Original subtitles

We are a nation of cheese lovers.

Working our way through nearly 2,000 tons of it every day.

And it all starts off with milk.

It takes 700 tankers like this to feed our daily habit.

With around 2,000 types to choose from,

everyone has their favorite.

I love a bit of the squeezy stuff.

We're in the right place, then, because this factory

makes processed cheese.

[music playing]

I'm Gregg Wallace.

That's a massive fondue, isn't it?

It is.

GREGG WALLACE: Big cheesy smell.

I'm learning the fondues and don'ts of this ultra-modern

and deeply traditional food.

Blessed be the cheesemakers.

Blessed be the chessemakers.

I'm Cherry Healey, and I'll be sniffing

out the secrets of smelly cheese and finding out how

to perfect--

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

- -my favorite comfort food.

You've taken a household staple to a new level.

GREGG WALLACE: Historian Ruth Goodman helps

uncover the 100-year-old recipe

Oh, that's horrible.

GREGG WALLACE: --for the first convenience cheese product.

Over the next 24 hours, this factory

will squeeze out over 115,000 tubes of processed cheese.

That should brie good.

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

[music playing]

This is the Primula Cheese Factory

in Gateshead near Newcastle.

This three-acre site produces over 3,000 tons

of spreadable cheese products every year.

As well as creamy spreaders and liquid dippers,

they make seven different flavors of their

best-selling spreadable cheese.

And this time, we're following production

of their hot jalapeno chili variety.

But before we put the squeeze into our cheese, first,

we have to make cheddar.

This hard cheese is our most important ingredient,

and it's made 178 miles southwest on the llyn Peninsula

in North Wales.

Wow, what a location for a factory.

It's so pretty.

South Caernarfon Creameries make 36 tons of traditional cheddar

every day.

The dairy is owned cooperatively by the farmers

who supply it with milk.

Their tankers come in to the intake area 20 times a day.

Mark Edwards is in charge of production.

- Mark. - How are you?

Pleased to meet you.

Gregg Wallace.

You are the top man, right?

- The grand fromage. - Yes.

Excuse me. MARK: Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: Obvious questions.

How much milk is on there?

MARK: There's about 28,000 liters on there.

How many in one of your silos?

MARK: About 100,000 liters.

Whoa.

How many will you go through in a-- in a day?

We'll go through about four silos a day.

GREGG WALLACE: That's enough milk to fill 5,000 baths.

Are they all from the same breed of cow?

Yes, friesians.

Are ya?

Put a jumper on.

Milk is nearly 90% water.

The rest is natural sugar, known as lactose,

plus fat and protein.

The driver will take a sample, and we'll

test it for the quality, fat, and protein.

If we've got high levels, that will

get us a good yield of cheese.

Well, it looks like that one's passed, doesn't it?

That's right. That's ready to go.

Now we're ready to dip into our silos.

GREGG WALLACE: Our squeezy cheese production line begins.

The milk pours along this 600-meter pipe

and into the creamery's 629-square meter cheesemaking

room.

The first job is to pasteurize the milk by blasting

it with heat for 25 seconds.

This destroys any unwanted bacteria, the kind

that might cause infection.

Right, Gregg.

There's our pasteurized milk going into our vat.

And it's gushing in as well.

MARK: Now we need to add our starter culture to the milk.

GREGG WALLACE: Starter culture is a mix of specially

selected good bacteria.

Tip that in now.

Oh.

Yeah.

It's in little balls.

These frozen cultures begin the cheesemaking process

by feeding on the lactose in the milk

and changing it to lactic acid.

They also create the building blocks for taste and texture.

Mate, this little sachet cannot be

making a difference to a swimming pool full of milk.

It certainly is.

GREGG WALLACE: The exact mix of bacteria is top secret.

So what cheddar are we making for our squeezy cheese?

We're making a mature cheddar.

So if I wanted a mild cheddar, would I need

a different type of culture?

A different culture, yes.

It would give you a different flavor.

Now what?

Our vat's nearly full of milk.

Now we need to add our rennet to our milk.

Right.

Can I?

Yeah.

Right.

Go in there.

GREGG WALLACE: What is rennet?

It's a natural enzyme and reacts with the milk proteins

to set them.

So the culture raises the acidity.

