.
'..the secrets of super-sized curry cookery.'
So there is enough there now for 25,000 people? Yeah. 7,000 jars.
'I'm Cherry Healy...'
I have come to the chilli capital of India to help with the harvest.
'..and I'm getting hot under the collar...' It's up my nose now.
That is seriously hot. '..working out what to drink to beat the burn.'
After you've had a couple of sips,
can I ask you please to rate your discomfort again?
And historian Ruth Goodman reveals the surprising origins of our
favourite curries. If somebody had said, "What nation does this dish come from?" I wouldn't have a clue.
Over the next 24 hours,
250,000 jars of curry sauce will fly off this production line.
And we're going to lift the lid on the hard work that goes into every jar.
Welcome to Inside The Factory.
UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS
This is the Premier Foods factory in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.
More than a million jars of cooking sauce are produced here every week.
They make sauces for pasta bakes and Chinese feasts,
as well as curry sauce.
Tonight, we'll be taking a look at their best seller -
tikka masala sauce.
It all starts here, at the ingredient arrival area.
Morning, Gregg. You all right?
Operations manager Paul Seaton is overseeing the delivery.
Paul, I have to admit, I don't actually know what is in a tikka masala.
It's a tomato-based curry. There's about 12 different ingredients in.
So what's getting unloaded there now? We're unloading the tomato paste, the tomato puree.
All those drums are tomato puree? Yeah, there's just over 100 drums there.
How many jars are you going to make, then, today?
Today we're going to make about 250,000 jars.
Me and you are going to make a 3,000kg batch.
I am very, very much looking forward to this.
Yeah. I've got a rucksack full of naan, we're going to have a great
time. Paul, thank you. Thank you very much.
100 kilos of this puree,
containing more than 4,000 tomatoes, is off-loaded for our batch.
Our tikka masala sauce production starts now.
I'm heading to the batching area to weigh out some of the sauce's 11
other ingredients, with technical operator Paul Swift.
The two biggest by weight are double cream and yoghurt.
This is our mixing bowl, on the weighing scales. Where's the
readout? There's the reading up there. Oh, OK. How much do I need?
270 kilos into there.
Over a quarter of a tonne of yoghurt?
Yes. Can I have a go?
I think I can trust you to let you do that. Paul might well regret this.
I know I'm only pressing a button, but I tell you what,
I'm slightly nervous, cos that's a serious amount of yoghurt. HE LAUGHS
The Greek yoghurt adds a distinct
flavour and will help thicken the sauce.
I actually wasn't aware that there was that much yoghurt in the world. LAUGHTER
I kind of want to strip off and get in.
Stop at 279, right? No, 269. Stop!
Oh! I'm two kilos over.
Thankfully, this is within acceptable levels.
So what we need to do now is put 240 kilos of double cream.
When you said to me, "You need to put in double cream and yoghurt,"
I thought, "How DAIR-Y?
Come on! Anyone?
HE LAUGHS
The cream does a different job from the yoghurt -
it provides a smooth texture and softens some of the stronger
spice flavours.
Five more kilos. You'd better turn off.
Aaah!
How do I get it on? Oh, I'm getting a bit stressed out.
Oh, look, look, look, I'm so close!
You're a natural, Gregg.
So, just over half a tonne of yoghurt and cream.
Wow! A lot.
Creamy dishes like tikka masala and korma are our favourites here in
Britain. But when did this love of curry begin?
Ruth is on a mouthwatering investigation.
There seems to be no bounds to our love for curry -
there are over 12,000 curry houses and takeaways in Britain.
In pride of place on many of their menus, of course,
is chicken tikka masala.
The legend goes that it was invented in Glasgow, in the 1970s,
when a customer ordered tandoori chicken and then complained that
it was far too dry. Now, the chef, wishing to please his customer,
had a quick look around and
added this - a tin of tomato soup -
and so a legend was born.
But our British passion for curry is 370 years older than tikka masala.
'And it's linked to a surprising location -
'London's financial district...'
Lizzie. Hello. Hello. How nice to meet you.
'..where I'm meeting food historian Lizzie Collingham.'
Behind us is the site of the old East India Company house.
It was founded in 1601 to trade in spices.
The East India Company sent thousands of employees to India to
buy and sell spices.
While they were there, they got a taste for the food.
So, this is the start, then, of the British connection with curry?
It is, yeah.
But the word "curry" was itself a misunderstanding.
"Khari" was the word for a particular spicy sauce.
In the mouths of the British, this became "curry",
which was used as a catchall term for any Indian dish.
But no Indian eats curry, they... It's a word... Really? No.
So if you ask an Indian what they are eating, they'll say,
"I'm eating rogan josh, I'm eating vindaloo,
"I'm eating..." the name for the dish.
