Just Add Water Food Factory

Orange Squash and instant tomato soup in a cup,

they're two of the most popular supermarket foods.

But what do they do to the oranges and the tomatoes

so that all we have to do is add water?

To find out, we're going to make our own, from scratch.

We think we know these foods,

but how much do we really know about them?

Do you reckon there are any real oranges in orange squash?

There must be a few.

No.

If there are, I think it's a really small amount.

How many tomatoes do you reckon are in that sachet of instant soup?

I don't think there are any in here.

One small tomato. THEY LAUGH

When I was a kid I used to get in masses of trouble

for playing with my food, but now it's what I like doing most.

I love finding out what happens to the stuff that we eat.

But finding out what factories do to our food isn't easy.

So to copy the big boys, I've set up my own Food Factory

here in this barn.

To help me discover what the masters of mass production do,

I'm going to need some factory workers.

Clocking on for today's shift are two stars of Saturday night TV,

Strictly Come Dancing's Anton Du Beke

and I'd Do Anything winner Jodie Prenger.

But whose version of today's supermarket food

will go in the basket and whose will go in the bin?

Our shift at the Food Factory is about to begin.

Jodie and Anton, brilliant to have you here,

thank you for coming.

What we're going to be making today is a supermarket product, I'm going to show you what it is.

Ooh!

-Orange Squash!

-Was this ever part of your world when you were a kid?

-Yeah, massively.

-Yes.

School sports days, really bad memories.

I never won the egg and spoon race.

So you drank a lot of squash on the way?

A lot of squash on the way. That got me through it.

The worst days of my life, so I love you.

It's lovely, isn't it?

It's something that we've all grown up with, as well.

Even now I'm partial to a little squash.

THEY LAUGH

-You ready for this?

-BOTH: Yes.

I think it's time to start your shift at the barn. You better follow me in.

There's a surprise ingredient inside every bottle of squash,

but I'm not going to tell them what it is yet.

So...thirsty?

-Yes.

-Yes.

-Yes?

I just want you to have a little taste and explain

what the flavour is to me, is it different from orange juice?

-Yes.

-Yes.

In what way?

It's sort of thinner....

-Yes.

-For a start, refreshing. Yes.

OK.

Your challenge is this, to make two rival bottles of orange squash

using the same techniques that they use in a food factory.

Then we're going to offer them to a group of Taste Testers

and it's they who will decide whose orange squash is most like

the ones you buy from the supermarket.

First of all, I think you need to meet your ingredients.

-Ah!

-Make friends!

-Oh. Surprise!

Well, it is a bit of a surprise

because orange squash does come from real oranges.

So the first task is to extract the juice. Grab your buckets...

-Thank you!

-..and get to work.

They're not quite on their own.

My factory foremen Marty and Tod are here to help.

We're going to do a double mechanical juicer,

and we're going to make it bicycle powered.

I can't ride a bike!

They need to get as much juice from their three dozen oranges

as quickly as possible to funnel all the fresh flavour into their squash.

We'll squash that down

-using a car jack. Orange will all come beautifully flowing.

-Beautifully flowing out.

Both these methods are designed to get into the juice

inside the orange, which is held inside it

in these funny little blister-like things called vesicles.

They're really hard to get out of the orange like this.

So what I'm going to do is freeze one first.

I'm going to do it using a super-chilly liquid,

called liquid nitrogen - minus 196 degrees centigrade.

One peeled orange.

Looks like it should be ready.

Just need to give it a light tap.

Let's slow that right down.

I can show you all the tiny vesicles much more clearly.

And it's great fun.

And there is one of the vesicles.

Inside this little bag is lots of water,

lots of sugar and a tiny little bit of orange oil.

And that's where the orange gets its flavour.

The production lines are ready to roll.

But who can produce the most juice?

-All set?

-Let's do it.

Please start your production line.

Jodie and Marty have assembled a bicycle powered squeezing machine.

The harder Jodie pedals, the faster the juicers spin,

the more juice should flow into the bucket...

Look at this! He's covered in orange juice.

It's like an orange shower going on here.

Anton and Tod's juice press

looks more like a mediaeval torture device.

Start your production line.

-OK. Lower the top.

-Yep.