Yes.

The rennet is then acted on that acidity.

That's right.

And between the culture and the rennet,

it's gonna turn the milk into something solid.

That's right.

So we press this button here, add rennet.

And that's it.

That's now dispersing all the rennet into the vat.

We've got to wait now 40 minutes for that to set.

Right.

We've got to put the kettle on.

MARK: Yeah.

Got any milk?

Almost two hours after the fresh milk arrived,

it looks completely different.

There you can see.

So what's happening there, all the milk proteins

now are joining together like a big jelly.

It actually looks like it's going off.

No, that's why--

Let me smell.

Yeah, if that was in my fridge, that's going in the bin.

The protein and fat are clumping into what's known as curds

and are starting to separate from the watery part

of the milk called the whey.

That is definitely thickening up.

Am I gonna meet an enormous spider?

No, I don't think so.

We're not allowed them in here.

GREGG WALLACE: I'm no Little Miss Muffet.

And to me, it's not looking too promising just yet.

It actually looks like yogurt, doesn't it?

Yes, it does, yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: Serrated blades cut up the thickening curds,

helping to separate them from the whey.

An hour later, and it's all poured

into what looks like a bath tub for someone

with very long legs.

There are four of them, each 12 meters long.

MARK: You can see now.

Here's our curds solid.

You know that rubbery scrambled

egg you get on an airplane?

MARK: That's just one side like that.

GREGG WALLACE: That is it, innit?

It's sweet.

Quite sweet, yeah.

Ooh, that's really nice.

So what you want is all the liquid gone and just the curds?

That's right.

No whey.

No-- no whey.

GREGG WALLACE: Three hours into making our cheddar,

and we've drained off a staggering 12,000

liters of whey.

It used to be thrown away.

But these days, it's turned into a powdered supplement

popular with bodybuilders.

The object of the game now is to get the remainder

of this liquid out here.

So what we need to do now is stir these curds,

and the whey will continue to drain off.

We need to press these buttons here, the two green,

and that'll stir the curds.

GREGG WALLACE: The more whey that's removed,

the firmer the cheese will end up,

and our cheddar needs to be solid.

Now we need to add salt to our cheese.

There's the salt, and we need to spread evenly all the way up,

following those stirrers.

All right.

What is the salt doing, apart from obviously adding flavor?

It's slowing the activity of those cultures

that we put in earlier on.

It's also driving out any more moisture that's in the curds.

Right, OK.

So it's drying it.

It's adding to the flavor.

It's stopping the cultures developing.

And is it helping to preserve it as well?

And it's obviously a preservative, yes.

So it will stop the cheese from spoiling.

You're a fully fledged cheesemaker now, Gregg.

Blessed be the cheesemakers.

Blessed be the cheesemakers.

GREGG WALLACE: After 10 more minutes of stirring,

we've removed almost 60% of the milk's original water content.

Our curds are now fully formed and ready to be shaped.

They travel to the pressing area,

where they're blown 10 meters up to the top

of these metal columns.

These are our cheddar towers.

The cheese is filled right to the top.

The pressure of the cheese then forms a block.

So there's no weight up in those towers pushing them.

The weight is simply more cheese.

MARK: Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: The chimneys are kept

constantly topped up with one and a half tons of cheddar.

It's the equivalent of two dairy cows lying on top

and squashing it down.

And the only technology is an enormous metal chimney.

MARK: It's a metal chimney with a blade at the bottom

that puts the blocks up.

GREGG WALLACE: Amazing.

Years ago, we used to put our cheese into molds

and press them by hand, and it'd take about 24 hours

to create a block of cheese.

Now this modern technique that we've got here now,

you'll get a block within 45 minutes.

This spongy thing will turn into a block of cheddar?

Nice hard block of cheddar cheese.

And how long does that take?

Between three months and 12 months.

Between three months and a year?

MARK: Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: Maturing the cheese

gives the bacteria inside time to develop the flavor.

The longer it rests, the stronger it'll taste.

It's taken five hours and 10 minutes

to make nearly 2,400 kilos of cheddar.

Now it's vacuum packed and sent to the chiller.

All cheeses start the same way, as milk and bacteria.

But they can end up looking, tasting,

and smelling very different.

Cherry is checking out the microbiology behind

this mind-boggling variety.