So, curry, right from the beginning, is a British appropriation.
When they returned to Britain, the traders brought their taste for
spicy dishes back with them and asked their cooks to recreate these
exotic recipes.
The first published recipe was in Hannah Glasse's book,
published in 1747, called, beautifully,
To Make A Curry The India Way. Oh, that's fabulous!
Hannah's ground-breaking cookery book included pilau rice,
along with chicken or rabbit curry.
Lizzie and I are following this recipe,
bringing Britain's first recorded curry back to life.
We have to take two fowls or rabbit and cut them into small pieces. OK.
"Sippets" is what they called them. Sippets, sort of mouthfuls, isn't it? Chunks, yeah.
I love all those mad old words.
30 peppercorns - do you think we need to count them out? Yeah, go on. RUTH LAUGHS
A spoonful of rice. About that? Yep. Spoon.
I think that they were using it as a thickener.
And then... Browned coriander seeds over the fire in a clear shovel.
I wondered what that was for. THEY LAUGH
So, we need to probably heat the shovel up a bit. THEY LAUGH
What we want is for them to start popping and crackling.
Oh, almost like popcorn. Yeah. They wouldn't have had a roasting pan,
so, in the 18th century, they would have been cooking over an open fire.
Smell that. It even lingers on your fingers. Yes, they're releasing the aromas, that's starting to come
out. So, those are ready.
The recipe also calls for ginger, turmeric and onions.
You want to massage it into the meat.
And then...put it all together into a saucepan with a pint of water.
Now, this, I have to say, is not sounding very Indian to me.
No. Now, an Indian cook would fry the spices gently first,
so that the spices flavour the oil.
This is a further Anglicisation... And when I pour this big jug of
water in, I'm busily "Englishing" this...
You're making a spicy casserole instead of an Indian dish! THEY LAUGH
The colours are not particularly attractive.
It's really good. Well, you know...
That is really quite yummy.
But if somebody said, "What nation does this dish come from...?"
No, you wouldn't guess India. I wouldn't guess.
No. I wouldn't have a clue.
Our modern curries may have a little more finesse,
but they're still a British take on Indian traditions.
And the joy of eating curry in Britain is just that, that it's a
fusion and unique to Britain.
In Worksop, I'm preparing the ingredients for a 3,000-kilo batch
of curry sauce - enough to feed 25,000 people.
And, just like when I make a curry at home,
I'm measuring out the ingredients.
BLEEPING
Who-o-o-o-o-oa!! How cold is it in here?
This is minus 25 degrees. What do we need to get from in here?
In here, we need our frozen onions.
They're in the blue sack? In the blue bags.
We need our frozen garlic,
we need our frozen ginger,
and, at the end, we need our frozen coriander.
Wow, it's so cold! HE LAUGHS
To preserve their freshness,
these ingredients are harvested and frozen at source.
All right. I'll open them, you do the carrying. OK.
Stands to reason.
We need 40 kilos of frozen ginger puree,
30 kilos of garlic -
containing a whopping 10,000 individual cloves -
and 80 kilos of onions!
40 kilos of desiccated coconut will give the sauce a grainy texture.
Can I? Of course.
Cor! Nice. Might want a bit of chocolate sauce.
Coconut flour will thicken the mix, so we add 30 kilos.
I could ski down that.
One final ingredient - coriander, all the way from France.
25 minutes in, our ingredients are prepped.
And that's it, job done. Thank you, big fella. OK, see you.
I'm moving into the kitchen to
transform them into tikka masala sauce.
And this isn't simple one-pot cooking -
I'm faced with two enormous stainless steel tanks,
looked after by Carl Gladwin.
Right, OK, this is the blender? It is, yeah. In the first tank,
'the tomato puree I saw unloaded earlier is mixing with cold water...'
That is now a big pot of cold tomato soup.
It is, yeah. That's gazpacho.
'..to which we add an ingredient that will transform our sauce.'
Your paprika. Paprika?!
Yeah. But that's not in powdered form, that's liquid.
Yeah, just a liquid, yeah. Mixes into sauces a lot better in the liquid form.
The natural pigments in paprika, called carotenoids,
create tikka masala's traditional orange colour.
That's changed it from a brown to a beautiful rust.
Yeah.
While this mixes, we put the second tank into action.
This is the liquiverter. Liquiverter? Yeah.
Liquiverter?! Yeah. Is that your pet name for it?
No, it's not mine, that's what they called it.
Liquiverter One, yeah.
Carl adds 350 litres of water to the liquiverter,
which will be followed by a special blend of spices.
What's in the spice mix?
It's 12 different spices, but it's all top secret,
they won't let us know what's actually in it.
So you don't actually know? No, secret recipe.
How long have you been here? 28 years. And you don't know? No.
