Original subtitles

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: The humble potato,

this tuber takes top spot as our favorite vegetable.

CHERRY HEALEY: Boiled, mashed, chipped,

or fried, we go through 18 million

kilograms of them every day.

GREGG WALLACE: This versatile vegetable takes many shapes,

including this classic--

The waffle.

This week, we'll get through nearly six million of them.

CHERRY HEALEY: And Where's the best place

to find out how they're made?

GREGG WALLACE: How about this enormous frozen food factory?

[upbeat music]

I'm Gregg Wallace.

I love it.

I find it waffle-y exciting.

And I'll be rooting out the amazing technology--

That is, like, the fastest croupier in the world.

- -behind this teatime treat.

[laughing]

CHERRY HEALEY: I'm Cherry Healey.

It's a potato off.

I'll be getting under the skin of the spud--

I cannot believe that has more vitamin C than that.

- -and learning which type of tattie to use for which dish.

Oh wow, hey, there, good looking.

I mean, so delicious.

GREGG WALLACE: And Ruth Goodman cuts a piece of potato history

down to size.

RUTH GOODMAN: So if Sir Walter Raleigh

is a bit of a red herring, where on Earth do potatoes come from?

Over the next 24 hours, almost a million waffles

will fly out of this factory.

That's quite a transformation from this to this.

Welcome to Inside the Factory.

[upbeat music]

This is the Birdseye Factory in Lowestoft on the Suffolk coast.

This 26 acre site produces 450 tons

of frozen produce every day.

That includes frozen peas, battered fish,

and chicken dippers.

Today, we're concentrating on one of their best

sellers, frozen waffles.

It won't come as much of a surprise

to you that the main ingredient in a potato waffle is potato.

It makes up 87% of the finished product.

Cherry has been harvesting the cream of the crop.

CHERRY HEALEY: This 3,400 acre farm in Norfolk

grows over 12,000 tons of tatties a year.

In charge of their harvest today is farmer, Tony Bambridge.

Hi, Tony. Lovely to meet you.

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Hi, good morning, Cherry.

Good to see you too.

CHERRY HEALEY: So can we dig one up?

Can I see what it looks like?

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Yeah, of course, we can.

CHERRY HEALEY: Oh wow, look at that.

Oh, and the potatoes are born.

That's amazing.

I had no idea they went so deep down into the Earth.

You could feed a family for a day on those.

That's right, and there's several there as well.

So you're looking at 12, 14 potatoes per plant

would be a typical plant.

So you get a huge amount of potatoes from one field?

TONY BAMBRIDGE: We think there'd be about 2.8

to three million potatoes.

CHERRY HEALEY: Three million potatoes in one field.

I feel like we've got some work to do, Tony.

Luckily, for me, Tony has a 22.5 ton

monster harvester that can pull up 130,000 of them in an hour.

Tony, this machine is not mucking about.

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Oh no.

CHERRY HEALEY: Exactly how does it work?

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Well, at the front,

it's cutting off the tops, and it's

throwing that out to the side.

Because we don't want that.

CHERRY HEALEY: Is it, like, a big whisk, but very sharp,

so it turns around?

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Yeah, that's right.

CHERRY HEALEY: And it shuts this off.

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Yeah, and then we've got--

they're, like, big spades, and they're going underneath,

and they're digging up the potatoes.

We're lifting the soil, and all the stones,

and the roots, and everything.

CHERRY HEALEY: The scooped up spuds in Earth

travel over a series of slatted conveyor belts, which

sieve out the soil and debris.

TONY BAMBRIDGE: We've got a special cleaning

unit at the back of the machine that

takes out all the big stones.

CHERRY HEALEY: So you've got a chopper, a digger,

a sieve, and a cleaner.

It's a very, very clever tractor.

TONY BAMBRIDGE: It is, yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY: The harvester drops them gently

into the trailer, so they don't bruise.

Whoa, it's a potato party.

But only one variety is invited.

They're called premier, and they're a commercial type

grown for food factories.

So what kind of potato makes a good potato waffle?

TONY BAMBRIDGE: A lovely round potato.

It's got a really potato-ey taste.

Now, that sounds really silly, but--

Tony, you're the potato expert.

If you says it's got a potato taste, then I'll buy it.

Tony harvests between June and November.

The fresh tatties are loaded onto trailers

and driven five miles to the sorting barn.

Ah, here they are, so these have come straight out of the field?

TONY BAMBRIDGE: They have, indeed.

CHERRY HEALEY: It takes the workers just two minutes

to sort through each ton.

TONY BAMBRIDGE: Grading team have taken

all the greens out, all the cracks

out, anything that was rotten.

