Frozen Food Factory

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Both these foods are frozen at the factory, but only one is eaten cold.

That seems obvious,

but why are these instant coffee granules frozen?

And how do they keep these stripes separate?

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?

So, are you an ice lolly fan? Whoar!

-What's it taste like?

-Several different flavours there.

-How do you think they keep the stripes separate?

-Perhaps freeze one bit and put the next bit on top?

-Are you a coffee fan?

-I absolutely love coffee.

-You love coffee?

-Yes.

What's the difference between instant coffee powder and freeze-dried granules?

The granules maybe have a richer flavour?

How do you think they make it?

Freeze a load of beans with that smoky ice stuff

and then bash it all up in a machine?

Bash the heck out of it! Yeah.

When I was a kid, I used to get into

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, fresh from BBC Breakfast,

are weather presenter Carol Kirkwood and sports reporter Chris Hollins.

There may be blue skies ahead, 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.

Fantastic to see you here at the barn. Thank you very much for coming along.

-Would you like to see what you're going to be making today?

-Yes, please.

Ooh, ice lollies!

Oh, yeah. So are these things that you eat now?

On a hot summer's day only, really. But delicious.

When is the next hot summer's day?

Today! This is the summer!

Oh, excellent well done, good prediction!

I think it's time to check in for your first shift at the factory.

-Please follow me to the barn.

-After you, Carol.

They're all sunshine and smiles now

but these things are incredibly tricky to make!

Grab a piece of ice.

Now, have a little suck on the ice

and think about what the difference is between that and an ice lolly?

No flavour.

-This is rock solid, whereas that's broken up.

-There's a big difference. These are very biteable.

There's a very different texture here from just normal ice that you make in

your own freezer at home.

So, your task is to make two rival lollies,

like the ones you buy in the shops.

When you've made them we're going to take them outside and we're

going to offer them to a group of very discerning taste testers and they are the ones

who will decide whose is most like the ones from the supermarkets.

First of all, let's meet your ingredients.

So, there's a bucket load of fun here.

So, some strange powders.

-Looks quite...

-Flavourings and colourings, I'm guessing.

-Yeah.

And then, one very strange ingredient.

A bucket of water!

Well done, muscles.

OK. So the first task is to make a freezer.

A super-fast freezer.

We need to make a super-fast freezer?

-It's as simple as that!

-I made one last week!

Assembling a super-fast freezing machine isn't easy.

That's why my ever-so-clever factory foremen,

Marty and Tod, are here to help.

Fast freezer.

Fast freezing, easy for you to say.

What we're going to do is use a technique they use in industry...

-Right, go on.

-Called a brine bath.

One of the industry standard ways is to make what's called a blast freezer.

And that is you create incredibly cold air and just blow it over and around the product.

You made that sound awfully easy, but I don't imagine it is for a second.

You might wonder why they've got to build their own super-fast freezing

machines instead of simply using a freezer like we have at home.

Now.

This is a block of ice

that was frozen in a domestic freezer.

It took about one day to freeze.

Now I'm going to make some ice very, very quickly.

Here's some water.

I'm going to put it on a bed of dry ice.

So that's at minus 78 degrees.

Now, what I've got here is a jug of liquid nitrogen.

This is minus 196 degrees.

This is an incredibly fast way of making ice.

This'll set the teeth chattering. Nice and icy!

The end result is very different to the ice

we can make in the home freezer at minus 18 Centigrade.

The very fast frozen ice

is made up of millions of separate tiny crystals.

That's why it's white. You can't see through it.

The ice that's been frozen slowly in a normal kitchen freezer

is basically one huge ice crystal, that's why you can see through it.

But there's something else very different about these.

It's not just the appearance, it's the texture.

Now, if I just give the home frozen ice

a light tap...

It breaks into big blocks.

But the fast frozen stuff is soft and crumbly.

It is completely different.

It's really, really soft.

And that's all about the speed of freezing.

For the perfect lolly, we don't want slow, we want fast freezing.

Fast freezing creates lots of tiny ice crystals

and tiny crystals mean soft and biteable lollies.

Carol and Chris are using two different methods.

Chris's brine bath

can be cooled to minus 40 Centigrade,

by adding calcium chloride salt to stop the water freezing solid

and dry ice to make it super cold.