You wouldn't lie to me, Carl, would you? No.
The liquiverter is a high-shear mixer,
capable of stirring water extremely fast.
Its eight blades rotate at 1,500rpm.
Wow! That's powerful!
This speed is essential, because dry spices don't dissolve in water.
The only way to properly combine these two ingredients is to force
them together using huge amounts of energy.
Whilst the contents of this mix are a closely-guarded secret,
I'm confident there's one spice that's definitely in here -
chilli.
And Cherry's on its trail in India.
INDIAN HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYS
She's in the city of Guntur, in the eastern state of Andhra Pradesh.
This is the Guntur chilli market,
the largest chilli market in the world - and the smell is quite
overpowering. Everyone's eyes are streaming and they're coughing.
It's incredibly strong.
They sell around 3,500 tonnes of chilli here every day.
It's a £72 million a year industry.
So, this is what I've come for - the Guntur chilli.
This vibrant red chilli grows well in the hot,
humid climate of this region, which produces 50% of India's chilli crop.
Farms are small-scale, and average just two acres in size.
Hello. Can you introduce me to your gang?
SHE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
Hi, everyone. Hello!
Chilli production supports the livelihoods of 10 million people
in India.
Which one is a good one and which one is a bad one?
What about something like that? No?
So really, really red. So that's a good one, yeah?
How long have you been picking chillies?
50?! 50 years of picking chillies!
Is this a good harvest?
Are you pleased with how they've been growing?
They look beautiful. I mean, they're so red.
This variety is a reliable, heavy-cropping plant that
is harvested between January and April each year.
A good harvest produces around 2.5 tonnes per acre.
And a quarter of this is destined for the export market.
This is just one farm and one morning - that's a lot of chillies,
every single one picked by hand.
Processing begins out here in the fields.
The crop is spread out and left to dry in the sun.
Priyanka is helping to coordinate this year's harvest.
Hi, Priyanka. Hello, Cherry. So, what's going on here?
So, after ten days of drying, these ladies start grading the chillies.
Right. So, here you see there are a lot of discoloured chillies.
So they're quality control. Yeah, they're quality control.
After 20 days,
the dried chillies are ready to be bagged up, using an age-old method.
I'm assuming that's just to pack everything down.
Yeah, that's for packing down. OK.
I've got to have a go at that! LAUGHTER
SHE LAUGHS
This is really fun.
When I woke up this morning, I didn't think I'd be standing in a
bag of chillies. It actually feels really nice,
because they're all crunchy and crispy under my feet.
It's a very satisfying experience.
Each hessian sack is given a barcode,
loaded up onto a truck,
and then driven to the ITC spice processing factory in Guntur.
They receive 18 deliveries a day from 3,200 different farms.
Venkat Nagesh is the factory manager.
Hi, Nagesh. Hi, Cherry. Lovely to meet you. Yes.
All right, so what are we doing?
How many chillies are in here?
35 kilos. And how many bags go through the factory?
That is an astounding amount of chillies.
All right. So I suppose we'd better get moving.
Up, up, up.
The chillies are dropped onto a conveyor belt and spread out.
What are you cleaning it for?
The clean chillies are sucked up and whizzed into the next room to be
turned into flakes.
Wow! So there they are.
Beautiful! So strong!
My nose and my eyes are streaming!
The flakes are cleaned again - reassuring,
given that my feet have been all over them.
It's heated up in here? Yeah.
Why is it so important to kill the microbes?
Then there's one final transformation.
So, where is this big parcel of chilli going to go?
Over the whole world? Yes.
They produce more than 11,000 tonnes of chilli powder each year,
feeding our global passion for this fiery flavour.
So, there it is - the beautiful, vibrant chilli -
and what an amazing journey it's been on.
But it's not finished yet,
cos this will go on to spice up the curries we know and love.
Back in the Worksop factory, we're 35 minutes into production.
Ground chilli powder has been joined by 11 other top-secret spices.
Ingredients prepped, we can finally cook my tikka masala sauce.
This is our kettle? Yeah, this is the kettle, yeah.
That's the big cooking pot? Yeah.
What's the first thing in, Carl? Rapeseed oil. Oh, right, I can see that.
Does that get heated first? No. No, it doesn't get heated yet.
Once everything's gone in, it starts to heat up.
At home I mix up onions with chilli,
garlic and ginger, and then I
basically fry it all in the bottom of a pan. Yeah.
And THEN I add the spices.
And it's all heating up, THEN I add the tomatoes.
Ah. I cook it one bit at a time. You wait till it's all together.
Yeah.
Into this massive mixer we add chopped tomatoes, our tomato puree,
lemon juice, starch powder and the watery spice mix.
'In goes a tidal wave of yoghurt and cream...'
OK, Gregg.