Then we've sieved, screened all of the small ones out.

CHERRY HEALEY: The little ones go for animal feed,

while the large ones are loaded onto a lorry,

ready for waffling.

All that hard work, done and dusted.

GREGG WALLACE: From here, the potatoes

travel an hour Southeast to the factory,

where the first of today's three deliveries of spuds

is entering the intake area.

Four different types are used, including Cherry's premiers,

and they're all grown within a 60 mile radius.

Greeting them is quality control operator Sue Wood

Hey.

SUE WOOD: Hello.

GREGG WALLACE: Sue, you are the star of the whole waffle making

process.

I am indeed, yes.

And that starts with potatoes?

SUE WOOD: Indeed.

There's no potatoes, Sue.

They're all in the lorry.

Can we get them out?

Of course.

GREGG WALLACE: The countdown from spuds to waffles

starts now.

[countdown]

How long is this truck going to take to unload?

It takes about 40 minutes.

What do you do when it's not potato season?

Then they come from storage.

The last ones come out of the ground

about October-November time, and they are stored

in box stores and long term stores,

ready for when we want them.

You get local potatoes 12 months of the year,

and every single packet of waffle

is made with local potatoes.

That's right.

GREGG WALLACE: To check this lot are up to scratch,

we need to give them a quick once over.

Do you want me to get a sample?

Yes, please.

If you fill it right up, that will be lovely.

GREGG WALLACE: Will that do?

SUE WOOD: That'll do.

GREGG WALLACE: Wow, that's heavy.

Don't give me the runaround, Sue.

I won't.

[laughing]

GREGG WALLACE: Quality checking a tuber

sounds like it should be easy.

What have you got to do, cut it and make

sure it's not moldy, right?

Well, that's the appliance of science to make sure

we will get a decent mash.

Mash, yes, of course.

You make waffles out of mashed potatoes.

We do, indeed.

So you have to make tons of mashed potato, first?

Of course, yeah.

This is my sort of place.

[laughing]

Mashing comes later.

First, Sue test's their sugar content by frying them

for three minutes.

Spuds are mostly water and starch,

but they also contain a tiny amount

of naturally occurring sugar.

And when heated, this sugar caramelizes and browns

the surface.

Not really teatime, is it, Sue?

SUE WOOD: Any time is chip time.

GREGG WALLACE: So the more sugar, the darker the waffle.

And that's not what you want?

No, that's not what we want.

Well, why?

Because when the customer cooks them,

they don't want them really dark.

They want a nice, golden brown, and that is what we aim for.

And what should it be?

We're looking for naughts and ones.

GREGG WALLACE: Naughts and ones?

SUE WOOD: Yeah, what we don't want

is to see them up here on the threes.

A number four chip is a chip just

come back from torremolinos?

Yes.

No good at all?

No good for us.

GREGG WALLACE: Sue is looking for a lower amount of sugar

around 10% less than your average supermarket spud,

so how mine measure up?

May I?

SUE WOOD: Yes, of course.

GREGG WALLACE: I'd say that's a naught bordering

towards double naught. SUE WOOD: Yep.

Is that OK?

That's very good, yep.

So as long as it's naughty, like a chip should be--

- Yes. - --we're in business.

That's it.

Are we now ready to make waffles?

Yes.

Thank you, Sue. SUE WOOD: Thank you.

GREGG WALLACE: Can I take one of these?

SUE WOOD: Help yourself.

[laughing]

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: My tatties are released into the storage area

where they trundle along 40 meters of conveyors,

then zig-zag into one of 10 super-sized bins,

where I'm meeting manufacturing manager Paul Buck.

Paul!

Hello, Gregg.

You, I've heard, are Mr. Waffle.

I've heard what you don't know about waffles

you could write on a waffle.

That's correct, Gregg. Yeah.

Bang on.

That's a beautiful sight.

A mountain of gently cascading potatoes.

How many does this hopper hold?

So this hopper will hold 25 tons of potatoes.

GREGG WALLACE: How many waffles would

we get out of this hopper?

We'd get about 308,000 waffles.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: That means there's enough in one

of these bins to give everyone in Nottingham a waffle for tea

tonight.

[upbeat music]

[upbeat music]

RUTH GOODMAN: It's a much-repeated story.

In 1586, Walter Raleigh returned from North America

with a unique present for Queen Elizabeth I.

The legend goes that he presented to the Virgin Queen

a potato from Virginia, and that we've

been eating them ever since.

It's a lovely story, but it's completely wrong.

[record scratches]

[mid-tempo music]

Sir Walter doesn't deserve the credit

here because potatoes didn't exist in Virginia

until after he died.