Now, it'll fast-freeze anything he puts in it.

Carol's contraption looks a little more complicated.

It uses super-cold air.

So, what have you got here?

Well, frankly, Stefan,

I'm quite surprised that you don't recognise it!

It's a super-fast freezing machine.

Oh yes, yes.

And how it works is in here we've put a fan,

so the cool air is coming out down through this tube,

up into this container where we're going to put the dry ice.

Then it goes into that one, and comes out again and round again,

so we've got this super cooling process going on all the time.

Well, I would like you to prove the concept.

There is a mould.

All you need to do is make one ice lolly,

make it from water, that's absolutely fine.

OK. We're up for that.

Start your production line.

I'll get the water.

I'll do the dry ice.

Carol and Chris are copying two of the different ways factories

really use to fast freeze.

Their challenge is to make an ice lolly with a nice, soft texture.

OK, you ready?

-Yeah.

-Steady. Go!

-Brilliant.

-Blimey. Bit more.

So, whose method will freeze fastest?

Will it be a brisk blow in Carol's blast freezer?

Or a shivering soak in Chris's brine bath?

Right, let's see how the air-cooled ice lolly compares with

the brine-cooled ice lolly.

Confidence, I like that.

Wonky-ness! I like that too!

All right. Let's have a little look. Pop them down there for me.

So.

OK.

So, that looks pretty good. Have a little try.

Quite solid. Not bad, though, not bad. OK.

Carol, let's have a look at yours.

Mine was bigger than yours, Chris.

We have got a little bit of gloopiness in the middle there.

But I have to say, bigger.

Thank you.

But that is only the first stage.

That's just a bit of water. I would like you to make me

a multi-coloured, multi-flavoured lolly. Not one, but three flavours.

Something that looks a little bit like this.

So, let's have a little look inside this fella. OK.

So, it's not just a case of three colours.

These have a central core of ice and then concentric rings

that are smallest at the bottom and largest at the top.

So, as you suck the lolly you'll reveal another colour underneath it.

Slightly tricky because this is a five-flavoured lolly. Only three...

So it should be simple.

Only three? I thought it was five? That's fine!

OK? So, get back to your production lines, please,

and get back to work.

Thank you, Stefan!

While Carol and Chris tackle their icy, stripey challenge,

I'm off to find out about a food which is frozen at the factory

but you won't find it in the freezer aisle at the supermarket.

-Are you a fan of coffee?

-Yes, I am.

-How many cups a day?

-It's got to be ten cups.

Now one of these two has to be frozen in the factory.

-Which one do you reckon has to be frozen?

-That one.

-And any idea why?

-No!

Any idea how they go about freeze drying coffee?

-Liquid nitrogen.

-Liquid nitrogen, that's a pretty good guess.

Put it in a freezer.

Do you know, I don't really know!

Two types of instant coffee, powder and granules.

But only one is frozen at the factory. Why?

This is the cheap one.

It's like a sort of a powder.

And this is the posh one,

it's got all these angular granules inside it.

The makers claim granules seal in more rich coffee flavour.

So, why is it that one instant locks in more flavour than the other?

Both instants start the same - ground-up coffee beans.

They're brewed up into the strongest stuff imaginable.

Ho, ho, ho! Look at that!

It's not the coffee grains they use, it's the super strong liquid.

I think that's about it.

Ho ho ho. Looks pretty good.

Ooh! It's like rocket fuel.

But now I need to get rid of all the water.

There are two ways to do it.

To make the cheap powder coffee, they use a machine called

a spray drier, which involves heating up the concentrated coffee

to get rid of all the water and leave behind the powder.

The trouble is, that also gets rid of all the zingy bits of flavour,

the stuff that makes the great coffee aroma.

So I'm going to do exactly the opposite.

To make granules,

at the factory they don't remove the water with heat,

they make the brew super cold.

I've got to freeze the coffee.

I'm using dry ice, minus 78 Centigrade.

At this temperature,

my super-concentrated brew will freeze solid in seconds.

That's all frozen, so now I've got a big pile of solid coffee.

And I need to break it up.

Amazingly, this IS how they get the tiny, angular granule shapes.

But it looks a bit more like coffee gravel than coffee granules -

but if you do look closely, there's some really good bits inside here.

Not bad. I think I've got a few there.