Whoa!
Fabulous!
'..followed by 250 kilos of hot water.'
Wow!
Finally, the frozen ingredients are added.
This is heavy. And we don't want to miss a scrap.
'Which means deploying an unusual kitchen implement...' Yeah?
'..a hosepipe.'
But I'm worried that all this extra water might be mucking up the recipe.
Whatever water you put in there,
there's a final water top-up at the end of the batch,
and it'll deduct that water that's gone in there out of the final water
top-up. So, whatever water I've put in there...
Yeah, it'll... ..the mix will know, and it'll put less hot water in.
Yeah. Now the tank heats up and my tikka masala starts cooking.
There we are. We got it!
Can I have a look, because this is the curry sauce now, right?
Can I have a look? Yeah, you can, yeah. Just lift it up.
Whoa! There you go.
Fully made curry. Hot, steaming, curry sauce!
So there's enough there now for 25,000 people, right?
Yeah, 7,000 jars. We deserve a couple of jars, mate, don't we?
I'm having some, definitely! THEY LAUGH
Our batch still has a long way to go before it's ready for dinner.
Today, we'll crack open almost 180,000 jars of curry sauce,
and most of us will be eating it with rice.
Cherry has been to sort her pilau from her basmati.
We Brits spend more than £62 million on rice each month.
Basmati is the bestseller,
and 50,000 tonnes of it is processed at the VeeTee factory in Kent
every year.
I'm meeting operations manager TJ Singh.
How does rice begin its life?
Well, like all other grasses...
Rice is a grass? It is.
This is part of the rice plant, which bears the grain,
and you can see it has got little shells,
and one of these has got a rice grain in each one of them.
Each grain is a single seed,
which grows in a protective layer, known as a husk.
After harvesting, this is stripped away, leaving grains of brown rice.
But what about white rice?
Well, this is brown rice and this is also white rice.
We have to take its outer layer off.
So, when the darker outer layer of the seed is removed,
it reveals the familiar white grain.
So, brown rice and white rice are in fact the same...?
Yes, absolutely, the same grain.
Long-grain white rice like this accounts for 84% of the rice
we eat in the UK.
It's ideal for eating with curry,
but is notoriously hard to cook correctly.
In the factory's kitchen,
chef Monisha Bharadwaj is giving me the lowdown on getting rice right.
OK, so, first things first, let's see how you make rice at home.
Well, I make it brilliantly,
because it's different every time, so you never really know what you're
going to get. Come on, show me how you do it.
That's two people, probably? Water.
Sloshy-slosh.
How long do you think it'll take to cook? I tap it to see if it's ready.
So, starting to get soft now.
OK, and you know that because you've been tapping it...
It's the tap-tap. The tap-tap? Tap-tap! SHE LAUGHS
Can I interest you in a slice of rice, Monisha?
Thank you, I've never had one before.
How is it raw and mushy
at the same time?
I mean, it's slightly...
Inedible? I've given this to people for supper.
And they've never come back. CHERRY LAUGHS
Monisha has four foolproof rules to ensure I never mess up my rice
again. So, I'm making rice by the absorption method.
The absorption method. Mm-hmm. One measure of rice and double the
amount of water by volume. That's crucial.
Measuring out rice and water in this one-to-two ratio is rule number one.
So, let's start off by washing the rice, because it's still got a
little bit of loose starch. The second rule is to rinse,
because any starch left on the grains will make them clog together.
Give it a good rinse till the water runs clear.
Rule three - use the right pan.
You want to choose a pan that is heavy-bottomed and has a
tight-fitting lid. Why is that important? Because you want to lock
the steam in, that's what's going to cook the rice.
The rice is going to absorb all the liquid that you put in here, so you
don't want any of the steam to escape.
Tip it all into the pan
and turn up the heat.
So, the rice has come up to the boil, I'll just give it a little stir. OK.
I turn the heat right down...
Wow! ..and put this lid on.
The final rule is, leave it alone!
You don't want to lift the lid, you don't want to peek,
you just leave it and let it do its thing.
It's very low-maintenance, this method.
It is. After ten minutes,
turn off the heat and let it stand for another five minutes...
..then serve. It's not porridge! SHE LAUGHS
Every grain is separate, it's all fluffed up.
It tastes nutty and sweet and lovely.
Because it's got the aroma, it's got the taste and it's also got texture.
All this rice needs now is the perfect curry to go with it.
And I'm getting on with that back at the factory.
While my curry sauce is simmering away...
..I'm going to meet Ray Caldwell, and rustle up some accompaniments.
Ray, hello, mate. Morning, Gregg, welcome to poppadoms.
These flat discs are the raw uncooked poppadoms,
made from a dough of chickpea flour and water.