[mid-tempo music]

I've traveled to Cambridge to meet

historian Dr. Emma Spary to find out

who really gave us the spud.

So if Sir Walter Raleigh is a bit of a red herring,

where on Earth do potatoes come from, and how do they get here?

Well, they come from South America.

About 5,000 BC, the Peruvians started

to domesticate and to breed them into all different varieties.

And you end up with something a little bit like this.

RUTH GOODMAN: They're extraordinary, aren't they?

I mean, look at that.

- DR. EMMA SPARY: Yes. - Yeah.

I'm not sure I'd know immediately

that that was a potato.

So I think, like, all the English explorers, the Rallies,

the Drakes, all of that, they're all going to North America.

DR. EMMA SPARY: Mhm.

If we want to think who's going to South America,

that's got to be the Spanish.

Hasn't it?

That's absolutely right.

And they're first documented by Spanish explorers in the 1530s.

[mid-tempo music]

RUTH GOODMAN: 10 years before Raleigh first sailed to North

America, it was Spanish conquistadors who

brought taters back to Europe.

[mid-tempo music]

They cultivated and traded them.

And over the next 200 years, they

became a popular garden plant.

But they weren't being grown primarily for their tubers,

but for their flowers.

So if in Europe they're mostly growing

potatoes for the flowers, how do we end up eating them?

Well, they're not only growing them for the flowers.

They were animal fodder, for one thing.

That was quite a big deal.

But they certainly weren't seen as human food.

RUTH GOODMAN: The spud had an image problem.

But one man was to change all that.

DR. EMMA SPARY: This is Antoine-Augustin Parmentier,

who was--

Parmentier?

Parmentier, yes.

RUTH GOODMAN: This 18th century French pharmacist

set about an ingenious publicity campaign

to encourage people to eat potatoes.

It began in print.

[speaking french] Oh, I can't do it.

My French is terrible.

The treatise on the cultivation and uses

of the potato, sweet potato, and Jerusalem artichoke.

RUTH GOODMAN: He then moved on to throw

some exclusive spud soiree.

He did things like organize a series

of banquets in which many of the dishes contained potatoes.

[mid-tempo music]

RUTH GOODMAN: So rather than a British hero,

it turns out we have Spanish explorers

and an enterprising Frenchman to thank

for our favorite carbohydrate.

[mid-tempo music]

Merci, Monsieur Parmentier.

[mid-tempo music]

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: At the factory, this morning's delivery

of potatoes is ready to be made into a monster amount of mash.

[laughs]

They head to the preparation room where, just like at home,

they need a good scrub.

First stop is the mud tank.

Oh, I love this.

I love this big industrial stuff.

The spuds take a quick bath in 1,000 liters of cold water,

which dissolves the loose mud.

[mid-tempo music]

Then they roll into the wash wheel, which

spins them 60 times a minute.

[mid-tempo music]

This cleans them up by dislodging any ingrained soil.

The dirty water is filtered and recycled.

[mid-tempo music]

Do you know, by chance, how many potatoes you're processing?

Yeah.

So at the moment, we're processing

about 2.2 tons per hour.

With at just over 2 tons an hour,

how many waffles are you hoping to make in a day?

We can do up to a million waffles in a day.

But that's like producing waffles

end-to-end about 59 miles.

Fabulous!

[upbeat music]

Sounds like a challenge to me.

Let's see if we could make a million waffles today.

With our target set, we've got a long way to go.

But first, Paul has a tater challenge for me.

[upbeat music]

I want to see how many potatoes

you can peel in 10 seconds.

You're going to count?

I'll count to 10.

On your marks, go.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Come on, Gregg.

Come on.

7, 8, 9, 10.

Almost a spud.

Well, almost half a spud.

So I've got a machine that can do this in 10 seconds.

GREGG WALLACE: [laughs]

Should we go have a look at the machine?

Love to have a look at what can do that.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: I'm expecting a scaled-up version

of a kitchen peeler.

But it's not as simple as that.

So here we've got the steam peeler.

And it's the steam that's taking the skins off?

No, no, no, no.

All the steam does is loosen the skin.

GREGG WALLACE: The clean spuds drop into a hopper.

Every 16 seconds, a batch of 200 kilos

is released into a rotating tank,

injected with high-pressure steam at 190 degrees

C. As they spin, the steam gets to the entire surface

of every tuber.

But if you're steaming them, you must be starting to cook them.

You do start to cook them very slightly just

on the outer ring.

But what we're trying to do is shock the peel of the potato

into becoming soft while leaving the rest of the potato solid.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: A spud's skin is on average

less than 1 millimeter thick.

