Original subtitles

Whether you like a korma, a jalfrezi, or a vindaloo,

curry is our unofficial national dish.

Over our lifetime, we'll each spend over 30,000 pounds

feeding this spicy habit.

Tonight, we are taking you inside one of the UK's largest

cooking sauce factories.

[music playing]

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 yogurt in the world.

And I'm sniffing out--

[sniffs]

That smells good.

- -the secrets of super-sized curry cookery.

So there's enough there now for 25,000 people?

Yeah, 7,000 jars.

CHERRY HEALEY: I'm Cherry Healey.

I've come to the chili capital of India

to help with the harvest.

And I'm getting hot under the collar--

Out my nose now.

That 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.

GREGG WALLACE: And historian Ruth

Goodman reveals the surprising origins

of our favorite curries.

CHERRY HEALEY: And it's linked to a surprising location,

London's financial district.

GREGG WALLACE: Over the next 24 hours,

250,000 jars of curry sauce will fly

off of 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."

[music playing]

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.

[music playing]

It all starts here at the ingredient arrival area.

Morning Gregg, you all right?

GREGG WALLACE: 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.

But there's about 12 different ingredients in.

So what's getting unloaded there now?

We're unloading the tomato paste, tomato puree

All those drums are tomato puree?

Yeah, there's just over a hundred drums there.

How many jars are you going to make then today?

Today, we're going to make about a quarter

of a million jars.

Me and you are going to make a 3,000 kilogram batch.

Oh, I am very, very much looking forward to this.

I've got a rucksack full of naan.

We're going have a great time.

- Paul, thank you. - See you later.

Thank you very much.

[motor humming]

100 kilos of this puree containing

more than 4,000 tomatoes is off-loaded for our batch.

Our tikka masala sauce production starts now.

[beeping]

I'm heading to the batching area to weigh out

some of the sauces 11 other ingredients with

technical operator Paul Swift.

The two biggest by weight are double cream and yogurt.

This is our mixing bowl on the weighing scales.

- Where's the readout? - There's the reading up there.

GREGG WALLACE: Oh, OK.

Well, how much do I need?

270 kilo into there.

Over a quarter of a tub of yogurt?

Yes.

Can I have a go?

I think I can trust you to let do that.

GREGG WALLACE: Paul might well regret this.

I know I'm only pressing the button.

But I'll tell you what, I'm slightly nervous because that's

a serious amount of yogurt.

The Greek yogurt adds a distinct flavor

and will help thicken the sauce.

I actually wasn't aware that there was

that much yogurt in the world.

[laughs]

I kind of want to strip off and get in.

Stop at 279, right?

No, 269.

PAUL SWIFT: Stop.

Oh, I'm 2 kilos over.

Thankfully, this is within acceptable levels.

So what we need to do now is to put

240 kilo of double cream.

When you said to me, you need to put in double cream and

yogurt, I thought, how dare he.

Come on, anyone?

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cream does a different job

from the yogurt.

It provides a smooth texture and softens some

of the stronger spice flavors.

Five more kilo.

You better turn it off.

You better turn it off.

Ah!

How do you get it on?

Oh, getting a bit stressed out.

Oh, no, no!

So close.

You're a natural, Gregg.

So just over half a ton of yogurt and cream.

Wow.

A lot.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Creamy

dishes like tikka masala and korma

are our favorites here in Britain.

But when did this love of curry begin?

Ruth is on a mouth-watering investigation.

There seems to be no bounds to our love for curry.

There are over 12,000 curry houses

and takeaways in Britain.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 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 round and added this, a tin of tomato soup.

And so a legend was born.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 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.

- Lizzy. - Hello.

How nice to meet you.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Where I'm meeting food

historian Lizzie Cottingham.

Behind us is the site of the old East India Company house.

It was founded in 1601 to trade in spices.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 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.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): But the word "curry"

was itself a misunderstanding.

"Kari" was the word for a particular spicy sauce.

In the mouths of the British, this

became curry, which was used as a catch-all term

for any Indian dish.

But no Indian eats curry.

- It's a word-- - Really?

No.