Am I allowed to touch one of these? There you go, Gregg.
Handmade in India. No-one will believe that they're handmade, you know.
Rolled out. You know what, in this world of 21st-century technology,
the fact that these are handmade I find incredible.
The dough is shaped into small balls which are rolled flat by hand,
then left to dry in the Indian sun before being shipped to the UK.
Now we're going to load them up. Can I load some? Yep.
From this point, robots take over.
I love robots!
They are magnificent!
How are they picking them up?
They work on air pressure.
Suck them up, lift them, put them down.
The factory uses a staggering
500,000 of these raw poppadoms every day -
more than 130 million a year!
Is that it? That's it now. Shut the door.
The raw poppadoms are carried on a conveyor belt into an enormous
five-metre-long fryer.
Inside, they are cooked in 1,300 litres of rapeseed oil
at 170 degrees C.
How long do the poppadoms take to go through there?
Ten seconds from one side to the other.
When I do poppadoms at home,
you put them into the oil and they puff right up.
How do they travel through there? Do they just float?
No, they're sandwiched between two belts,
to keep them flat so we can pack them.
Is that it? That's it.
Now 30% bigger, the cooked poppadoms fly out of the fryer at a rate of
six per second and have any excess cooking oil removed.
We blow air on them to blow the oil away.
What is that glowing-red tunnel of love?
That...is magic.
More science fact than magical mystery.
Light sensors in the roof map the position of each poppadom and pass
the information onto the packing robots.
That is like some sort of demented chicken!
These robotic heads suck up the poppadoms using a vacuum that is
just strong enough to lift them without snapping them.
Any they miss are picked up by the next one.
I mean, that is the quickest, that is so fast!
What does it remind you of?
To me, it's a chicken. It's a crazy chicken. It's a crazy chicken, isn't it? It's a crazy chicken.
It really is.
The frantic four pick up 360 poppadoms a minute.
These fragile stacks are loaded into their packets by nimble-fingered
factory workers.
Hello. Hello.
I've come here to help you out.
We get a stack of eight
from down the line,
you just hold your hand out, receive it off the belt,
transfer it into the... So you've got to do eight at a time?
Yes. I can do that. Come on, then, show us.
There you go. I don't have a great track record with hand packing.
Here we go, let's pop it.
Let's dom it. He's popping and domming!
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
This is actually...
You have to work really fast. Wow! Whoa! Hang on a minute!
I think it's time I hand control back to the experts.
I wasn't very good, was I? No. LAUGHTER
They march out of the factory - ready to contribute to the
£3 billion we spend on prepacked foods and ready meals each year.
But rewind a few years and these convenience foods
simply didn't exist.
Spice pastes, curry sauces and ready-made curries stack our
supermarket shelves today.
But, in the 1960s, this shopping basket would have been empty.
In 1961, Vesta set out to change all that.
They introduced a new convenience curry,
made with freeze-dried ingredients,
and it came in either beef or vegetable varieties.
Marketed as a taste of the exotic, these quick-cook meals were many
Brits' first experience of Indian food.
Hello! Welcome, come on in. Hello!
But, for British Indians like food writer Roopa Gulati...
Oh, this takes me back.
..they were a confusing culinary experience.
So, when did you eat your first one of these, then?
Well, we weren't allowed to have ready-made curries at home because
my mum, a Punjabi cook, cooked from scratch.
So, everything was garlic, ginger, garam masala, all home ground.
And so she said to me, "Well, these curries are for English people..." RUTH LAUGHS
..which made me determined to taste one,
and I had to sneak out to a friend's and eat one,
and... Oh, the disappointment! LAUGHTER
I mean, it tasted like Christmas cake!
It's sweet with apple, it's spiked with turmeric,
there are no chillies. It was like nothing else I had ever tasted.
Time to take Roopa back down memory lane.
That's the sauce.
Presumably that's the rice.
It takes 20 minutes to transform these freeze-dried ingredients into
a hot meal.
So, let's have a go, then.
RUTH LAUGHS
It certainly is different, but that's how things were then.
It was exotic dining.
And the whole idea of eating spices in this way, it was a new idea.
In those days there wasn't the whole thinking of high-street
curry houses, they hadn't yet come into the fore -
it was fish and chips when you went out for a takeaway.
When did you start to notice that curry was becoming more mainstream?
Well, it sort of started creeping up
on our school dinners. And, OK, it was an Anglicised version,
but you see, slowly, things began to change.
It was another 20 years before Indian-inspired ready meals took
their next big step forward.
In 1981, Marks & Spencer launched a range of three chilled curries -
the brainchild of Cathy Chapman.
Were they received as being an authentic Indian experience?
We thought we'd done a good job. RUTH LAUGHS
And they sold, and then I started getting telephone calls from a lady...
She thought you weren't getting it right? She said she thought she could help us make them better.
I said, "Right, by all means,
"why don't you come in and show us what you think we should be doing?"
It seems the British Asian population were not impressed by the new meals.
The curry crusader on the phone was Kent housewife Shehzad Husain.
Nice to see you.
On the day, I can remember it clearly,
there was Shehzad with two very large wicker baskets full of
delicious home-cooked Indian food.
I was nervous, because walking into this big fantastic building with my
baskets, you know, and I didn't know what I was getting into.
And we just tasted them and we were very honest about...
..tasted our product but also tasted Shehzad's product, and, erm...
..yeah, Shehzad's product won out! LAUGHTER
With Shehzad's help, they tweaked their recipes,
adding more heat and fresh spices.
The UK fell in love with the taste of these more traditional dishes,
and sales of the relaunched ready meals rocketed.
This proved to be the turning point for cook-at-home curries,
and now we spend £1 million on them every day.
Our batch of tikka masala sauce has been cooking for 20 minutes.
From the kitchen, it heads to quality control...
..where it faces a set of rigorous
tests to make sure it's up to scratch.
I can't help feeling a bit nervous.
Ian. Yes. Gregg, nice to meet you. Quality control, right?
Yep. Now, that is a beautiful batch of curry.
OK. Well, I'm hoping it is. It will be. Right, what do we check?
The first thing that we're going to do, we're going to check its
consistency on this consistometer.
A what?! A consistometer.
You're making this stuff up, aren't you? Have you guys all got together to pull my leg?
I had a liquiverter a little while ago. I'm not bright enough to make that up, Gregg.
Somebody else has made it up for us.
Right, so, fill it up first...
Ian's rig tests the viscosity of the sauce by measuring how far it
travels down this ramp in 15 seconds.
Two, one... Flick it.
15 seconds?
This simple idea was first developed in 1938 to test the
thickness of tomato ketchup.
That's its time, so what are we looking at? We're looking at
eight-and-a-half... eight-and-a-quarter.
Yeah, and that's well within spec. So we've got the consistency right?
Yep. What's the next check? The next check that we do is pH.
We use an electronic probe to measure the acidity in the sauce.
Too much acid can ruin the taste.
What we're looking for is a reading of less than 4.1. And you've got it.
The colour check relies on something a little more low-tech.
So, what we're looking for is 152C.
A decorating colour chart, right? It is, it's the best thing for the job. 152C, there.
Good for a curry sauce, not great for a bedroom.
Right, well, that looks pretty bang-on to me, mate.
It does to me, yeah. I'll just grab us both a spoon, Gregg.
Finally, I get to taste the sauce I've been making!
That is creamy without being heavy. There's a slight richness to it.
The aftertaste is spice, almost like an itchy pepper.
And you keep that taste with that nice creamy mouthfeel afterwards.
Yeah, you keep the flavour, there's no doubt about it,
you keep the flavour. You know what we're missing?
We're missing a chat about the rugby and a pint of beer. Your round.
THEY LAUGH
With the thumbs-up from quality control,
it's time to get this curry into jars.
My tikka masala sauce arrives at the filling department,
where Kevin Coles is in charge.
Hello, Kev. Hiya, Gregg, how are you going, mate? You all right, mate? Good. Yeah, not bad.
Right, I have followed the making of a curry sauce all the way through.
Yep. Now I'm going to need about 7,000 jars, is that right?
Roughly that, yeah.
The empty jars are blasted with hot air at 40 degrees C as they travel
along the conveyor belt.
This stops them cracking when the hot sauce is squirted in.
Have you any idea how many jars you're going through here in the
course of a day? If we have good runs, anything upwards of 300,000.
These jars are ready to be filled with our batch of sauce,
currently being held in a 1,500 litre-tank
just above the filling machine.
There we are. Sauce finally in jars.
This machine fills at a phenomenal rate, more than four jars a second!
Which means our batch of 7,000 whizz through in just 23 minutes.
Now these jars need lids.
What is that doing? What is it doing? This is a cap hopper, Gregg.
The cap hopper ensures that all the lids are facing the correct way.
Those lids are bouncing around in the case like, like a pinball machine!
The steel lids stick to this white magnetic belt as it rises out of the
hopper below. Those facing outwards are rejected by a blast of air and
dropped back into the hopper for another go.
The lids make their way to meet the full jars of sauce in the
capping machine.
This is where the lids finally get onto a jar of sauce, Gregg.
They are timed to meet at the perfect moment,
when the rim of the lid hooks onto the lip of the jar and drops
into place.
Two rubber belts, one moving slightly faster than the other,
screw each lid down.
There's more goes on behind that steamy door
than the rest... the rest of this process!
Finally, our batch of sauce is sealed in jars.