So the machine only steams them until the skin

is soft and loose, leaving the rest of it uncooked.

That's quite precise for a dirty, gray thing like that.

That is correct.

So that's now finished its steam.

That's now going to turn upside down

and drop the potatoes out of the bottom.

Was that it?

That was it, yeah.

That was it?

That's 200 kilos of potatoes done.

Then we go on to peeling.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: 48 minutes into the production process,

I'm about to get under the skin of our taters.

So this machine here is called a brush de-skinner.

And inside there is six of these spinning

wildly and peeling the potato.

That looks like a wet rolled-up carpet.

Do you feel like you would want to walk

on that with no slippers on?

GREGG WALLACE: Oh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And to you give me an example, we've got a steamed potato.

And as you can see, the peel just falls away.

If we haven't steamed the potato, as you can see,

we don't peel the potato very well.

GREGG WALLACE: Three tons of peeled every hour,

shedding 450 kilos of skin.

The peel is sent off to become fertilizer while the newly

naked spuds take a skinny dip.

This lot are well on their way to becoming waffles.

[upbeat music]

CHERRY HEALEY: I put potatoes in my shopping basket every week.

I kind of just find out what's on offer and grab that.

I'll roast, chip, or boil them all without thinking

about what type I'm using.

But does it really matter?

Meike Beck, Lifestyle Cookery Director at "Good

Housekeeping," thinks it does.

Hi, Meike!

Hi, Cherry.

You are looking quite confused.

I've been cooking with potatoes for a really long time

and I've never known the difference between them.

MEIKE BECK: You don't need to be embarrassed about not knowing

the different varieties.

But what you do need to know is there are two types of potato.

There are floury and there are waxy.

So how do you know if a potato is waxy or floury?

MEIKE BECK: The easiest way, really,

is to tell by their size.

Typically, the smaller potatoes are waxy

and the larger potatoes are floury.

Which potatoes do you use for which food?

Why don't we take some and go and find out?

All right.

Load up.

Thank you.

CHERRY HEALEY: We head to Meike's test kitchen

to get to the root of this potato puzzle.

But before we cook, Meike has one more

tip to make sure we haven't mixed

up our flouries and our waxies.

So if you get yourself one of those,

Cherry, and one of those.

And have a go at peeling off the skin with your thumb.

OK.

MEIKE BECK: Waxy potatoes have thinner

skin, which means their skin will rub off more simply.

CHERRY HEALEY: OK.

MEIKE BECK: Compare that to the other one

and see what you find.

CHERRY HEALEY: That doesn't come off at all easily.

So that's much thicker.

MEIKE BECK: Absolutely.

So a floury potato has a thicker skin, typically.

[mid-tempo music]

CHERRY HEALEY: Now we're clear what we've bought,

I want to know the best way to cook them.

We're testing three family classics.

Going to do some roasties, we're

going to do boiling potatoes, and we're going to do mashing.

So you're going to be dealing with the King Edwards.

They're a really great floury potato.

And I'm going to be using the Charlotte, which

is this lovely waxy potato.

CHERRY HEALEY: The biggest difference between these two

rivals is on the inside.

Floury potato typically has about 20% to 22% starch in it.

And a waxy one has far less.

CHERRY HEALEY: The cells of my floury ones

are more tightly packed with starch than the waxies.

Brilliant.

Ta-da?

Ooh, there they go. They're going to be good.

MEIKE BECK: [laughs]

There it is.

[laughs]

[upbeat music]

All right.

Do your thing, King Edwards.

MEIKE BECK: Let the best one win.

CHERRY HEALEY: 45 minutes later, our competing

roasties come out of the oven.

MEIKE BECK: Here we go.

Let's see.

CHERRY HEALEY: Oh wow,

MEIKE BECK: Golden perfection.

CHERRY HEALEY: Hey there, good looking.

Shall we see how these are?

These-- I think-- god, they look amazing.

[laughs]

I mean, so delicious.

Floury, soft.

But crispy on the outside.

The starch granules in my King Edwards

have expanded in the cooking process,

forcing open the spud cells and creating

a light, fluffy texture.

[upbeat music]

Welcome about Meike's waxy Charlottes?

They're quite dense.

Exactly.

[upbeat music]

They have 6% less starch.

So they don't soften as much and produce a harder

roasty with a drier feel.

[upbeat music]

If I was looking for a nice, traditional roast,

I'd be disappointed.

So far, it's flouries 1, waxies 0.

Onto the second test, boiling.

Carefully

After 20 minutes in boiling water,

it's clear that my floury King Edwards just

aren't the right choice here.