So if you ask an Indian what they're eating,

they 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.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 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 Glass's book,

published in 1747, called beautifully, "To Make

a Curry the India Way."

Oh, fabulous!

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Hannah's groundbreaking cookery

book included pilau rice along with chicken or rabbit curry.

Lizzy and I are following this recipe,

bringing Britain's first recorded Curry back to life.

We have to take two fowls or rabbits

and cut them into small pieces.

Sippets is what they call them.

Sort of mouthfuls.

Inchy chunks, yeah.

Love all those mad old words.

30 peppercorns.

Do you think we need to count them out?

Yeah, go on.

[laughs]

A spoonful of rice.

- We got that. - Yeah.

Spoon.

I think that they were using it as a thickener.

And then?

Browns coriander seeds over the fire in a clear shovel.

I wondered what that was for.

[laughs]

So we need to probably heat the shovel up a bit.

[laughs]

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.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): The recipe also calls for ginger,

turmeric, and onions.

We're going to massage it into the meat.

And then put all together into a saucepan with a pint of water.

The colors are not particularly attractive.

It's really good.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): In Worksop, I'm

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

How cold is it in here?

This is minus 25 degrees.

What do we need to get from it 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.

Whoa, it's so cold!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): To preserve their freshness,

these ingredients are harvested and frozen at source.

All right.

So I'll open them.

You do the carrying.

OK.

Stands to reason.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

Gwa.

Nice.

Might want a bit of chocolate sauce.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 25 minutes in, our ingredients

are prepped.

And that's it. Job done.

Thank you, big fella.

OK, see you.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 Gladwyne.

Right, OK, this is the blender.

It is, yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

Yeah.

That's gazpacho.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): To which we add an ingredient

that will transform our sauce.

Your paprika.

Paprika.

Yes.

But that's not in powdered form.

That's liquid.

Yeah, just a liquid.

Yeah, it mixes into the sauce a lot better, the liquid form.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The natural pigments in paprika,

called carotenoids, create tikka masala's

traditional orange color.

That's changed it from brown to a beautiful rust.

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): While this mixes,

we put the second tank into action.

Carl adds 350 liters of water, which will be followed

by a special blend of spices.

The liquivertor water is a high shear

mixture capable of stirring water extremely fast.

Its eight blades rotate at 1,500 RPM.

Wow.

That's powerful!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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--

chili.

And Cherry's on its trail in India.

She's in the city of Guntur in the Eastern

State of Andhra Pradesh.

This is the Guntur chili market, the largest

chili market in the world.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): They sell around 3 and 1/2 1,000

tons of chili here every day.

It's a 72 million pound a year industry.

So this is what I've come for, the guntur chili.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): This vibrant red chili grows well

in the hot, humid climate of this region, which produces

50% of India's chili crop.

Farms are small scale and average just two acres

In.

Size.

Hello can you introduce me to your gang?

[non-english speech]

Hi, everyone.

Hello!

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Chili production

supports the livelihoods of 10 million people in India.

A good harvest produces around 2.5 tons per acre.

And 1/4 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.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Processing

begins out here in the fields.

The crop is spread out and left to dry in the sun.

Priyanka Ayenga is helping to coordinate this year's harvest.

Hi, Priyanka.

Hello, Cherry.

So what's going on here?

So after 10 days of drying, these ladies

start grading the chilies.

Right.

So here you see there are a lot of discolored chilies.

Yeah.

So they're quality control.

Yeah, they're quality control.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): After 20 days,

the dried chilies 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 got to have a go at that.

[laughs]

This is really fun.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): 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. - Yeah.

All right.

So what are we doing?

How many chilies are in here?

35 kilos.

35 kilos.

And how many bags go through the factory?

That is an astounding amount of chillies.

All right, so I suppose you better get moving.

Up, up, up.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The chilies

are dropped onto a conveyor belt and spread out.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The clean chilies

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 reeling.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The flakes are cleaned again,

reassuring, given that my feet have been all over them.

It's heated up in here.

Yeah.

Yes.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Then there's

one final transformation.

So where is this big parcel of chili going to go?

Over the whole world?

Yes.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): They produce more than 11,000 tons

of chili powder each year, feeding our global passion

for this fiery flavor.