But these are just bits of coffee ice.

As soon as they warm up, they'll melt back into liquid.

So I need to do something to them, quickly!

Can you tell what it is yet?

This cunning contraption will remove all the water from my frozen

coffee brew, leaving me with nothing but freeze-dried coffee.

All I have to do is pop the frozen granules inside.

I'm choosing all the best looking, most granular

bits of coffee that I've got.

Put a lid on the top.

Attached to the lid is a piece of tubing.

And the tube is attached to a big pump which is set to suck

and it's going to suck all of the air out of here and hopefully

remove all of the water that's still trapped inside my coffee as ice.

Here goes.

In here, I'm going to create the kind of conditions you find

in outer space.

Earthly science rules don't apply up here.

If I suck all the air out, I'll create a vacuum.

Under these conditions, something really weird happens.

The water in the ice won't melt back into liquid,

it will turn straight into gas.

This is the factory secret to drying out coffee without heating it.

I need the water in my frozen coffee to go from being a solid to a gas

without ever becoming a liquid.

Solid to a gas, without becoming a liquid.

As the hours tick by, my frozen coffee should gradually lose

all its water, but, because of the vacuum,

the coffee ice won't melt into liquid.

That's the theory, anyway.

But here in the barn, things don't always work first time.

All the coffee melted.

Turns out the culprit was this, it just wasn't up to the job.

The hose was a bit leaky.

My freeze drier had a dodgy vacuum.

So, she's been into the workshop.

Freeze drier mark two.

New pipe work and my last few coffee grains inside.

I hope it's worked!

They do,

they look like the right kind of thing.

They're very delicate.

Look at that.

It feels really dry on my fingers.

Time for a taste.

Oh, wow, that is completely dry inside.

Classic freeze-dried coffee taste to it.

It's worked.

That is fantastic!

The frozen water in the grains has gone, leaving behind

the dry, solid remains of that strong coffee I brewed.

OK, let's taste this stuff.

Don't laugh.

It's quality, not quantity.

Well, it dissolves - ish!

Here goes.

But has it got that zingy flavour?

That is a fantastic cup of freeze-dried coffee.

There's not a lot of it, but it's right.

It's the right thing.

# All I want is a proper cup of coffee

# Made in a proper coffee pot

# I may be off my block

# But I want a cup of coffee in a proper coffee pot. #

My very own freeze-dried instant coffee.

But how does it compare to the shop-bought stuff?

Only our taste testers can decide.

Welcome to the world's most precious coffee.

There's such a small amount that I've managed to produce that

I can't actually make you a cup of coffee.

It looks like caramel.

It looks like burnt honeycomb.

Recognisably coffee?

No.

Mud?

Crystals of mud!

So, here we have one grain of freeze-dried coffee.

I know it's strange because you don't normally eat it like that but have a little taste.

It's like a really bad cup of coffee.

Very bitter.

Do you think that that would make a decent cup of coffee?

I think I would try and drink that.

Yeah.

ALL LAUGH

Back in the barn, Carol and Chris are making ice lollies,

not just any old lolly, but Icy Stripey lollies.

They've tested their super-fast freezing machines, but now the heat is on.

Carol and Chris have got to stop the stripes from mixing together

and they've got to freeze the lolly faster than

they could in a home freezer - that is really difficult!

They need a mould to pour the syrup for the stripes into.

Tod's raided his toolbox.

OK. Plumbing fittings, so the idea is when we

connect all these together we get a lovely rocket shaped...

Oh, I see what you mean.

Nice idea, but careful with that blowtorch, Carol.

Chris and Marty are using bubble blowing bottles for moulds.

I hope they're not soapy inside.

But how are they going to keep the three different coloured stripes separate?

So, Chris, can you explain to me, what is your system?

We put the green one in, and as soon as it starts freezing over on the outside we'll then

suck out that to make a little shell.

-And then, moving on to the next one, same thing...

-Same thing.

-And fill it up, so your core is going to be orange?

-Because we love orange.

-Fantastic. Are you feeling confident about this?

-No!

The ice lolly factory calls this technique "suck and fill".

When the syrup around the cold sides of the mould has frozen solid,

they suck out the unfrozen gloopy syrup left in the middle.

Carol's using the same trick.

Wow, look at that, a work of art.

