Episode 1 Food Detectives

Every day, we face a huge number of choices about food.

Everything from what we buy...

To whether it's good for us...

And how to cook it.

Beautiful.

In this series, we're going to use our expertise

to help you make the best food choices.

We want to improve your cooking...

-Well done, girl.

-Looks delicious.

-High five that!

..your health...

Even if I've washed my hands, my forearms are still contaminated.

..and your bank balance.

What are you getting when you spend extra money?

I'm scientist Alice Roberts.

I'll be looking at the latest research into nutrition

to find out what's good for us and what's not.

I'm journalist Sean Fletcher.

I'll investigate which everyday products are value for money

and which are a rip-off.

And I'm chef Tom Kerridge.

I'll be sharing my tricks of the trade that

I guarantee will fire up your taste buds.

Wow, that looks great.

We're going to dish up the plain facts

-so we can all enjoy our food more.

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

When it comes to food, there's more choice out there than ever before

and it can be overwhelming.

We want to make your lives simpler,

so we're going to cut through the conflicting advice

to reveal what you really need to know about food.

To start the series, I'll investigate a major health risk

that most of us are unaware of...

Three quarters of shoppers are taking home a food poisoning

bacterium with them from the supermarket.

..and find out what we can do to avoid getting sick.

If you think how few organisms you need to make you ill...

And look at that. It's even on the baby's cup.

Sean pulls apart everyday foods to discover

if expensive is always better...

Looking at these, there's not much difference, is there,

in terms of the ingredients?

..and Tom reveals his easy-to-follow professional techniques to

help transform our cooking.

It hasn't shrunk up too much because of that brining process.

And I promise you now, beautiful, crispy, crackling skin.

First up...

What do you think is the biggest cause of food poisoning in Britain?

Maybe undercooked sausages, or seafood from a restaurant, perhaps?

Well, no, it's chicken, and the shocking fact is that most

of the chicken in our supermarkets is contaminated with bacteria

that can make you seriously ill.

So with potentially such a big public health scandal,

wouldn't you expect everyone to know about it?

We're interested in food poisoning

and whether you could name any bugs which might cause it.

-Salmonella.

-Salmonella.

-Salmonella.

-Salmonella, that's the only one I know.

-Salmonella.

-Yes.

-Listeria.

-Yes. All of those, all of those.

-Campylobacter?

-I haven't heard of that one.

-No.

-No.

-No.

No. Never heard of that.

Campylobacter is responsible for a quarter of a million

cases of food poisoning in the UK every year.

If you've had an upset stomach recently,

it may well have been the cause.

You may not have heard of campylobacter

but the supermarkets know all about it.

A report by the Food Standards Agency in May 2015 found that,

incredibly, more than 70% of fresh chickens sold in supermarkets

were contaminated with this food poisoning bug.

To find out more about it, I've come to

the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh.

I'm meeting Professor Mark Stevens, an expert in foodborne illness.

-Hello, Mark.

-Hello.

-Is that actually campylobacter that you've got there?

Yes, it is. Growing on the surface of this jelly medium

are colonies of campylobacter.

You can perhaps just make them out as these small circular colonies

about a millimetre wide.

Are the bacteria in that dish enough to make me ill?

Oh, my goodness, there's much more there than would make you ill.

Each one of those colonies contains maybe 100 million bacterial cells

and perhaps just 500 bacterial cells are thought to be

sufficient to cause infection.

In the UK, tens of thousands of people require hospital

treatment as a result of this bug

and every year it claims the lives of over 100 people.

The main source of contamination can be traced to the supermarkets.

Of the seven major stores tested by the FSA between 2014 and '15,

Asda was the worst performer with a contamination rate of around 80%.

Even the best-rated supermarket, Tesco,

had a contamination rate of 67%.

To us, this bug can prove fatal,

but to the chicken, it's relatively harmless.

The chicken intestine just seems to be the perfect

home for campylobacter.

How is it getting out of the gut onto the meat that we're eating?

The process by which birds are slaughtered

is actually rather mechanical.

It can involve mechanical gutting of the birds

and some of that gut content can contaminate the surface of the bird.

Spending more on a free-range organic chicken won't keep you safe.

Most poultry is slaughtered in exactly the same way.

Here's a whole range of supermarket chickens and it's a bit of a lottery

to know which ones might be contaminated and which ones aren't.

But since the Food Standards Agency report, both supermarkets and

the poultry farmers have promised to try to clean up their act.

Now, we want to know if that's happening,

so we've commissioned our own survey.

We asked a public health laboratory to test

chickens from a range of different supermarkets and butchers.

Tests were carried out on 58 birds.

We'll be back later to find out the results

and to see what simple steps we need to take to avoid getting sick.

It's really quite simple. Just a little bit of pre-organisation

and a definite no-no on the washing of the chicken.

We're on a mission to improve home cooking one dish at a time.

It doesn't matter if you're an accomplished cook or

a kitchen rookie, Tom's tips could transform your cooking.

I put a shoutout on social media for your kitchen fails.

It's clear there's a lot of you struggling with dishes

that always go wrong.

But don't despair. I can help.

When training as a chef, I had my fair share of kitchen fails,

but fortunately, I was surrounded by people that could put me

on the right track.

As a result, I have an escape route for pretty much

every kitchen nightmare.

This time, I want to help Suzanne Rock with her kitchen fail -

salmon fillets.

Oh, no!

It seems to be going from one disaster to another.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I need help.

We're ditching and we're starting again.

Suzanne, who works in events, lives in Poole in Dorset.

She loves fish but she just can't seem to cook it.

She's asked for my help, so I'm on my way to see what I can do.

-Suzanne.

-Hi, Tom.

-Tom, really nice to meet you.

-Shall we go on in and find out what's going on?

-Yeah.

Suzanne's going to show me how she normally cooks

her salmon fillets so that I can see where she's going wrong.

I put my pan on to heat. Coat my salmon skin in olive oil.

-Straight away? Just like that?

-Yeah.

-OK.

This is where I get a bit...

I press it down to get the skin to crisp up.

The thing is, as well, the pan, it's not sizzling and it's on full.

It's not heating up very well.

-Then, lemon.

-Now?

-Yes.

You're quite nervous, you're not quite sure about anything

-that's going on...

-No.

-So you're playing around with it,

turning it up. Prodding it.

It's like having all the notes to an amazing song

but played in the wrong way!

Ah, it's separated away from the skin.

It has, indeed!

-It doesn't look very appetising.

-It's soft.

-There.

-I just don't know if the middle's cooked.

OK, the middle is raw.

There's a difference between nice and pink

and almost being revivable so that it can swim back off!

-This, this is pretty raw.

-That looks bad.

Suzanne has somehow managed to overcook and undercook her salmon.

She's making a few common mistakes,

but hopefully with my help she'll never make them again.

Now, I'm going to show her a fail-safe way to cook

this fish perfectly.

You're going to be cooking this.

What I want you to do is score it.

Scoring the skin prevents it curling up.

Freshest salmon you can get. That's exactly what you need.

And I've just salted it in rock salt for ten minutes.

It draws out moisture,

because moisture is going to be your enemy in getting a crispy skin.

Right.

And the next thing, skin side down into the flour.

It acts as a barrier from the pan

-and it'll also mean that it doesn't stick to the pan.

-OK.

-So, we're ready for cooking.

-Right!

-Get rid of this!

-Wrong pan?

-Wrong pan. This is good for steaks.

For getting a nice, crispy, even skin on a fish, no good.

We put a nonstick pan on.

Heat on, my friend.

-At this point, you actually put the salmon into the pan.

-Yes.

The pan wasn't hot.

When you cook fish at too low a heat, it causes the protein

to break down slowly.

This forms a strong bond between the fish and the pan.

So unless you want it to stick like glue, make sure your pan is hot.

So I was doing it too slow to start with, with a cold pan.

And then when the heat came through, it was too hot.