I seem to have a kind of potato soup.

MEIKE BECK: Exactly.

Because what happens with a floury potato when it cooks

is that the cells pop open and it

keeps on taking in all that water,

and they completely fall apart.

Whereas the waxy ones, they don't let as much water

in when they're cooking.

So they stay in much better shape.

I think that's 1-all.

MEIKE BECK: 1-all.

CHERRY HEALEY: Now for our final test,

mash, where the spud has been squashed,

releasing the starch granules.

Oh.

I don't want to be offensive, but that

looks like wallpaper paste.

It's so gluey and dense.

MEIKE BECK: It is.

Isn't it?

That is what you get if you make a mash with a waxy potato.

And that was my Charlotte potato.

You end up working it so hard to get it smooth that you've

effectively made potato glue.

[laughs]

CHERRY HEALEY: Waxies need so much

pounding to open the cells, the released starches

end up matting together.

So we're back to our nice, fluffy King Edward potatoes.

Cook them until they're just about to fall apart,

but not waterlogged, and you've got good mash.

CHERRY HEALEY: But for perfect mash,

Meike has one last trick up her apron.

It is a ricer.

And basically, it is designed to work that potato as little

as possible.

CHERRY HEALEY: In the ricer, the tater cells are gently broken

apart rather than smashed open.

Less force produces a fluffier texture.

[upbeat music]

You can see how smooth it is already

without putting much work in.

Right.

So you just want to stir in the butter, milk,

and whatever flavorings, and you're done.

CHERRY HEALEY: Let's have a taste.

[upbeat music]

It's perfectly seasoned.

It's smooth.

But it's still got a nice kind of grainy, potato-iness.

That is the perfect mash.

MEIKE BECK: 2 unto you.

[laughs] Game set and mash to my King Edwards.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: 49 minutes since my potatoes arrived,

they've been washed and peeled.

Now they turn towards the dicer.

These spuds are floury, which as Cherry discovered,

means they'll make great mash.

[upbeat music]

So to make the perfect mashed potato,

we need to chop the potatoes up into cubes

of all the same size.

So about half an inch.

They've all got to be the same size because they've all

got to cook at the same time.

Exactly.

It's like making mash at home.

Exactly.

So this is our dicer.

So this is the machine, though it's not in use at the moment.

The potato is coming down here.

It goes into this rotating drum which is spinning at speed.

And on this side here is a blade that

will basically chop it into fritters, so slice

it as it's spinning round.

It then goes into these blades here.

But that fritter would then get cut into chips.

And then it hits those blades at the top

there where the chips will be cut horizontally.

And that'll give me my half-inch cube pieces.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: The raw taters into the drum, which spins

them 1,200 times per minute.

[mid-tempo music]

They're pushed against the first blade, which slices them.

These slices meet a set of rotating blades

which divide them into batons.

And spinning circular blades give us our cubes.

Our spud cubes are dropped onto a vibrating belt.

Oh, I like that.

Oh, I do like that.

Why is it vibrating?

PAUL BUCK: What we want to do is accelerate our cubes of potato

onto this belt. So we separate them out.

It goes fast to separate them?

Yes, yes.

GREGG WALLACE: Once there's some space between the cubes,

six cameras take millimeter-accurate pictures

of every individual one to check for defects like black spots

or bits of peel.

Ha ha ha!

And every time you hear that gun

fire, that's an error rejector rejecting a cube of a potato.

[crackling]

Look, I'm not a very clever man.

I'm a practical man.

It's very difficult to accept that six cameras inside there

are doing that, spotting them at that speed.

And not only spotting them, but shooting them up.

PAUL BUCK: Yeah, it is. Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: Look at it!

[upbeat music]

I'm following the spotless cubes,

but I can't help thinking there's something missing.

I don't want to be funny.

I've seen a lot of waffle-making process with you.

I haven't seen anybody else working.

You're the only bloke I've met.

Well, we're a highly automated factory.

So the whole waffle-making processes

is only made by seven people.

Seven?

Seven people.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: I don't know where they're hiding.

But can the Spudtacular Seven make a million waffles today?

I'm heading to the blancher to find out.

Inside this machine, the cold cubes are warmed

in water at 85 degrees C.

[upbeat music]

How long are they in there for?

They're in there for about two minutes.

Well, why do you blanch them at all

if it's only two minutes?

Well, we just want to get the potato warm enough to get

ready to be steam cooked.

What would happen if you didn't?

They'd just turn to mush.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: It's full steam ahead as the blanched spuds

go straight into the cooker.

Inside, the warm cubes are heated by 190-degree steam.

The chunks are so small they only

take three minutes to cook.

Cooked potato.

And now we have our cooked potato.

Bit bland.

It's a bit bland.

We've not added our secret spices yet.

Right there.

I'll get [inaudible] butter.

[laughs]

What do we do now?

Now we're going to mash them.

Mash them.

[mid-tempo music]

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: It's taken 56 minutes

to get my spuds to the masher.

[upbeat music]

And here we have our mashed potato.

Yes!

At last.

What have you got?

Oh, we have mashers.

A big machine mashing like that?

No, we don't do that.

What we've got here is a hydraulic pump

that pushes our diced potato through a ricer screen.

[upbeat music]

Now, this screen is placed in the end of this tube.

And that push shaft comes across really slowly and just

gently pushes the mash through.

GREGG WALLACE: That's actually quite fine holes.

Yeah.

They're 1.5 mill.

GREGG WALLACE: These small holes will ensure our mash

has a super-smooth texture.

If you'd like to put your hand in there,

you can actually feel the consistency.

- Can I? - Yeah.

Be careful.

It's a bit warm.

- It's still at 80 degrees. - Whoa!

- That is red-hot, mate. - Yeah.

That's 80 degrees.

That is super light and fluffy.

Yeah, mate.

That's a good consistency.

OK, I like that.

I really like that.

[mid-tempo music]

From here, it's squeezed through two 30-kilo metal rollers

onto a belt.

And the mash has been flattened to 1.5 mill thickness

so I can start bringing the temperature down.

Why do you want it to be cool?

I can't make a waffle with hot mash.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: The underside of the belt

is sprayed with a coolant which chills the mash on top.

[mid-tempo music]

The thinner the layer of mash, the faster it cools.

Colder mash is firmer and holds its shape better.

Is that cool?

That's now cool. So--

May I?

Feel free to touch it.

That is fridge cold.

PAUL BUCK: So that was 80 degrees at that end.

What, about 10 yards away?

Yep.

And that's now lower than 10 degrees.

That, in such a short space of time, I think is remarkable.

57 minutes into production.

So far, nothing's been added to this potato

to make it waffle-y versatile.

But that's all about to change.

[mid-tempo music]

My spuds have been mashed and cooled.

Right-o.

Getting there.

What now? Right.

So this is where we're going to weigh

in 280 kilos of mashed potato.

How many waffles will that give us?

About 5,000.

Right.

And now what we've got, Gregg, is you've got a light flashing.

So what I want you to do is we need to add some spice.

One are these bags?

Yep.

PAUL BUCK: We've literally got one minute to get the spice in.

Why?

We'll never make a million waffles

if we don't do things quickly.

[laughs] The spice mix contains the all-important

starch, 2.2 kilos of potato granules, a kilo of salt,

and 2 kilos of white pepper.

That's great.

[laughs] I think that's in.

And then we press our Dry's Added button

there that's flashing.

There you go.

And then if you look there, you can see our mixing process

is now starting.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: Potato granules like starch help

firm up the mix.

[mid-tempo music]

The balance of starch and potato granules

has to be just right to get the best texture.

We've got obviously a load of potato.

But you put potato granules in.

And that's all to help it form a shape?

Yes.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: The last ingredient

is 8 kilos of a plant extract called cellulose.

It's derived from tree fibers.

This creates a barrier preventing

the finished waffle soaking up too much oil when it's fried.

That remains mostly potato, though.

Doesn't it?

Yes.

So a waffle is 87% potato.

It soaks up a little bit of oil, which is 7%.

And the rest is made up with the spice

mix and the plant extract.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: It mixes for 45 seconds,

then drops down into bins.

[upbeat music]

You know what we're going to do now?

We're now going to go make some waffles.

But we need to be quick.

At last.

[mid-tempo music]

GREGG WALLACE: After nearly 64 minutes,

it's the moment I've been waiting for.

Our mash is finally ready to be turned into waffles.

And Paul is a man on a mission to make a million today.

[mid-tempo music]

The 140-kilo tub of mash is emptied into a hopper.

Then it's pumped through to the extruder

where it's forced through a metal plate, emerging

in a very familiar shape.

[upbeat music]

There we are.

Waffles.

It's taken a long time, but I recognize those.

Yep.

[upbeat music]

And if you look down underneath there,

you can see the waffles being cut.

So currently we're doing 750 waffles a minute.

What the cutter is doing is that's on a shaft,

and the cutter is just moving backwards and forwards.

And the pure speed is-- that wire is cutting that waffle.

GREGG WALLACE: Yeah. That's not sharp.

Not sharp. No heat.