They're hoping to juice a dozen oranges at a time.

The juice is supposed to flow through a hollow spike

pierced into each orange.

But it looks like it's flooding over the edge.

Juice is coming out.

Juice is coming out, you have produced some juice.

Some? Loads! It's like a torrential rainfall of juice.

I can smell it, as well!

-Look, that's the smell of orange squash.

-We're in production.

-We have smell!

-Smell?

We've had have smell since....

That's because you've been pedalling so much, love! We have orange smell!

There's an orangey aroma

and juice in their buckets, but who's let loose most juice?

OK, Anton. Let's have a look at you. You got...

-5cm.

-4cm. Behave yourself.

Your eyes are bad.

And, Jodie, you got 5cm. Blimey. Now that's great.

But what we're making here is concentrated orange squash.

Not all of the flavour of your squash comes from orange juice,

it comes from something else.

-Lemons!

-Lemons!

-Limes!

-It's got to be limes.

-It's got to be limes. No, it hasn't.

What?

The clue's here. It says it's whole orange squash.

I hope you didn't throw away any waste matter?

No. Got buckets.

Buckets of it, excellent.

THEY LAUGH

So some of the orangey flavour in your squash

will come from orange peel.

Have a little taste. Just a little nibble, at the side.

-So what does that taste like?

-It tastes zingy.

-Uh-huh.

-Quite sharp.

-Pleasant?

-No.

It's quite bizarre that you need to put peel in your squash.

But of course you can't hide that in squash,

so you need to come up with some machines.

You need machines which will pulp your peel.

Back to work please, team!

More work! I hope it's not another bike!

I hope you have a space hopper this time!

Come on, come on. No time to muck about. Take that with you.

What are they like?

While Anton and Jodie search for the secrets of squash,

I'm going to find out what soup-in-a-cup makers really use

to put the tomato flavour in powdered soup.

-Do you think there are any tomatoes in a dry...?

-No

-..tomato soup?

-Sadly not.

I really hope so!

There should be, but I sincerely doubt there is.

I guess you'd like to think they were somehow dried

and condensed and there was loads of them in there,

but probably something horrifying like quarter of a tomato or less!

Loads of us have this stuff on standby.

Instant tomato soup in a cup.

Just add water and the powder magically transforms

into steaming soup.

And amazingly, it really does start with tomatoes.

Aah!

Honest. But what does the factory do to turn them into powder?

Well, first there's something they have to get rid of.

Here we go!

Water. There's lots of it.

About 95% of a tomato's weight is water.

Oh-ho! Look at all that liquid.

But the thing is, all this liquid has got to go,

it's got to go, leaving behind a bone dry powder.

As well as water, tomatoes contain lots of seeds.

No-one wants seeds in their sachet of soup.

So I'm rigging up a filter to get rid of them.

I give you...the spatulator!

This is my version of what they use in the factory.

So down here I've got a bit of mesh, and hopefully when I spin this,

these spatulas will push all of my tomato pulp through that,

leaving behind all the bits of peel and all those seeds.

See if it works.

It's working, it's coming through! it's coming through!

Right, let's see if we can crank this up to factory speed.

HE LAUGHS

The answer's no.

Oooh! Look at that!

Lovely liquid and no pips, but still way too watery to go in a sachet.

But if I boil it up, some of the water will evaporate

and I'll be left with nice, thick concentrated juice.

But then soup in-a-cup makers do something clever

to turn it into powder.

Here's my version.

No, it's not a rocket, this is my spray drier.

And this is how it's going to work, heat guns.

We're going to put one heat gun in here and one in here,

and they're going to heat up this drum.

Then, we're going to put my tomato liquid into this paint sprayer

and spray it through this hole in the top.

Hopefully, all of the water will turn instantly to steam

and come out of the top,

and my delicious tomatoey powder will all fall to the bottom.

Here goes, it's 120 degrees centigrade inside the drum,

so no copying at home, this is risky!

Paint sprayer, with tomato juice, that looks pretty good.

At this high temperature, the water in my concentrated juice

should turn to steam and evaporate instantly.

Hopefully, the magic is all going on inside.

If it's not hot enough,

the concentrate will simply fall to the bottom.