So there it is, the beautiful vibrant chili.

And what an amazing journey it's been on,

but it's not finished yet.

Because this will go on to spice up the curries

we know and love.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Back in the Worksop factory,

we're 35 minutes into production.

Ground chili powder has been joined

by 11 other top secret spices.

Ingredients prepped, we can finally

cook my tikka masala sauce.

This is our kettle.

Yep, the kettle. Yeah.

That's the big cooking pot?

Yeah

What's the first thing in, Carl?

Rapeseed oil.

Oh, I can see that.

Does that get heated first?

No.

No, it don't get heated yet.

Once everything's gone in, it starts to heat up.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 yogurt and cream.

OK, Gregg.

Wah!

Fabulous!

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Followed

by 250 kilos of hot water.

Wow!

Finally, the frozen ingredients are added.

This is heavy.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And we don't want to miss a scrap.

Which means deploying an unusual kitchen implement.

Yeah?

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 end of the batch,

and it'll deduct that water that's gone in there off it,

the final water top up.

So whatever water I put in there--

Yeah, it will--

The mix will know, and it'll put less hot water in?

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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. There you are.

- Whoa! - There you go.

Properly 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Our batch

still has a long way to go before it's ready for dinner.

While my curry sauce is simmering away,

I'm going to meet Ray Caldwell and rustle

up some accompaniments.

Right.

Hello, mate.

Morning, Gregg.

Welcome to poppadoms.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): These flat disks

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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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?

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): From this point, robots take over.

The factory used a staggering 500,000

of these raw poppadoms every day, more than 130 million

a year.

Is that it?

That's it.

Now shut it off.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The raw poppadoms

are carried on a conveyor belt into an enormous 5 meter

long fryer.

Inside they are cooked in 1,300 liters of rapeseed oil

at 170 degrees C.

How long do the poppadoms take to go through there?

10 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 out on them to blow the oil away.

What is that glowing red tunnel of love?

That is magic.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

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 come down the line.

You just hold your hand out, receive it off the belt,

transfer it into the other.

So you got to do eight at a time?

Yes.

- I can do that. - Come on, then.

Show us.

There you go.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I don't have a great track

record with hand packing.

Here we go.

Let's pop it.

Let's thumb it.

He's popping and thumbing.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

This is actually-- you have to work really fast.

Wow, whoa!

Hang on a minute.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I think it's time I hand

control back to the experts.

I wasn't very good, was I?

No!

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They march out of the factory,

ready to contribute to the 3 billion

pounds we spend on pre-packed foods

and ready meals each year.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 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.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Marketed

as a taste of the exotic, these quick cooked meals

were many Brits' first experience of Indian food.

- Hello. - Hello.

Welcome.

Come on in.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): But for British Indians

like food writer Roopa Gulati--

Oh, this takes me back.

- RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): - -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 mom, Punjabi cook, cooked from scratch.

So everything was garlic, ginger garam masala, all unground.

And so she said to me, well, these curries

are for English people.

Which made me determined to taste one.

And I had to sneak out to a friend's and eat one.

And, oh, the disappointment.

[laughs]

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.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Time to take

Roopa back down memory lane.

That's the sauce.

And then that's the rice.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): It takes

20 minutes to transform these freeze dried

ingredients into a hot meal.

So let's have a go, then.

[laughs]

It certainly is different, but that's how things were then.

It was exotic dining.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): It was another 20 years

before Indian-inspired ready meals took

their next big step forward.

In 1981, Marks & Spencer launched

a range of 3 chilled curries, the brainchild

of Kathy Chapman.

Were they received as being an authentic Indian experience?

We thought we'd done a good job.

[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?

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): It seems

the British Asian population were

not impressed by the new meals.

The curry crusader on the phone was

Kent housewife Shahzad Hussain.

Hello.

How lovely to see you.

On the day, I can remember it clearly,

there was Shahzad 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 Shahzad's product, and yeah.

[laughs]

Shahzad's product won out.

[laughs]

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): With Shahzad'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 a million pounds on them every day.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

Quality control, right?

Yeah.

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 consist-o-meter.

A what?

A consist-o-meter.

You're making this stuff up, aren't you?