As curries go, the one I'm making is fairly mild,
but there are some seriously fiery concoctions out there.
Cherry is getting the scientific lowdown on what to drink
to beat the burn.
I'm at the University of Sheffield to put chemist Dr Jo Buckley
in the hot seat.
So, we have to understand the chemistry of what's going on in the
chilli to be able to understand how to relieve the burn.
Don't touch your eyes after this.
Most certainly not. I've made that mistake, it's not a happy day.
You'll see inside that you've got the seeds...
Yes. ..you've got the flesh, and then you've got this sort of membrane bit.
So there's a chemical in there called capsaicin,
and capsaicin is basically the thing that makes it hot.
So, in fact, the seeds are not really the problem.
Not really, that's a common misconception.
But I can only learn so much from looking.
Bon appetit!
I've got to experience the result of capsaicin for myself.
I've got a feeling that this isn't a lovely, mild masala.
THEY LAUGH
Well, it's delicious. Oh, there it is...
That is seriously hot. Does your mouth feel like it's on fire?
It's really, really all over my mouth, up my nose now.
Really intense pain? Really intense.
What is going on, then? So, it's all to do with a certain receptor that
you've got in your mouth, and it's called TRPV1. BOTH: TRPV1...
..receptors, yes, and these are sort of little temperature sensors,
so if you have a really hot drink or a really hot meal,
those same receptors will fire off to stop you from burning your mouth.
So the capsaicin binds to the TRPV1 receptors and it sends a signal to
your brain that basically perceives that it's a hot sensation.
But in fact there is no fire. It's a false alarm.
It is a totally false signal.
The only way to put out this fire is to wash the capsaicin away from
these receptors. To find out which drink is most effective at beating
the burn, I've enlisted the help of
some willing but unsuspecting volunteers.
We've split them into three groups and we're going to give them a
really hot curry.
I can feel it in my cheeks. Oh, yeah. And my eyes. I'm crying a little bit.
I'm definitely getting the sniffles a bit. It's extreme curry eating.
I've made some poor decisions in Indian restaurants before,
but I think this one tops them all.
I mean, is it enjoyable or is it quite painful?
Erm, a lot of others have said they're enjoying it,
I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it right now.
First, the diners score their discomfort out of ten.
Now we'll test the effect of three different drinks on that
burning sensation.
So, we're going with milk,
we're going with cola, and we're going with beer.
Oh, you can almost see the relief, can't you?
And, after you've had a couple of sips, can I ask you please to rate
your discomfort again, ten being the most,
one being the least?
Their heat reaction verdicts are in,
and Jo's compiled the results of our experiment.
So, let's go for the cola group.
All right. The average of the before and after they took a drink of cola.
It was a sort of moderate success, the cola. Yes. The beer group,
they had a similar amount of discomfort to start with, but the
beer, maybe not quite as good for relieving the burn.
But very, very similar. Really similar. To the final group,
that was our milk group. Now, you can see the before and after,
there's a dramatic effect. What is going on?
How does milk get rid of that heat so quickly?
So, milk has got loads of fat in it, and the fat dissolves the capsaicin,
so it gives you relief.
So, cola and beer both contain a lot of water.
We know that the capsaicin behaves a little bit like an oil.
Oil and water don't mix.
The high water content of these drinks means they'll never fully put
out the fire, although sugar and
alcohol do lessen the effects of capsaicin.
So, the milk really is the thing to go for if you want a winner, winner,
curry dinner. Exactly.
An hour and a half into this curry-cooking journey,
and our tikka masala is now sealed in jars.
To keep the sauce fresh on the supermarket shelves,
it needs to be pasteurised.
Charlie Rowett is looking after this critical process.
Charlie! Gregg, how are you? All right, mate?
You seem to have them in a dishwasher. Yep, and that's basically what it is.
This is what we call a pasteuriser.
So, this is giving your jars a thermal process.
A thermal process.
Yes. Whoa, hang on a minute, this is massive!
This whole pasteuriser fits 30,000 jars in it.
On their two-hour shuffle through the pasteuriser,
hot water heats the jars to 97.5 degrees C,
killing any bacteria in the sauce...
..and giving it a shelf life of 18 months.
But the heat isn't just preserving the sauce.
But you must be cooking it. Yeah.
So, when it went in the kettle before, that wasn't cooking it?
Not quite there. This...?
This is a finishing job.
This mega, metal thing?
Yep. That's cooking it?
Yes. I've heard of boil-in-the-bag, but cook-in-the-jar?
It's a new one on me.
Can I taste one? Yeah.
I want to see if this double whammy of cooking has changed the taste of
the sauce.
That's a much smoother product than when I did the quality control.
That's creamier as well. Yeah. It's still got the spice,
it's almost as if its texture is different. Yeah.