Choosing my favorite cheese is like choosing

my favorite child.

But how come there are so many types of cheese?

And where does that smell come from?

I've come to Somerset to learn from award-winning cheesemaker

Roger Longman.

- Hi, Roger. - Hi.

Good to see you again.

So what are you making?

So this is gonna become a brie.

I love cheese.

- So this is like Disneyland-- - This is the right place to be.

- -for me.

The right place to be.

CHERRY HEALEY: Soft, squishy brie packs a smelly punch.

But at the extreme end of the cheeseometer--

Holy moly.

- -is this goat's cheese.

Wow.

That is a very intense smell, to be polite.

So this is a washed-rind cheese.

We wash the cheese every single day to grow a rind on it

that is made from bacteria.

So the offensive smell is caused by the bacteria.

It's given off by the bacteria.

CHERRY HEALEY: The smell is only one of the things

the bacteria are producing.

They're also altering the taste and texture of the cheese.

Now, I never thought I would say this,

but can I help you wash your cheeses?

ROGER: You can absolutely help while I wash my cheeses, yes.

This is so weird.

The bacteria we're encouraging to grow

are already in the air, which makes

them unique to this location.

ROGER: 10 miles down the road there'll

be a different bacteria, which will

create perhaps a different color and also a different flavor.

I can only make this particular cheese, this particular taste,

here.

CHERRY HEALEY: That's smell explained.

Ooh.

Yes, a cheese board.

Now there's another mystery I want to solve.

Why are there holes in Swiss cheese?

Again, that's caused by bacteria.

What we get in Swiss cheese, you get little spores

of hay dust in the milk.

It's perfectly safe.

There's no harm from it, and that just

happens to be the perfect breeding ground

for the bacteria to grow on.

The bacteria is eating some of the cheese,

and it's producing carbon dioxide.

There's big holes.

Yeah, yeah.

They do cause this sort of pocket of air,

but it can't escape out of the cheese.

So it just keeps growing, and then you

end up with this bubble inside the cheese.

It's pretty amazing.

That's actually incredible.

So far, bacteria seem to be the answer

to all my cheesy questions.

What is the blue in Stilton?

So the blue is-- it's not a bacteria.

It's not?

It's a mold, but we do add it with the starter cultures

at the start when we make the cheese.

CHERRY HEALEY: Mold is a microscopic fungus.

On bread that's gone off, it can be harmful,

but most cheese molds don't produce the same toxins.

But it's perfectly safe for people to eat

and has a tremendous flavor.

Not made in Somerset, unfortunately.

We're not allowed to make Stilton,

but it's one of the best blue cheeses around.

CHERRY HEALEY: Like champagne and Parma ham,

Stilton has protected status of origin.

So this is Stilton as well.

How come they look so completely different?

Where's the mold?

OK.

This is a young Stilton before it's developed the blue mold.

You'll see very fine cracks in it,

and that's where the blue mold will grow at a later stage.

So the spores are already in there.

They just haven't grown yet.

Why haven't they grown?

ROGER: They can't breathe.

So they need oxygen. So there's no oxygen

in that cheese at the moment.

So the mold can't grow on the inside.

So how do you get the oxygen in?

So we get the oxygen in by using a stainless-steel needle.

CHERRY HEALEY: It's a technique developed

at least 200 years ago.

ROGER: And we just basically push it in the cheese

at an angle, all the way in.

CHERRY HEALEY: There she blows.

So that is like opening the windows.

ROGER: That is opening the window.

So that the lovely spores can have enough fuel--

Absolutely.

- -to start growing.

Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY: When it's about four weeks old,

a Stilton is pierced around 100 times, which allows the mold

spores to spread, creating its blue veins

and distinctive tang.

It is very artistic.

It's probably like a snowflake.

You could cut it, and every time, it

would be a different pattern.

CHERRY HEALEY: It's beautiful.

So there we have it.

The huge variety of cheeses that we enjoy

are all thanks to mold and bacteria.

They are the unlikely heroes of the cheese board.

GREGG WALLACE: Thanks to our bacteria and three

months of maturing, the cheddar for our processed cheese

is ready.

And a new delivery is made every week

to the factory in Gateshead.

The company, run by a charity, has been making

cheesy products since 1924, and they all

start in the preparation room.

There's 200 kilos of cheddar waiting for me and New Product

Officer Sharon Cunningham to begin turning

it into spreadable cheese.

Here?

Yeah, just there.

Right.

How do you get that into a little squeezy tube?

SHARON: Now, we're gonna cut it in half.

GREGG WALLACE: Like this?

SHARON: Yeah, yeah.

Crying out loud.

The cheddar is in 20 kilo blocks,

and we need to chop them up so the factory's machines can cope

with this very dense cheese.

Do you know what?

It's better if you wiggle it.

GREGG WALLACE: I need enough cheddar for 5,400 tubes.

How many of those have I got to cut in half?

You've got to cut 196 kilograms, so there's about--

well, you've cut that one.

About another nine of them.

Yeah.

Can you phone me wife and tell her

I'm gonna be late for dinner?

Right, OK.

On the scale?

SHARON: Yes.

You're getting the hang of that now, Gregg.

That is physically really, like, quite demanding.

It takes me 20 minutes of solid slicing.

Ah.

That'll do.

I've never been so relieved to see

the back of a piece of cheese.

But it's not the only kind we're using.

We've also got 144 kilos of Gouda.

Together, they'll make up 42% of our finished spreadable cheese.

Why do you add Gouda?

SHARON: Because Gouda is a milder flavor.

Very mild.

- Compare it to that. - Oh, now.

Give us a bit.

Crying out loud.

Just done 20, 30 kilo of cheddar for you.

And what do I get?

What wouldn't fill the stomach of an average mouse.

That is a lovely, strong, mature cheddar.

- Yes. - But that's too strong for you?

Yes.

So you put the Gouda in to make it milder, basically.

- SHARON: Yeah. - Right.

How much Gouda?

I'm frightened to ask.

SHARON: 144 it'll be.

GREGG WALLACE: Thankfully, the Gouda is

soft enough to go in as it is.

We still need 15 kilos.

Go on.

Put that on.

That's a total of 340 kilos of solid cheese

that will go into our squeezy tubes.

Yes!

SHARON: Yay.

GREGG WALLACE: I've gone right off cheese.

I can imagine.

GREGG WALLACE: Cheddar was first sold as a convenience food

a whole century ago.

Ruth is finding out how it all began with food

historian Polly Russell.

Polly.

Hello.

- Great to see you again. - You, too.

You, too.

So when and where do we see the beginning

of processed cheese?

Well, we have to go back 100 years.

I'm gonna go back to Chicago, and it starts

with a man whose name will be familiar to you,

James Lewis Kraft.

- Oh. - Familiar?

Oh.

Yes, it is.

And he was the son of a German immigrant farmer,

and he was delivering cheese to Chicago on the back

of horse-drawn cars.

He wanted to find a way to produce

cheese that would not deteriorate,

that would remain totally stable.

Before modern refrigeration, cheese went off quickly

in the hot Chicago summers.

But Kraft found a way to stabilize it,

giving it a much longer shelf life.

And I have a pattern here from 1960.

Yeah, the improved process of sterilizing cheese.

By sterilizing the cheese, it is not going to deteriorate,

and that's what this patent is for.

OK.

I'll beat you.

RUTH: We're recreating the very first process cheddar by

following the original patent.

It doesn't actually specify what sort of cheddar to use.

We're using a sort of quite mature farmhouse cheddar.

There are no other ingredients.

The patent simply requires the cheese to be heated.

A temperature of 175 degrees Fahrenheit,

maintained for a period of 10 or 15 minutes,

is ample to ensure thorough sterilization.

RUTH: Processing complete.

We pour it into a container to set.

So that's it.

We've got some sterile processed cheese.

Once cool, it's ready for sampling.

Oh.

Oh my.

That's horrible.

That's just vile.

It's the texture thing.

It's like butter and chalk mixed together, isn't it?

Yeah.

RUTH: It's hard to imagine that this is what the inventor had

in mind, and it tastes nothing like today's processed cheese.

So this time, we're adding an ingredient that isn't mentioned

in the patent, but that's essential when

combining fats with liquids.

We're gonna use an emulsifier.

Now, I suspect that Kraft used an emulsifier back in 1916

because they were around then.

[music playing]

Completely different.

And that's just that little bit of emulsifier and nothing

- else. - Yeah.

It's really bound everything together, hasn't it?

This silky processed cheese was sold in blocks

and made its creator extremely rich.

By 1930, it's estimated that 40% of all cheese sold in America

was produced in Kraft factories.

We're talking about processed cheese,

but I tend to think of it, you know, like, presliced.

Yes.

Norman Kraft, brother of James, in 1935,

wanted to work out a way to make processed cheese

even more convenient for the consumer

and produced sliced cheese.

So what Norman worked out was that if you put the molten

cheese on a cold stainless steel top

and then rolled it with a cold stainless steel rolling pin,

it would remain pliable enough to get it into slices.

My goodness.

Look at that.

So that is your processed cheese slice, isn't it?

That's your processed cheese slice.

Yep.

And that first becomes available in 1950.

Have we improved it?

It's much easier to eat.

The sharpness is gone, but so is all that horrible texture.

Mm-hmm.

This is what you expect from modern processed cheese.

RUTH: It took the US by storm, its convenience

making it an instant fast-food hit

and giving us those American classics, grilled cheese

and cheeseburgers.

GREGG WALLACE: In Gateshead, we're

ready to process our blend of hard cheddar and Gouda.

Cooking it up will give it a long life, but how on Earth

are we going to make it soft and spreadable?

OK, where do we start?

Right.

Dose the water.

- Do you want to do it? - Just put that down?

Yeah.

And then you press that one.

GREGG WALLACE: It needs 177 liters of water.

Right.

What goes in now?

The liquid cheese.

Liquid cheese?

Yeah.

But that's what we're supposed to be doing,

turning this hard cheese to liquid cheese.

What we're pumping in is cheese made using different production

methods which keep it soft.

The liquid base is essential for making

and keeping our cheese squeezy.

What goes in next?

Milk powder.

It'll make it a little bit sweeter.

Wah.

Now, what goes in?

We put in the whey powder.

In there?

Yep.

GREGG WALLACE: The whey will make

our base thicker and creamier.

It's a bit hubble-bubble.

Next, it's those all-important emulsifiers--

- Stick it in? - Yep.

GREGG WALLACE: --that will stop the fats

and liquids separating.

And starch will thicken the mix like adding cornflour to gravy.

But there's still something crucial missing.

Can I put the cheese in now?

No, we have to whizz it up first.

Come on, then. Lid down?

Yep, lid down.

Is it gonna take off?

After nearly nine hours of active production,

at last, we're ready for the star of the show--

So can I put the cheese in?

Yep.

GREGG WALLACE: --and that big punch of flavor.

Right now, that's all liquid, right?

Yeah, it is.

That's like throwing a lump of cheddar into a milkshake.

Yeah.

So what do we do now, stir it around?

Yeah, yeah.

We need to mix it up.

Agitator.

- Heating. - Heat.

Yes?

Yep.

Put it on auto.

On auto.

It's a bit space age for a bit of cheese, innit?

Inside, a 12-inch steel blade strong enough

to cut through the cheddar.

And the giant blender doubles as an oven,

melting the cheese at 95-degrees Celsius

and spreading it through the migs.

on toast, but are you making it correctly?

Cherry has been getting the recipe for success.

CHERRY HEALEY: I'm heading to the University of Redding

to meet food experimenter Dr. Stuart Farrimond.

Hey, Dr. Stu.

Hey, Cherry.

Good to see you.

So are there any golden rules?

There is some serious science behind how to make

the perfect cheese on toast.

Let's start with the base, the foundation, the vehicle

for the cheese, the bread.

Now, I don't know if you've noticed this,

but when you toast brown, it never comes out quite as good

as white bread.

And there's good reasons for that.

The brown bread contains a substance called ferulic acid.

That stops this wonderful browning reaction

that goes on on the top.

So I prefer brown bread because I

think it has more flavor. STUART: Mm-hmm.

And I know it's got more fiber.

But you're saying that for cheese on toast,

white is preferable.

If we just think about taste and flavor,

then you should go for white.

CHERRY HEALEY: And Dr. Stu recommends presliced.

So you might think, let's go for the chunky, extra thick--

Yeah, let's get the chunky one.

- -getting more bread in there.

Yeah.

But most of the flavor is coming from this browning

reaction on the outside.

And so medium works out to be a really good compromise.

So the next big debate, butter or no butter?

- Butter. - Really?

Not if you're thinking about your health,

but the flavors that come from that browning reaction

blend very well with fat, which is why if you have a dry piece

of toast, you don't get the flavor

from it because you haven't got the fat there to release it.

And do we need to spread it carefully?

STUART: You need to get it right to the very edges

because this is going to let the very edge,

which isn't going to have cheese on it, have some flavor to it.

And also, it'll help prevent it from burning

when it's under the grill.

CHERRY HEALEY: Next up, the cheese.

I've got mild, medium, and extra mature cheddar.

So which one is the cheese of dreams?

The best melting cheese is either the mild or the medium.

I would have thought you'd go for the extra mature cheddar.

The longer that a cheese is aged for,

the proteins that hold it together,

they become so tightly intertwined with one another

that they can't soften quickly enough when

you put it under the grill.

So it's important that you have a fairly young cheese

if you want it to melt well.

CHERRY HEALEY: I always slice, but Dr. Stu insists on

grating and careful measuring.

50 grams of cheese is the optimum amount.

So I've probably got about 200 grams.

The accuracy doesn't stop there.

Now, you would have thought you should have it

really close--

Yes.

- -to cook it well.

But the surprising thing is, is that if you

double the distance, the heat only drops by a third.

So at this distance, you get a nice, even spread of the heat.

CHERRY HEALEY: That's a scientific 18 centimeters.

You want a medium temperature, about 130 degrees C,

because that's the temperature at which the browning

reactions will start.

CHERRY HEALEY: Science aside, cheese on toast

is a beautiful thing.

STUART: Look at that.

CHERRY HEALEY: Look at that.

But my slapdash approach won't win any beauty prizes.

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear me.

So mine is bad.

Are there are any condiments that you can use to really

take it to another level?

I like Worcester sauce.

I'd say put it on at the end, and that heightens

the flavor of the cheese and all the flavors that are in there.

CHERRY HEALEY: We're going to try mine first.

I mean, it's not bad.

It's not bad.

It's cheese, and it's toast.

How bad can it be?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

But quite hard to eat.

It's like eating through a leather sole.

Mm-hmm.

Let's try my cheese special.

Oh, it looks really nice.

- It looks better. - Ready?

Cheers.

OK.

Mm.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

I mean, it's just the yummiest thing.

It's lovely and flavorful.

Mm.

So I can safely say that you've taken a household

staple to a new level.

I've given it the science treatment.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE: At the factory, our 788 kilos

of processed cheese mix has been cooking

and blending for 35 minutes.

Big cheesy smell.

Fabulous.

Right.

What's next?

Put the jalapenos in.

GREGG WALLACE: The extra flavor for our batch--

Chilies away!

- -is a whopping 22 kilos of red and green chili peppers.

I'm guessing the green one's bitter.

Yeah.

And the red one is sweeter.

Yeah.

GREGG WALLACE: One last mix and five minutes steaming

to cook the frozen jalapenos.

Have we got cheese?

We have got cheese, yeah.

Come on.

Are you gonna have a look?

GREGG WALLACE: And our spreadable cheese is ready.

Wow.

I don't mind telling you.

That aroma is lovely.

That's a massive fondue, isn't it?

It is.

So are we ready to pull this out or--

No, we need to take a sample first.

That is red hot.

It is.

Shall we?

Yep.

Cheese!

We got cheese.

Before we can use our hot jalapeno mix,

it has to pass Sharon's quality checks.

I just can't imagine what tests you have to do on cheese.

What do you have to test it for?

We're looking at the consistency of it, so--

It's runny.

It is, yeah.

But if it was a lot runnier than that, we'd be worried.

Obviously, we need to taste it.

- Taste it? - Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I'm your man.

I get the tang from the cheddar.

And I get the heat from the chili.

Is that what you want?

Definitely.

OK.

So we'll have to put this sample in that machine.

What's it, taking an X-ray?

Not an X-ray as such.

It's like a fingerprint.

So it'll shine light into the cheese

and reflect it back to tell you what the fat and moisture

and the salt content of it is.

GREGG WALLACE: Our blend aces the tests.

Is that it? That's done?

That's it.

That cheese is ready to go into tubes?

- It is. - Sharon.

- Thank you. - Thank you very much.

- Thank you, Gregg. - Thanks for your patience.

And you, yes.

GREGG WALLACE: Our hot chili cheese

travels 30 meters and into one of these 1,500-liter tanks.

The factory makes up to four flavors at a time.

So in here, there's also salmon, prawn, and ham.

Rob Thorogood is the production manager.

Rob.

Hiya.

Gregg.

I need to get cheese from there into the squeezy tubes.

Right.

Gregg, your cheese currently is in holding tank one.

We need to get it into filler one.

And you do it with these hoses?

With these hoses.

GREGG WALLACE: In this factory, there are four filling

stations, and it's vital that my mixture

is sent to the right one.

So just like an old telephone exchange.

It is.

So this one here, that is clearly pumping.

And actually, that is red hot.

What are the challenges with moving cheese?

One, to keep it hot so it stays liquid

and to keep it moving, continuously

moving all the time.

But if this doesn't stay hot, it will start to go thick.

It will.

No one wants pipes full of solid cheese, right?

Definitely not.

GREGG WALLACE: How long have you got to move it through?

You've got about an hour to keep it moving.

Right.

That, unscrew it?

Unscrew it.

And then tighten it with the big spanner.

You push the green button.

Your cheese is now on its way over.

Yeah, OK.

That's moving.

Gallons of red hot liquid cheese.

It's quite scary.

It is.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE: My hot and squeezy jalapeno mix has

reached its filling station.

Right. What's this?

These are the tubes.

Ah.

We're going to fill 5,400 of them

with our 810 kilos of processed cheese.

So Gregg, this is what you call the finger picker.

A finger picker.

It picks 16 tubes up at a time.

GREGG WALLACE: The machine is lifting them straight

from their delivery box.

Two rubber disks go inside, captures it, flips it over,

and then it gets pulled up by what you call a ring.

Oh, I can see.

It's like a big fork.

The tubes are spun into the right position

with pinpoint accuracy.

And those two blue lights--

it's more lights-- is looking for this blue mark

all the time.

That will align them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If it wasn't the right way around, were it bent,

it might bend down the middle of the info.

And you want it to seal like that?

Like that, every time.

Yeah.

Every time.

Clever, clever.

The empty tubes are in place.

And above the machine is our vats of jalapeno cheese,

bubbling away at 85 degrees Celsius.

So the cheese is up there in that hopper.

How is it getting into those tubes?

What look like steel udders, inside

there is a metal spindle.

The cheese comes down, starts filling.

And as it starts to put the hot cheese in, it comes away.

Yep.

GREGG WALLACE: So it's got the right amount.

150 grams goes into each tube, leaving

enough space to seal it in.

Now, there's a 400-degree blast of air.

It's so hot, it melts the ends of the tubes together.

And finally, the machine neatly trims off the edges.

State of the art engineering so that we can squirt

some cheese out of a tube.

Yep.

GREGG WALLACE: It's taken 45 minutes

to fill my batch of tubes.

Now, they're weighed and X-rayed to make sure there's

nothing inside but our mix.

Now, what happens to our tubes of cheese?

Now, the tubes go into the blast chiller,

ready for packing for the customers.

Surprisingly, the rather refined cheese cracker

started life as this, the hardtack ship's biscuit.

Made for sailors to eat on long sea voyages,

they were thick and tough.

That is rock hard.

In 1831, a factory baking ship's biscuits

was established here in Carlisle by Jonathan Dodgson-Carr.

Mr. Carr went on to develop a thinner ship's biscuit that was

much more delicate, and fit for the captain's table,

and advertised to be eaten with cheese.

These table-water biscuits were an instant hit

and have been made here ever since.

Hi, Tony. Lovely to meet you.

Hi, Cherry.

Nice to meet you.

So what's happening right now?

We're just about to set a mix up.

CHERRY HEALEY: Tony Kidd makes 7 million crackers every day.

It's a deceptively simple recipe, 600 kilos

of flour mixed with 155 liters of water,

plus a little oil and salt.

Oh, wow.

Look at that.

God, it is so crumbly.

The mix is sent downstairs, where Tony

is going to show me the secret of transforming

it into a crispy cracker.

TONY: It then goes through a set of rollers.

CHERRY HEALEY: Oh, look how-- can I touch it?

Yeah, yeah.

So when it comes out of that set of rollers--

CHERRY HEALEY: Wow.

TONY: --that's about three and a half centimeters.

I mean, it's like a paving stone.

It's so heavy and dense.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's really, really bound together tightly.

This dense, heavy dough is thinned down

through a series of rollers to just four

and a half millimeters.

So what on Earth is going on here?

So it just goes through our lamination process.

What is a lamination process?

To me, lamination is when you put

a plastic sheet over something.

TONY: Basically, the lamination puts layers in it.

So it's a layering process.

It's a layering process.

So you've now got six sheets of dough.

Why have you done that?

We'll see further down the process.

CHERRY HEALEY: The layers are flattened

and rerolled until the sheet is just 1.5 millimeter thick.

Oh, here we go.

And then finally--

All right.

- -we have our final sheet.

Oh, that is-- it looks like material.

It's so thin.

It looks like a kind of cotton sheet.

Yeah.

So is it now ready to be cut out?

It is, yes.

CHERRY HEALEY: The dough speeds under a cutting

roller, which punches out more than 5,000 crackers a minute.

Oh, look.

Here we are.

Oh, these are amazing.

- God, they're so thin. - Yeah.

- Can I pick one up? - Yeah, you can pick one up.

Ooh.

It is quite thin.

It's incredibly thin.

I mean, look at that.

That is paper thin, nearly.

Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY: The delicate disks head

into a 150-foot oven, heated to an intense 370-degrees Celsius,

emerging two and a half minutes later as hot crisp crackers.

Hooray.

Look at these.

Oh my gosh.

Here they are.

Can we take one off the line?

They are very warm.

You've got-- you've got to move fast.

- Wow. - They are very warm.

Can I try it?

Yeah, you can try it, yeah.

Mm.

It's really flaky.

Is that because of that lamination process?

It is, yeah.

Yeah, that's-- that's the six layers

of flakiness that it gives you, that lamination process.

And that's why you get that lovely crunch.

Yeah, the bite.

CHERRY HEALEY: Over 150 years of biscuit-making tradition--

Coming to a cheese board near you.

And to think, it all started from a rock hard ship's

biscuit.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE: In Gateshead, my 5,400 tubes of jalapeno cheese

has arrived in packaging.

- That's cold now. - Oh, definitely.

Last time I touched it, it was red hot.

Now, it's really cold.

Below 5 degrees.

GREGG WALLACE: The tubes have been

blast chilled at -15 degrees C.

Now, they're cold.

What happens to them?

So now they get put into trays of 12.

And this is our robot.

I know it's weird, but it seems to me like the machine

is really pleased with itself.

It's lovely.

It's stacking them up like soldiers on parade there.

- It is. - Isn't it?

It's fantastic.

We all need a machine like this to organize our homes,

don't we?

That's how I would like my sock drawer.

Mate, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's 11 hours and 56 minutes since production began

with milk, and now my tubes are being loaded, 15 at a time,

into 450 boxes.

They travel into a massive 800-square meter chiller,

and from there, orders are collected for distribution.

Today, Managing Director Paul Looney is

sending them off to the shops.

Oi.

How are you, Gregg?

You're the big boss.

Cheese ready to go?

Absolutely.

So as accurately as you can, how many actual tubes

leave your factory every day?

Every day, Gregg, we'll ship about 115,000 tubes.

Seven days a week?

Seven days a week, across the whole country.

We can't be eating that many.

Trust me.

You are.

This is our last pallet, isn't it?

Yeah, it's looking like he's ready to go.

- Should we let him load? - Yep.

Take it away, Alan.

GREGG WALLACE: From here, it's distributed to supermarkets

all over the UK.

It also has fans as far afield as Malta, Greece, and Korea.

What a journey for a piece of cheese,

from a creamery in North Wales to a factory in Gateshead.

We started off with enormous blocks of cheddar

that I had to cut in half, and then add Gouda, then

a lot of other ingredients, then cook

it all up, all so that it would fit inside a squeezy tube.

Amazing.

[music playing]