Nothing.

[upbeat music]

Then what we do is we just spray the waffles with a little bit

of light mist of water.

Just water?

Just water.

GREGG WALLACE: Why would you spray them with water?

PAUL BUCK: What we want to do is we

want to create a nice crisp edge around the waffle.

So when you spray it with cold water,

then it hits the grapeseed oil at 195 degrees,

you get a nice sizzle effect which

causes a nice crispy seal round the outside of the waffle.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: The mash shapes enter the 10 meter-long fryer.

They are cooking.

They are indeed.

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: Inside, the waffles

are held between two belts that keep them submerged

to ensure an even cook.

[upbeat music]

They fry for just 36 seconds.

[upbeat music]

As I watch these go past, what I'm seeing

is hundreds of tea times all over the place

going past my eyes.

I'll look at them and I can't help think to myself, what's

going to be on top of that one?

What's on top of that one?

What's going to end up on top of that one?

[upbeat music]

The freshly-cooked waffles are now ready to be

turned into frozen waffles.

And to ensure they're preserved at their best,

it's a race to get them into the freezer

where they chill at -38 degrees C for 20 minutes.

Our 25 tons of potato have made 308,000 waffles.

And they all need to be packaged,

ready for the supermarket shelves.

A vibrating belt nudges them into uniform lines.

I find it very comforting that no matter how

high-tech the machinery gets, there's a human with a stick

having to sort it all out.

Two workers poke any stacked waffles into a line.

I love this.

I find it waffle-y exciting.

But if we rely on human fingers, we won't hit our 1 million

target.

[upbeat music]

That is, like, the fastest croupier in the world.

It's like dealing endless decks of cards.

The frozen potato frames are picked up off

the belt individually by six pairs of robot arms

and placed into groups of 10.

But it's impossible to get your head round, the speed of it.

It's impossible to understand how that-- how

does it know where they are?

Are the waffles always in the same place?

No.

If you look down, Gregg, you can see that red line, that scanner

that goes across there.

That scanner is taking a photograph

of every single waffle.

And to see that in action, we've got this screen.

And there's a photograph of every single waffle

that's been packed.

GREGG WALLACE: That is like a crazy game of dominoes.

PAUL BUCK: Yep.

So it's taking a photograph of each waffle.

But it's also putting together a picture of the conveyor belt.

PAUL BUCK: Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: The first pair of robots

pick the waffles closest to them on the belt.

The next ones pick the ones further

away so that the last pair at the end only have a few to do.

And they never miss a waffle.

[upbeat music]

[upbeat music]

I absolutely love potatoes.

But I'm worried that they might not be that good for me.

Too many calories and not enough vitamins and minerals.

Am I being unfair to my poor little spuddy?

[upbeat music]

I'm on the streets of London to find

out how people rank the potato in comparison

to other vegetables.

Which has got the most calories?

Wow.

Potato, beetroot probably, and then carrot.

Potato, carrot, beetroot.

CHERRY HEALEY: 100% of the people I spoke to rated

the potato most calorific.

Which has got the most vitamin C?

Vitamin C?

WOMAN: Beetroot, number 1.

Because it's a superfood.

Well, I'll get carrot on that one.

I'll guess carrot.

I would have thought the carrots, and then the beetroot,

and then potatoes.

CHERRY HEALEY: Unanimous again.

Potato is perceived as bottom for vitamin C.

I'm meeting King's College London

dietician Sophie Medlin--

Hi, Sophie.

Hi.

CHERRY HEALEY: --to see if the results of my street survey

stack up in the lab.

[mid-tempo music]

OK, Sophie.

So it seems that people really do think that the potato is

the king of calories.

Is that true?

Well, we're going to do an experiment and find out.

And we're going to use our bomb calorimeter.

CHERRY HEALEY: This machine accurately measures

the calorie content of foods.

It does it by burning up a sample of dried foodstuff.

In this case, potato.

Shall we set fire to the potato?

I think we should.

Down.

[groans] After 45 fiery seconds, the results are in.

100 grams of peeled potato has 82

calories, more than double that of the beetroot and the carrot.

So there really are a lot more calories in the potato.

Is that a bad thing?

It very much depends on your lifestyle.

For example, young children need lots of energy.

And potato is a good, cheap source of energy.

Same for people who are doing a lot of sport.

If you have a very sedentary life, if you do an office job,

you maybe don't need so many calories.

And so you maybe want to think about cutting back.

But enjoying potato as part of a balanced diet.

It is great.

And we shouldn't feel guilty or demonize the potato.

[mid-tempo music]

CHERRY HEALEY: So my street testers were

right about calorie content.

But what about vitamin C?

So vitamin C is an essential nutrient in the body,

and it has lots of really important functions.

So it's an antioxidant vitamin.

And the other thing that's really important about it

is that it's really essential for our immune system.

This is a sample of potato that I've ground

up using the pestle and mortar.

It's like a very, very bad potato smoothie.

That's right.

CHERRY HEALEY: I add drops of this dye to my potato water

until it turns pale pink.

By measuring the amount used, Sophie

can calculate that this bowl of potato

has 14 milligrams of vitamin C, way above both

the beetroot and the carrot.

That's mind-blowing, because I look

at that color and I think--

We all associate vitamin C with orange.

So I cannot believe that that piece

of potato has more vitamin C than that piece of carrot.

And what's amazing is it's not just a little bit more vitamin

C. It's three times.

More than three times.

CHERRY HEALEY: My testers couldn't have been more wrong.

High in vitamin C, the potato packs a real nutritional punch.

But it's also a great source of potassium.

It has more potassium than a banana.

Potato?

SOPHIE MEDLIN: Yep.

And potassium is essential in our bodies for muscle function,

for muscle contraction.

So it helps our hearts to beat and our lungs to breathe.

CHERRY HEALEY: So how do you make

the most of these all-important nutrients?

What's important to remember about potatoes

is that when you cook them in water,

vitamin C is water soluble.

So you'll lose lots of the vitamin C

in the cooking process.

So I would have thought that boiled potatoes would have been

the healthiest way to eat them.

But actually, you lose a lot of the nutritional value.

SOPHIE MEDLIN: That's right.

Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY: The best way to lock the nutrients in

is baking.

The skin on the jacket potato adds extra nutrition,

so you get lots of extra fiber, which

feeds the beneficial bacteria in your large bowel.

And you maintain all of the nutrition inside the potato.

So baked potato absolutely the best way to eat your spud.

SOPHIE MEDLIN: Yep.

CHERRY HEALEY: Good news for fans of jackets.

And the chip lovers out there won't

be disappointed either, as long as you don't overdo the oil.

The great thing about wedges is you've still got the skin.

So that gives you the fiber that you need to keep you full.

And you've retained all of the micronutrients.

So you've got all the vitamin C and all the potassium

still in there.

And it's a great way to enjoy potatoes.

Amazing.

[upbeat music]

It turns out that the potato's bad rep isn't deserved.

So if prepared in the right way, the potato

can be a real dietary hero.

I feel like me and my best spuddy

are getting back together.

I'm going to turn that frown upside down.

[mid-tempo music]

[upbeat music]

GREGG WALLACE: Just two minutes after my waffles left

the freezer, they're speedily pushed into boxes

to keep them ice-cold.

This is their final stop in the factory on their journey

to the nation's dinner tables.

Ta-da, waffles.

[upbeat music]

That's just 101 minutes since I saw potatoes being unloaded.

Now the pressure's on to get my frozen waffles onto a lorry.

[upbeat music]

There we are.

That's our waffles getting loaded.

Have they come out of the frozen store here?

No.

There's no frozen store.

Wow.

So you are making, boxing, shipping continuously.

24/7.

Wow.

Now, that is impressive.

But was it fast enough to make one million waffles today?

How many waffles is that?

On the lorry, that's about a quarter of a million waffles.

How many trucks are going to leave here today?

Four trucks will leave here today.

With 250,000 waffles on them.

Does that mean you've made your million waffles?

They're just under a million waffles in the last 24 hours.

We've done about 980,000.

Pretty close, though. Weren't we?

Yeah, we were pretty close.

I mean, no need to be embarrassed about that.

No, no.

It was a good effort.

GREGG WALLACE: Paul's not a millionaire today.

But that hasn't dampened his spirits.

It's not just food manufacturing for you.

Is it?

It's the waffle.

Yeah, absolutely.

And how do you feel when you see that on the shelf?

Brilliant.

Sense of achievement and pride.

[mid-tempo music]

There is the last waffle on the truck.

Yep.

It's been a fantastic adventure.

Good.

I'm pleased you enjoyed it.

[laughs]

[mid-tempo music]

From the factory, our waffles head to a distribution center.

From here, they're sent all over the UK,

and as far afield as Malta and Cyprus.

But their biggest fans are in the Republic of Ireland.

[upbeat music]

This is an enormous food processing plant basically

making mountains of mashed potato

that they form into waffle shapes.

But what really astounds me is how few people there

are employed in making them.

This means the responsibility for millions of families'

waffles are in the hands of just a few workers

here in this factory in Lowestoft.

[mid-tempo music]