Well done.
The cooled, and now fully cooked, jars of sauce are blow-dried, ready
for labelling.
Inside the labelling machine, a foam pad applies glue to the jars.
Labels are stuck on...
..and brushes gently flatten them down.
Does this run on like this all day?
Yeah, it just happily carries on without stopping.
We've made enough curry sauce for 25,000 people,
and if they're anything like me,
they're going to want all the extras.
Come on, Cherry, time for you to do your bit.
For many of us,
these spicy little parcels are the perfect accompaniment to a curry.
But how are they made?
I've come to the Farsan factory in Leicester - a small family firm that
supplies bhajis, pakoras and samosas to 190 takeaways and bakeries.
Operations manager Nicki Patel is letting me in on the secrets of
Indian snacks.
How many samosas do you make a day?
We can make about 10,000-12,000 samosas a day.
That sounds like an extraordinary number. Yeah, and it's all handmade.
There's not that many people here, and it's all handmade?
Yeah, that's correct.
The classic Southern Indian samosa is vegetarian.
Its main ingredient is potato.
I hate peeling potatoes, it takes forever.
Don't worry, we've got this machine to peel it for us. Is this a peeling machine?
Yes, it's got an abrasive material which removes the skin off the
potatoes. A potato sander.
Yeah. It kind of rubs the skin off.
How many samosas will that make?
Around 1,000.
Woohoo!
That is astoundingly fast! Everyone should have one of these!
Oh, my God, a potato waterfall!
25kg of potatoes, peeled to perfection...
..in 40 seconds.
Oh, wait, there's one more. There it goes. Aww!
They get through well over 1,000 potatoes a day,
and they all have to be diced into one-centimetre cubes.
Geronimo!
They're steamed in an oven for around 20 minutes,
so they're soft but still hold their shape.
While the potatoes are cooking,
a traditional Indian kadhi is used to hand-fry the carrots and peas.
So now we're going to add the spices in. Ooh, spice time!
'This mix is a family recipe...'
Oh, look at that!
'..dating back three generations.'
Now we're going to add the peas and carrot mix into the potatoes.
These oven gloves are everything I need and want in life.
THEY LAUGH
Three, two, one... Wahey!
That is a match made in heaven.
I'm really having to be very disciplined not to take a massive bite.
The last ingredient is 4kg of raw onion.
So now we just mix it with our hands, so each samosa has each
vegetable in it. Lovely. So now the filling's ready.
Finally, it's wrapped up in specially-cut filo pastry strips.
Shabana has ten years of lightning-fast samosa-shaping experience.
Are you ready to give me a masterclass... Yeah. ..on samosa-building?
I have done finger lunges, I'm warmed up, I'm ready to roll.
Cross it. Yeah. Lift with your left.
Lift with left. And turning it.
Turn it. Right hand fold it. Right hand fold it,
like that. Like that. Little pocket.
And then... Put one spoon...
Ugh! Ugh! LAUGHTER
Just fold it like... Fold it like...
CHERRY GASPS
Oof! Boom!
Yeah. Is that edible? It's all right. It's fine.
It's a bit baggy, isn't it? How many do you make in a day?
2,000. 2,000 samosas?! Yeah.
And you've worked here for ten years? Yeah.
Which means that you've made over six million samosas.
Yeah, I've not counted it.
It may not be as beautiful as the other ones,
but I am so proud of that.
Even holds together!
The samosas are dispatched frozen,
ready to be fried and served alongside your favourite curry.
Just three hours and 20 minutes since I saw 26 tonnes of tomato
puree being unloaded...
..our curry sauce is packed and wrapped in an elaborate
Bollywood-style dance number.
UPBEAT INDIAN MUSIC PLAYS
From here, it heads to the distribution centre.
Mark Dunning looks after shipping.
So, that's it, finished pallets, right?
Yes. How many jars on a pallet?
1,554. GREGG CHUCKLES
OK, how many pallets to a truck? 24 pallets to each truck.
Do you know how many jars that makes on a truck? 37,296.
Brilliant. Brilliant! I don't suppose...
How many people would that feed?
152,000 people.
Amazing.
There we go. Pallet on a truck, truck full of tikka masala sauce.
From here, this curry sauce heads to supermarket shelves all over the UK
and Europe, but it also has fans as far afield as Canada and Australia.
He's got some sauce, hasn't he? He's got a lot of sauce.
Saucy!
You know, I like to make a curry at home,
and I was delighted to find that, here,
they use a lot of the same ingredients as I do,
but they make it in a very, very different way.
But, then, I suppose I've never tried to make curry for 25,000
people before. And tikka masala - a dish that I've always considered to
be Indian - turns out to be a very British invention -
this one, made here in Worksop.