But crank the heat too high, it'll burn and ruin the flavour.

It's a really fine balance but I haven't a clue if it's working.

So will there be a lovely dusting of red tomato powder at the bottom?

Oh, it's like a really thick liquid!

That's a bit of a disaster.

The temperature at the top was about 120.

Maybe if I really push it up lot higher, get it up to 160-180,

maybe that would do the trick.

Improved spray drier, Mark Two!

Now with twice the power!

It's now over 180 degrees centigrade. Here goes.

I'm getting some really strong tomato smells, but I don't know

if that's a wonderful dried tomato or if it's burnt tomato.

OK, let's open it up and see what I've got.

Ha-ha! Yes!

That is tomato powder.

Ha-ha! It might look like rust but it tastes like delicious tomato.

So proof, that there are real tomatoes in instant soup,

roughly one or two in each sachet.

But there's lots of other stuff in there too.

At the factory, they add more vegetable powders,

potato starch to thicken it, dried onions and herb for flavour.

They even add some extra red colour from this beetroot extract.

And it's not finished yet, in go sugar and salt, vegetable fat,

and here's a surprise - milk powder, to make it creamy.

It looks like beef soup at the moment.

That is quite strange.

It's like a tomato-vegetable soup I guess. But really good.

I think that's pretty decent.

My very own tomato soup-in-a-cup.

But only our Taste Testers can decide

whether mine's as good as shop-bought stuff.

Ho, ho, ho, do I have a treat for you!

What sort of taste do you think it has?

Quite salty...gravy granule taste.

Doesn't taste of a huge amount.

That's not bad, actually.

Hey, my man! Thank you very much!

It's got tomato and a bit of herbs.

Yes.

Back in the barn, Anton and Jodie have discovered

the secret inside every bottle of orange squash.

It's something we would normally throw away. The peel.

-Now we've got to turn this...

-Yeah.

-..to make that more concentrated.

-Right.

So what's so special about an ingredient which tastes so bad,

yet it gives squash such a powerful punch?

Orange peel tastes horrible

because it lacks all the sugar that's in the flesh.

However, it's also rammed with a potent orange flavour.

Take a look at this. Put this under the microscope.

See all these little dots, well, these are the oil glands

and they contain the zest or the essential oil of the orange.

It's under pressure in here.

And if you squeeze the peel,

it squirts out like you're squeezing a spot.

In fact, there's 50 times more essential oil in the peel

than the flesh.

It's highly flammable too - set it alight

and you can see just how much oil there really is.

The peel is a massive source of flavour.

It would be a crime not to put the peel in.

That's why they call it whole orange squash.

It's got the whole orange in it, but you didn't notice

because on the ingredients list, they call the peel "comminute",

comminuted orange.

Now Anton and Jodie have to work out how to comminute their peel

to transform it from waste into extra taste.

That's the first thing that sprung to my mind, as well.

Did that come to your mind, as well?

I want to smash something up, I'm going to get a lawnmower.

Jodie hopes the upturned lawnmower

will unleash all the extra flavour in her peel.

Anton and Tod have souped-up a shredder.

Woooo! Power!

And cannibalised a cement mixer to completely crush their peel.

Is that, is that a caravan wheel?

-Yes. It is.

-OK!

The pulpier the peel, the easier it'll be to mix it

into their orange juice.

Ah, it looks like cornflakes.

But whose method has produced the smoothest looking pulp?

I'd say one is slightly more successful than the other.

Jodie's is very nicely broken down.

I'd say, Anton, you're a bit lumpen.

Why don't we have a little taste?

It's actually not as bad as I thought.

THEY LAUGH

OK, so that is loads and loads of flavour in there.

So you've already got your juice.

You've now pulped your peel into comminute.

Now you need to work out how to mix it all together

into a lovely sweet orange squash,

like the one you buy from the supermarket.

Before they can do that,

Anton and Jodie must make their juice super strong.

So they've got to get some of the water out of their juice.

But get it wrong and they'll ruin the whole day's work.

For factories, taking the water out of some of our most popular foods

is a mighty challenge.

There's one food we need everyday

which arrives in buckets of the stuff.

How many buckets of sea water do you reckon goes into making

this pack of sea-salt?