And you create steam. How else did you create steam, as well?

Put in the lemon juice.

Putting the lemon juice in. So you put the lemon juice in right

at the beginning, so straight away you're making your skin

that you want to be crispy go soggy.

Now, we're going to cook it 85% to 90% of the time skin side down.

-So nice and slowly.

-So don't turn it at all before then.

-Don't turn it at all.

-Leave it alone, essentially.

-Leave it alone. Can you smell anything?

-No.

And that comes from it being very, very fresh fish.

When fish smells, it means that it's old.

Fish tissue contains an odourless compound,

but when the fish dies, bacteria

and enzymes quickly break this down into chemicals like ammonia.

This is what makes it smell bad and, more importantly, taste bad.

-At this point, this is where you've got to be brave.

-OK.

You're going to flip the salmon over

and this is the point where we're going to use the steaming process.

Put a couple of little knobs of butter into the pan.

And then squeeze that lemon juice. That's enough.

All that bubbling, that's the steam.

Baste the top of the salmon.

That looks delicious.

Wow.

OK, Suzanne, the final test.

Cocktail stick. Stick that in the middle.

If it goes in and out without any resistance,

you know it's cooked perfectly.

-No resistance.

-Perfect.

-Great.

There you are. You've just cooked a perfect bit of fish.

-Well done, girl.

-Looks delicious!

-High five that.

The perfect accompaniment,

the classic French sauce beurre noisette -

melted butter, lemon juice, capers and some chopped dill and parsley.

Suzanne's produced a great plate of fish

and husband Paul's well impressed.

Perhaps next time he could give it a go.

That's fantastic.

If you need help with your kitchen fail, then share it on

social media using...

I'll pick a few and tell you where you're going wrong.

A red pepper contains more vitamin C than an orange.

The answer is true.

A red bell pepper contains nearly three times more vitamin C

than an orange.

We Brits love supermarket own-label items.

In fact, they make up more than half of what's in our trolleys.

Supermarkets offer different ranges of their own-brand products

at different price points -

basic, standard and premium.

But when is it worth spending extra on premium,

and when can we get away with a money-saving basic?

Many of us are unsure of whether the basic ranges

really are value for money.

So we're going to find out by putting these everyday

products through rigorous tests.

We're going to pull apart own-brand products across the price ranges

to see what they're made of, what they taste like

and whether there are any nutritional differences.

We're going to dissect own-brand products

here at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.

This time it's that store cupboard staple - pasta.

Premium pasta can be over £1 more expensive than budget,

so I want to find out what we're paying for.

To help me is nutritionist Dr Carrie Ruxton.

She's going to take me through the ingredients.

Looking at these, there's not much difference, is there,

in terms of the ingredients?

No. In fact, pasta usually has just one ingredient,

which is durum wheat semolina.

It makes a very pliable dough that's easy to make

into these pasta shapes.

Some of the cheaper pastas contain soft wheat.

This ingredient has less protein than pasta made with only

durum wheat, so it can lack that al dente bite.

We've got all these different shapes here and what you'll find

is that the premium tends to be this pennoni regati.

Pennoni means a wider quill.

Then, in these other pastas,

they're much more narrow and they're called just penne.

What that means is that these nice big quills with the ridges on them

are much better at holding your delicious sauce

as opposed to these narrow ones.

Now, I had a sneaky look at these pastas

and they're all made in Italy.

Yes, they're all made in Italy, but they're not necessarily eaten by

the Italians because in Italy, there is a law that says you can't sell

something as pasta unless it only contains the durum wheat semolina.

So while the Italians might make this budget pasta that

contains the soft wheat flour, they only sell it outside of Italy.

That's the ingredients, but what about the taste?

We've invited a group of volunteers to help us carry out a taste test.

First, what would they normally choose?

Who here would buy budget pasta?

Sometimes I think it's as good as one of the others.

And what about those who would buy premium?

I would buy premium. The cat would never eat any budget stuff.

So if the cat would never eat it, I don't eat it.

Our volunteers will try ten different pasta samples from four of

the UK's major supermarkets, ranging from budget, standard to premium.

It's a blind taste test, so nobody knows

if they're eating the cheap or expensive kind.

They'll sample the pasta without sauce

so it's just the taste of the pasta being tested.

Dr Laura Wyness is carrying out the test.

What we'd like you to do is rank in terms of overall likeness

each sample, so one being "extremely dislike"

to nine being "extremely like".

# Hey mambo, mambo Italiano

# Hey, hey mambo, mambo Italiano

# Go, go Jo... #

So, what are the results?

It was actually the standard that came out on top -

it had an average score of 6.1 out of a possible 9 -

followed closely by the budget with 6.0,

and then the premium which scored 4.9.

Oh, poor old premium!

So in our taste test, standard was just a fraction

ahead of budget with premium lagging well behind.

And it's interesting when we look at the price.

The budget is around about 30 pence, the standard is between 50

and 80 pence and the premium is between £1.25 and £1.70.

So that's more than £1 per pack for the premium

and it may not necessarily taste any better.

Well, according to our panel, it tastes worse.

I'm just glad I don't spend the money on the premium.

Earlier, I found out that a report from 2015 showed that

most supermarket chicken was contaminated

with the food poising bug campylobacter.

Now, the Food Standards Agency took the rather unusual measure

of naming and shaming supermarkets who promised to clean up their act.

So, is there any evidence that that's happened?

To find out, we asked a public health laboratory to analyse

58 chickens bought from the major supermarkets

and some independent butchers.

So will our tests show an improvement on the FSA figures?

Professor Mark Stevens has the results.

So in the recent BBC survey, the total number of birds that

were positive for campylobacter were 74%, and that compares nearly

identically with the 73% of birds in the Food Standards Agency report.

Compared to the Food Standards Agency survey, ours was on a much

smaller scale, but even so, clearly there's still a major problem.

For me, the most important finding is that still three quarters

of shoppers are taking home a food poisoning bacterium

with them from the supermarket.

We put the findings of our survey to the British Poultry Council.

They told us...

Asda told us...

And Tesco said...

The efforts to cut campylobacter infection in chicken flocks

aren't going to fix the problem overnight,

so for a while at least,

the chicken that you buy does pose an infection risk.

But if you're sitting at home thinking,

"That's it, I'm going to stop eating chicken," don't panic,

because even heavily-contaminated chicken can be completely

safe to eat if you follow a few simple rules.

Hygiene expert Dr Lisa Ackerley is helping me work out

what those rules are.

In one half of this kitchen,

Lisa will prepare chicken the correct way,

and I'll show what can happen if you're a little less careful.

We do have another trick up our sleeves -

that is that our chickens have been laced with a dye which is only

visible under ultraviolet light.

This should allow us to see

how quickly campylobacter could spread around your kitchen.

Right, then. Chicken for dinner tonight, then.

Let's get this bird out. I'm going to give it a wash.

Oh, my God.

Alice, I'm doing my salad first.

Oh, I see. Well, look, I want to get my bird in the oven because

I'm in a rush and once that's cooking,

then I can get on with the salad.

Mine is ready to go in the oven.

My dinner is going to ready long before yours.

I think it is, yes. It's not going to take you long to do the salad.

I do recycle my plastics, so I'm going to give that

a bit of a wash off.

OK, salad time. So I am going to clean up a little bit now.

-Looks like you need to.

-I think so.

I'm just flipping the board over to make the salad on the other side,

so I'm not getting the salad in contact with the fresh meat.

Alice, I'm catching up with you. You are, aren't you?

I really thought that doing the chicken first I was going to save

a lot of time, but I'm not saving that much time, actually.

Oh, Lisa, before you tidy up completely,

I'd quite like to see what's going on at both our stations now.

That'll be interesting, won't it?

So let's see just how much we've spread the UV campylobacter around.

Please could you kill the lights?

THEY GASP

Any potential bacteria that we've spread around show up

as bright spots under the UV light.

The reason that most of this is like this, I've touched this

with my hands, I haven't been fastidious about washing my hands.

I've got it up my arms as well, my forearms,

so even if I've washed my hands, my forearms are still contaminated.

Look at this chopping board. You turned that over, didn't you?

What about over here? Oh, my goodness.

It looks like a crime scene. That's disgusting.

That just shows how important it is not to wash your chicken,

and if you think how few organisms you need to make you ill...

And look at that. It's even on the baby's cup.

Although it looks horrendous,

by following Lisa's advice, you can avoid getting sick.

It's really quite simple. It's just a little bit of pre-organisation

and a definite no-no on the washing of the chicken,

and don't forget the packaging as well.

A lot of people are washing packaging.

Get that straight in the bin.

So I've done really badly over here.

How about you, Lisa? How have you done?

Let's have a look.

-That's it. Three tiny spots.

-Yeah.

You were about to clean up, as well,

-so I think you would remove those.

-Oh, yeah.

To stay safe, cook your chicken thoroughly.

Bin the packaging, don't recycle it. Never wash your chicken,

use separate chopping boards for meat and veg

and try to touch the chicken as little as possible.

To deliver great-tasting food,

chefs develop a range of clever techniques.

I want to let you in on a few of my personal favourites.

Now, I've been in professional kitchens for over 20 years

and in that time, I've learnt plenty of tricks and tips.

And I'd like to share with you some of my trade secrets to help

you improve the cooking in your home.

Here's a top trick of the trade.

It's how restaurants produce meat that melts in the mouth

and tastes so much better than if you cooked it at home.

This tip is all about a process called brining.

It helps deliver moisture and flavour to a dish.

Follow this trade secret and you can transform a simple cut of meat

into something amazing.

Now, this pork belly takes quite a long time to cook.

It's got a lot of sinew and a lot of muscle that needs to break down

and to help that process, we're going to put it in a brine.

That brine will give it flavour.

That's where we'll season it as well, get it right into the meat.

When most people think of a brine, they think of the salty water that

tuna comes in, but a professional brine does a slightly different job.

This brining process starts with one litre of water.

Add 200g of salt, some herbs and spices for flavouring,

and then some sugar to balance out the salt.

I'm just going to put it onto the heat, bring it to the boil

so that the salt and sugar dissolves.

Now, once it's come up to the boil and everything's dissolved,

turn the heat off and you have this beautiful, salty brine mixture

just gone cold here, and this brine is going to go on top of the pork.

Pour the brine over the meat and pop it into the fridge overnight.

OK.

Little secret that you lot might not know is that in the cooking process

it can lose up to 30% of its weight in moisture,

just in evaporation in that tray whilst it's in the oven.

Now, what happens with the brining process is it helps to

lock in a lot of that moisture. It can reduce that

figure down to around about 15%.

The dissolved salt causes the cells of the meat to absorb

the water in the brine.

This water binds with the proteins of the meat,

locking the moisture inside.

So this pork belly is now ready to go in the oven.

Just going to pop it onto a roasting tray just slightly

lifted from the bottom with a rack.

Into an oven now. Preheated, 150 degrees centigrade,

and I'm going to cook it for about two and a half to three hours.

MUSIC: At Last by Etta James

Look at that.

The smell is fantastic.

It hasn't shrunk up too much because of that brining process.

And I promise you now...

..beautiful, crispy, crackling skin.

This is what transforms an average piece of meat into something

any professional chef would be proud of.

And you can try it with other meats, such as chicken or turkey.

If you look at how beautiful that pork is.

Really moist, full of flavour.

That is the best pork ever.

You can find this trade secret and more on the website.

Next time...

Should we all be going gluten free?

We carry out an experiment to find out.

Do you think it might be a bit of a fad?

I do, yeah.

Sean reveals how to make huge savings by using new tricks

to buy your favourite foods...

With a little time and effort, there are serious savings to be made.

..and Tom rides to the rescue of another kitchen disaster.

There's definitely white and a yolk,

they're just in two separate parts of the pan.