Have you guys all got together to pull my leg?

I had a liquivertor 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Ian's rig tests

the viscosity of the sauce by measuring how far it travels

down this ramp in 15 seconds.

Two, one, click it.

15 seconds.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This simple idea

was first developed in 1938 to test the thickness of tomato

ketchup.

Now, that's it's time.

So what we're looking at?

We're looking at 8 and 1/2--

8 and 1/4.

Yeah, and that's well within spec.

We've got the consistency right.

Yeah.

What's the next check?

The next check that we do is pH.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 lesson than 4.1.

And you've got it.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The color check relies on something

a little more low tech.

So what we're looking for is 152C.

A decorating color 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, that looks pretty bang on to me, mate.

It does to me, yeah.

I'll just grab us both a spoon, Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 flavor.

There's no doubt about it.

You keep the flavor.

You know what we're missing?

We're missing a chat about the rugby and a pint a beer.

Your round.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.

Hi, Gregg.

How are you doing, mate?

Yeah, not bad.

Right.

I have followed the making of a curry sauce--

Yeah.

- -all the way through.

Now I'm going to need about 7,000 jars.

Is that right?

Hopefully that, yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The empty jars

are blated 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 a good run, anything upwards of 300,000.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): These jars

are ready to be filled with our batch of sauce

currently being held in a 1,500 liter tank

just above the filling machine.

There we are, stored finally in jars.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This machine

fills at a phenomenal rate, more than four jars a second.

Which means our batch of 7,000 whizzed

through in just 23 minutes.

Now these jars need lids.

What is that doing?

What is it doing?

Oh, this is a cap hopper Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cap

hopper ensures that all the lids are facing the correct way.

The lids make their way to meet the full jars of sauce

in the capping machine.

This is where the lids finally get on to a jar of sauce,

Gregg.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 of this process.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Finally, our batch of sauce

is sealed in jars.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'm at the University of Sheffield

to put chemist Dr. Joe Buckley in the hot seat.

So we have to understand the chemistry of what's

going on in the chili 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.

It's a common misconception.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): But I can only

learn so much from looking.

Bon appetit!

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I've got to experience the result

of capsaicin for myself.

I've got a feeling that this isn't a lovely mild masala.

[laughs]

Well, it's delicious.

Oh, there it is.

That is seriously hot.

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 there?

So it's all to do with a certain receptor

that you've got in your mouth.

And it's called TRPV1.

TRPV1.

Receptors, yes.

And these are sort of little temperature sensors.

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.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): 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.

[chattering]

I can feel it in my cheeks 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?

A lot of others have said they're enjoying it.

I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it right now.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): First, the diners score

their discomfort out of 10.

Now we'll test the effect of three different drinks

on that burning sensation.

So we're going with milk.

Mm-hmm.

We're going with cola.

And we're going with beer.

Enjoy.

Cheers.

Chin, chin.

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,

10 being the most, 1 being the least.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The 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.

Yeah.

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.

Very, very similar.

Really similar.

So the final group 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.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 pasteurized.

Charlie Rower 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 pasteurizer.

So this is giving your jars a thermal process.

A thermal process.

Yes.

Whoa, hang on a minute.

This is massive.

This whole pasteurizer fits 30,000 jars in it.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): On their two-hour shuffle

through the pasteurizer, 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.

Well, 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I've heard of boiling the bag,

but cooking the jar?

It's a new one on me.

Can I taste one?

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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 still got the spice.

It's almost as if its texture is different.

Yeah.

Well done.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The cooled and now fully cooked

jars of sauce are blow dried, ready for labeling.

Inside the labeling machine, a foam pad

applies glue to the jars.

Labels are stuck on, and brushes gently flatten them down.

Do they just run on like this all day?

Yeah, happily carries on without stopping.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Just 3 hours and 20 minutes

since I saw 26 tons of tomato puree being unloaded,

our curry sauce is packed and wrapped

in an elaborate Bollywood style dance number.

From here, it heads to the distribution center.

Mark Dunning looks after shipping.

So that's it.

Finished pallets, right?

Yes.

How many jars on a pallet?

1,554.

[laughs] 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.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 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.