The key thing is, have you left behind a layer of ice?

Have a look.

Yes!

Fantastic, so you're getting ice.

-Well, crack on.

-Thank you.

Because the syrup around the sides is now frozen, when they fill

the hole with the next liquid the colours can't mix together.

That's suck and fill. Genius.

WHIRRING

Making a good racket, guys.

Is it working?

Well, have a look.

Oh, my word that is...

that's a beautiful thing.

As well as the super-fast freezing, there's another reason

shop-bought lollies have a softer, less solid texture than home-made lollies.

It's because of the syrup the factory uses to make

the coloured stripes.

Inside here you've got

millions and millions of tiny, solid ice crystals,

surrounded by sugary syrup that's still liquid.

So an ice lolly isn't completely ice.

The sugar syrup doesn't freeze, even at minus 20 Centigrade.

So it's still soft, even when the ice is frozen.

That's what helps make shop-bought lollies so biteable.

Back on the production line,

Chris is taking the fast freezing very seriously.

Kirky! That's the old sticks gone in. Finished for us.

We're going to have a lie down.

It is the quality, not the quantity.

But inside those moulds,

has all the syrup run into a single, gloopy splodge,

or have they got lovely, separate stripes?

As the competition hots up, I'm off to find out how the big boys use

super-fast freezing so we can enjoy another of our frozen favourites.

Are you a fan of frozen peas?

I prefer fresh - because I grow them.

How long do you reckon it takes to get the pea from the field frozen into a packet?

A day.

About an hour

A week.

It actually takes under two-and-a-half hours.

We can be from the allotment to home and in the freezer,

-45 minutes.

-You should run a food factory!

Well, let's see how the professionals measure up against

our amateur allotment enthusiast.

Of course, they're working on a slightly larger scale.

None of these peas gets picked and put inside a Birds Eye bag

unless Anthony Kitchener says so.

Sweet. Beautiful pea, yeah, perfect.

For me, too small, they'll go into the machine, they'll just squash and crush - there'll be

-nothing left of the pea.

-I'm rubbish at pea testing.

Well, you're not very good, Stefan, to be honest!

See the next field.

Good idea. I'd agree with that.

-Have a look at these, you tell me how good these are.

-Ooh, yeah.

So still really sweet but they've got a definite structure to them.

I think these are actually bang on ready.

There's no time to waste.

From the moment they're picked,

the peas start losing their sweet flavour.

I've taken that out of the pod there.

It's dying, basically, that pea's dying.

With every passing hour, the lovely sweet sugars

are turning into bitter starch.

Within 150 minutes, or two-and-a-half hours,

they have got to be in a bag frozen.

-You'd better make a call, then, haven't you?

-Exactly!

The race is on.

Lorry 46 to the rise 15.6 field.

You're about to witness a childhood dream coming true.

You sure I'm allowed to do this?

This amazing machine separates the peas from the pods.

All I've got to do is steer it in a straight line.

I'm going to leave a bit of a wobbly path, aren't I?

It's all right. We'll straighten it up!

Now we've got to get the peas from the farm to

the factory before they turn bitter.

Meet the man in charge of keeping the peas sweet and tender.

He's head pea honcho, James Young.

First of all, we've got to stop the reactions inside the pea.

If we just freeze them straight away we'll lose that lovely sweet quality.

Instead of freezing them, James heats them up.

# Splish splash I was taking a bath. #

To stop the chemical reaction that turns the sugar to starch,

the peas are given a quick bath in almost boiling water for 80 seconds.

It's called blanching.

Take the sample evenly across the whole of the belt.

A few from each bit. Ah ha, ha!

We've got a good sample there. We can go down and do the test now.

We're checking the blanching has stopped the chemical reaction.

If the peas haven't been blanched properly

and there's still reactions going on which may affect the flavour,

-we'll see bubbles rising up through the tube. What do you think?

-That's a no-bubble situation there.

-No bubbles.

-Excellent, so good peas.

We know we can maintain that sweet flavour as we go into freezing.

So, these peas will stay sweet, but we like them tender too.

That means freezing them very fast.

This crazy pea dance is caused by blasting them

with jets of very cold air - minus 30 Centigrade.

It's so cold they're frozen in just six minutes.

Freezing this fast produces tiny ice crystals

which don't damage the pea.