About a 1,000.

-What, one pack that size?

-One pack, that size.

-20?

-20?

-30.

-30?

That's a lot of water.

Well, that's a lot of salt.

-It's actually three.

-Really?

-Yes. Not 3,000, three buckets.

-Wow.

Yes, it only takes 15 litres of sea water to produce one 500g pack.

The Cornish Sea Salt Company gets their main ingredient for free.

They simply suck it out of the sea.

They heat up sea water to get sea-salt out.

How hard can that be?

15 minutes later and hey, presto, free sea salt!

Let's see what it tastes like.

Ugh! Well, it's very salty,

but it's got some other weird taste sensations there, as well.

It's quite bitter, quite a nasty kick to it.

So what I want to know is, when we buy sea-salt in the shops,

do they just boil the water away, or is there something more to it?

Philip Tanswell produces salt from sea water on a very big scale.

And here we have, down below, our main sea water feed pipe.

It's able to pump 80,000 litres of sea-water per hour, so it's...

So you really don't want to be swimming past that!

All that sea water ends up in these tanks.

That's a lot of water to boil off.

You can't do that with a camping stove.

You need one of these, a steam evaporator!

So, Phil, this is what I made this morning. That's my salt.

Oh, dear!

Is all this kit basically just doing this, but on a bigger scale?

What you've done there is you've made salt, fairly poorly may I say!

-But there we go.

-What are you saying?

-Look at it.

There's no structure there, there's no flaky crunchy bits in there.

My camping stove boiled ALL the water away.

But this is a very clever bit of kit,

it doesn't evaporate ALL the water.

It stops at the crucial moment.

The water now contains 25% salt, it's super salty brine.

It's as salty as brine can get.

Any more salty and it'll start to form the crystals.

The highly concentrated brine is then transferred

to these evaporation tanks

just before the salt crystals have a chance to form.

So this is where the magic happens. You can actually watch them growing.

If you look really closely,

there's a little speck where it's just started,

and they kind of seem to team up with other crystals.

It's almost better than television, isn't it?

These lamps produce a gentle heat that slowly evaporates the water.

The sodium chloride that's already dissolved in the water

is eventually forced out, forming crystals of salt.

We want nice big flaky crystals to form on the surface of the brine.

You can see the salt dropping down through.

Which sort of shows it's time for some harvesting, I think.

Excellent. So we've got to dig it out?

Yes, let's go and get some shovels and dig it out.

As the sea water evaporates other minerals,

including calcium and magnesium, start to crystallise, too.

But they'll spoil the taste of the salt.

So this is the critical moment.

The salt crystals must be scooped out of the water now.

If we were to evaporate the water all the way down onto that salt,

it would leave a very bitter taste.

So the stuff I made on the beach probably had all the bits

the magnesium and calcium left behind, and that's why it didn't taste so good?

Exactly.

The salt is left to drain, and then it's dried, ready for packaging.

Next stop, my chips!

The big question though - is this any better than the stuff I made?

Let's have a little go.

Oh, yeah!

Back at the barn, Anton Du Beke and Jodie Prenger are discovering

getting all the extra flavour into orange squash

is far from easy squeezy!

They've juiced three dozen oranges,

and turned the peel into an unpleasant puree,

now they need to come up with a recipe

to turn all of these ingredients into something that's delicious,

orangey and refreshing when you pour it into a glass and just add water.

But before they can mix up the ingredients,

they need to make their juice extra strong.

To do this they've got to boil some of the excess water out.

-Oh, that smells so nice.

-It is good, isn't it?

-We need to warm it up, but not too warm.

-OK.

By now you'd think the best way to get the water out

would be to boil the juice.

But that will spoil the flavour.

So they need to use a clever trick.

Here's a cup of tea. Just been made with boiling water.

Put a bit of milk in now, so the temperature's dropped.

It's probably about 80, 90 degrees.

I'm going to put it in this jar.

There we go.

Put a cork on the top.

And this little hand pump is going to suck the air out of it.

Still only about 80 or 90 degrees in there. Look, look. Can you see that?

It's starting to boil all over again.

Water usually boils at 100 degrees centigrade.