If they're frozen slowly,

the ice crystals would grow big inside and turn the pea to mush.

Next time you pop some frozen peas in the pan, don't forget what

they've been through to keep them sweet and tender.

All that frenetic activity so the peas in your freezer

are as fresh as when they were picked in the field.

Back in the barn, Carol Kirkwood and Chris Hollins

are reaching the climax of their chilling challenge.

They're making rival Icy Stripey ice lollies.

Now all they've got to figure out is how to get the lollies

out of the moulds.

Um, I'm not quite sure how to do this,

so we've got to warm the outside and try and slip them out.

They're frozen solid.

But Tod's not one for messing about - he's gone

straight for the blowtorch.

So let's just see if there's any turning at all on that.

For Chris and Marty, it's a more softly, softly approach.

I think it's all ready now, isn't it?

I think it's ready. Let me take this out.

Inspired by that old trick of running the ice tray under the tap,

they're using a tray of warm water

to liberate their lollies.

But Carol's rocket lollies are still stranded on the launch-pad.

This is when you pray

-when it comes out that it comes out as one.

-It better do.

It's the moment of truth - syrupy sludge

or a multi-coloured rainbow of loveliness?

Here we go.

Wa-hey! Look at those!

They are beautiful.

I think I overdid the green.

-Look at those!

-Look at the colours. We did overdo

the green, didn't we? I got a bit excited with the green.

But Chris has succeeded in making Carol and Tod green with envy.

Did you see their ones?

Oh, I did, they were brilliant, brilliant.

Oh, we've got movement.

-Ah! That's fabulous!

-Right, we need to get this in the freezer.

But it's not over yet!

That's the number one.

Ooh, he's ever so thrilled!

Careful, Chris, don't drop them.

Put that there like that...

Carol and Tod's rockets look like they rock!

-Fantastic. They're great.

-That's great.

OK, Carol and Chris, can you package up your ice lollies

and bring them over to me for some quality control.

Look at this exquisite one here.

-Oh, it worked!

-Tricolour, as requested.

That is brilliant. Loving the shapes. Loving the shapes. Little bit more...

-What have heck have you done there?

-I think we over-did it on the green!

They look pretty good from the outside, but it's time to destroy them.

-Oh, no!

-To find out what they're like inside.

Do you know how long it took to freeze them and to make them?

OK, ready?

Oh, my word. Look at that!

That is not bad. So you've got a central core there.

Each of these is a nice separate layer - they haven't bled into each other too much.

-Well done.

-Thank you.

OK, Carol. Here we go.

Wow!

That's fantastic!

It is, actually.

Very different, though.

You've got some colours bleeding from one into the next.

-I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

-It was actually intentional.

-Yeah!

-Yeah.

She says that now!

OK, what's the texture like and what's the taste like?

Mmm.

That's very good,

because it's breaking down in the way a lolly should.

OK. Let's chop the end off there.

Oh! A lot of blackcurrant there.

But I think you've cracked it, as well, you know?

So, we've got lots of taste testers outside.

They're very hungry and they're very hot.

Grab your ice lollies, let's go.

-Good luck, CK.

-And to you, hon.

APPLAUSE

So, what did you think?

It does taste nice.

Very colourful and very crunchy as well.

I think it would be something I would buy in the supermarket.

Ladies and gents, bold stripes, bold colours. What do you reckon?

To me, it looks like a traffic light, just in the wrong order!

-Good colour.

-The consistency is almost exactly

like a lolly that you would buy at the supermarket.

That's exactly what I was looking for.

OK, come into the middle, please.

Hands up if you thought that Carol's ice lolly was

most like the ones you buy in the shops.

Hands up, please.

11 votes for Carol. OK.

Now, who thinks that Chris's ice lolly is most like the one

you buy in the shops? Hands up, please, nice and clear.

Ten, 11.

-Oh, my goodness!

-It's a dead heat.

APPLAUSE

So, I was going to say that one of these ice lollies has to go

in the bin, but what a joy, because both can go in the basket!

Give them a round of applause!

Chris and Carol both got the texture just right.

Fast freezing made their lollies lovely and biteably soft.

Freezing food is surprisingly complex.

We're used to just sticking stuff in the home freezer

but in the factory it's never that simple.

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