But by sucking the air out I've reduced the pressure inside

and made it easier for the water to turn into steam,

so it's boiling at a much lower temperature.

It's very weird, but it's very useful for food factories.

This means the flavour of the juice won't be spoiled.

That's the trick Anton and Jodie must copy

to concentrate their juice.

I can't help thinking that this looks a little bit rudimentary.

You've got a pan and some fire.

-Yes.

-How are you going to go about this?

We're going to put a lid on it and we're going to reduce the pressure.

This is my favourite bit. We're going to use a vacuum cleaner.

-Very good. OK.

-Not so rudimentary now.

No, no. I like it. That's practically technology!

Even with a lid on and the vacuum on full suck,

I think there's a real risk Anton's juice is going to burn.

Jodie's done something clever to stop it burning,

she's got her juice inside a hot water bath, away from direct flame.

66 degrees. So you're boiling something.

This is properly ingenious. I like the work here.

Well, I hope it goes down to the right consistency.

I guess, the trick is to stop before there's nothing left.

This stage is crucial, burn the juice and it'll taste horrible,

but leave behind too much water

and the juice won't be concentrated enough.

OK, it's quite a high temperature, isn't it?

There's an ever so slight smell of sort of orangey toffee going on.

I'll kill the vacuum. It should stop boiling immediately.

MACHINE BUZZES

-Oh, no! It's putting water back...

-It's pulling water back in.

-Ahh.

Terrible! Have we just destroyed all the work we've done?

Some.

SHE LAUGHS

That's unfortunate!

Some of the water they boiled off has leaked back in.

Anton's looks a bit burnt to me. Although he seems thrilled...

Ooh!

Isn't that beautiful?

Anton and Jodie are both staring a squash disaster in the face.

But how does it taste?

HE LAUGHS

It's got that, hasn't it?

It needs water.

Now they need to mix up all their ingredients.

The pulped peel provides all that surprise orangey flavour.

The concentrated juice is ever so sharp,

so they need six times more sugar syrup than juice.

And a sprinkle of citric acid gives squash that special zing.

Just bung it all in. Bung it in?

-Ah?

-Too late, in.

And after all that work, we're almost done.

Can you please package up your products!

It's time for quality control.

Yours looks out of date!

Feeling confident, are we?

No!

Du Beke squash. Here we go.

Perfect.

OK, so what's your usual? You tell me when to stop.

Keep going. Keep going. Stop. Stop.

Stop.

OK.

Do you know what? That's very nice.

-I know.

-It's really nice.

-Thank you.

-It's a little bit weak.

-Did you put much of the comminute in?

-Not so much.

It's a little bit weak but it is a lovely drink.

-Jodie. Bright orange. It's ever so slightly scary.

-Day-glow!

Ah, OK. I would say more of the comminute?

They are both lovely and very refreshing drinks.

-But...

-Yes.

-It's not for me to decide.

-Ah!

What we need to do is take this to our Taste Testers

and they are the people who will decide whose orange squash

is most like the one you buy in the shops.

So grab your bottle, follow me.

Put that back!

THE CROWD APPLAUD

Oh!

It's very, very orangey...

because it's made of oranges.

Now, this is the moment of truth. What do you think?

-It tastes really orangey.

-I would buy it.

It's fantastic.

-Try a bit of this.

-More like freshly squeezed orange juice.

Yes, that's exactly what I did, I squeezed my oranges.

Move up, who's your favourite dancer?

-You.

-Me?

It was amazing.

One of the best orange juices I've ever tasted.

Group hug, group hug.

OK, Anton and Jodie, come over here, please.

Now, you lovely people, you need to vote on whose orange squash

was most like the ones you buy in the supermarket.

Raise your hands for Anton.

Now, please raise your hands

if you thought that Jodie's orange squash was the best.

Raise those hands, please!

Yeah!

OK, come here!

I have to say, Anton, your orange squash is going in the bin.

Jodie, yours is going in the basket,

but please give them a round of applause - they've worked so hard!

THE CROWD APPLAUD

Anton should have added more peel

because that's the secret ingredient that contains all the extra flavour.

Now, squeezing all of that flavour into a bottle of squash

is a huge challenge for the factory,

but it means that when we're thirsty,

all we need to do is just add water.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd