Original subtitles

There you go. Enjoy.

Thank you!

- Ooh! - There we are.

- Yummy. - Sausage, chips and beans.

That is champion.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

- Mmm. - The oven chip.

How easy is life with these?

I don't want to parent without them.

Absolutely.

The thing is, though, it's not going to be a very long episode, is it?

Potatoes. Chop 'em up. Done.

It's possible there's a bit more to it, Paddy.

Every year in the UK,

we get through an astonishing 280,000 tonnes

of frozen chips at home.

As a nation, we love them so much

that we need massive factories like this to keep up with demand.

- Should we get our hair nets on? - Let's do it.

Hello? Paddy McGuinness here.

This time...

Let me squeeze in there so the people at home can see me.

..I'm discovering the mind-blowing technology...

That is a modern way of peeling a spud!

..that's responsible for making miles

and miles of frozen chips.

My word, it's just chips as far as the eye can see!

I'm in Northern Heaven here!

And I'm delving into the science

behind one of our favourite condiments.

To the bacteria!

Phwoar! That will blow your socks off!

And our resident historian, Ruth Goodman...

- Lovely. Cheers. - You're welcome.

..serves up the story of our favourite fried fish...

They were processing about 20,000 tonnes of fish.

Good grief!

..and chips...

When did they come together?

..became a national dish.

This factory peels, slices and fries

over 80 million chips every single day.

- 80 million? - 80 million!

- That's a lot. - It's a lot of chips.

Welcome to Inside the Factory.

This is the McCain factory near Scarborough

and they've been making chips here since the 1960s.

Look at that. It's like a savoury version of Tipping Point!

Top of the world, Ma!

They make all sorts of spud-based delights here.

Not often you see a robot playing chess with potatoes, is it?

From skinny French fries...

Chip Nirvana!

..to chunky chips.

They do jacket potatoes here as well!

What you whack in the microwave.

Very nice.

But I'm looking for a classic family favourite.

Today, I'm following production of their bestseller -

the straight-cut frozen Home Chips.

Lovely stuff!

Now, there's no prizes for guessing

the main ingredients for chips is...

..potatoes.

And, bang-on cue, is a lorry packed with 28 tonnes of them.

Operations manager Mike Hartnett...

Whoa!

..is in charge.

- Morning, Mike. - Morning, Paddy.

Pal, are you OK? Let me squeeze in there

so the people at home can see me.

- Spuds. - Spuds.

This is where it starts, Mike.

So, we've got a lorry-load of Daisy potatoes

from the West Midlands,

one of our 250 growers from the UK that supply into us.

I don't know why I thought they'd be, like, a Maris Piper.

I've never heard of Daisy potatoes.

Why Daisy? What is it about the Daisy potato

that makes a really good chip?

Daisy just process the best way possible

to make the chip that we're looking for today.

How many Daisies are on there, then?

This lorry will make 1.7 million chips.

And how many of those wagons come a day?

So, we get between 60 and 70 a day.

Yep.

Staggering!

These farms must be absolutely constantly churning them up,

- sending them in? - Yep, it is constantly, mate.

It's one of our busiest times of year as well.

We're currently straight off the field.

- So, straight from the farmer's field? - Yep.

From loading these potatoes to being put in the bag, frozen,

how long's that process?

In two hours' time,

they'll be in a fresh bag of chips.

Two hours?!

Better get 'em on.

Let's get 'em on.

So, if you want to press that green button there,

then we'll start unloading.

As the clock starts on this super-speedy process...

..the spuds are unloaded with a clever conveyor belt

that runs right along the bottom of the lorry,

gently carrying them into the factory.

Go on, you little Daisies!

Got to be careful, though. You don't want to bruise them, do you?

We have got to treat potatoes very carefully.

We look, within the factory, of not having

anything more than a 30cm drop for that exact reason.

Nobody wants a bruised chip.

Nobody wants a bruised spud.

To me,

it feels like a really simple, quick process.

Potatoes, chop 'em up, out they go.

It's certainly a quick process.

There is a little bit more to it.

You'll see that later on.

Well, if you say so, Mike.

But if this lot's going to be chipped

and frozen in just two hours,

surely it can't be that complicated?

I still can't get me head round

the amount of potatoes

that go through this place every single day.

The mind boggles, really.

So I've sent Cherry Healey off to a farm

that supplies this actual factory to get involved with the harvest.

This farm in the West Midlands provides the factory

with almost 9,000 tonnes of spuds every year.

In charge is fourth-generation potato farmer

Nigel Adams.

- Nigel, lovely to meet you! - Morning, Cherry.

- How are you? - Oh! - My hands are dirty. Sorry.

I'll swerve that one.

And the harvest for Paddy's potatoes

is already in full swing.

So, why is Daisy so good for chips?

It's quite a durable variety.

It can handle various different conditions.

It's a lovely shaped potato

and it can produce that nice, round, long, perfect potato.

So, they're going to make that into lovely long chips

once it goes into the factory.

So Daisy is low-maintenance,

she's not a fussbag,

- perfect shape, cracking chips. - Spot-on.

Very good, yes.

This hardy crop was planted just four months ago

using potatoes, or tubers,

from the previous year's harvest as seeds.

If I could just show you over here.

When we planted the potato,

we actually put this mother tuber - that we call -

- into the ground. - A "mother tuber"? - Mother tuber, yeah.

So she's sort of, like, gone from the solid potato,

she's used all her energy to produce these roots and leaves

and then the soil and the sunshine feeds it.

And so, she produces her little babies.

Oh, look! Look!

That's incredible. So she's produced 15, 20 new potatoes?

Yeah. Yeah.

Once planted, they take 16 weeks to grow.

So, these are little babies that have grown into big babies.

Yeah, they're big babies, aren't they?

- They are. - Look at that. - So, the perfect size,

perfect shape.

A whopping 750 trailer-loads of spuds

are harvested here between July and October every year...

Come on. Enough chat. Let's get on and do some work,

- some harvesting, please. - All right.

..so they need some serious kit.

OK, so this is the beast that harvests. This is Daisy.

Look at her. She's a monster.

All right. So we'll fire her up.

- Oh, there she goes! - Yeah, we're off!

The harvester uses a blade to dig into the soil,

scooping up around 35 tonnes of potatoes an hour.

Then the spud is separated from the mud

using a mesh conveyor.

So, before these huge machines were invented,

how did they used to harvest potatoes?

So, I remember coming to a field, seeing my grandad harvest them -

and he had his spade, and they used to literally loosen the soil,

pick them up by hand,

put them into buckets and then into the trailer.

So you used to harvest potatoes when you were a kid?

- Yeah, yeah. - What you don't know about potatoes isn't worth knowing.

Mmm, yeah. Maybe.

LAUGHTER

- We're actually nearly full now. - We are nearly full.

- Look, they're mounding up! - They are, yeah.

Lots of potatoes, all ready to go to the chip factory.

The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky

Transferring the spuds from the harvester

is a carefully choreographed operation.

This is like a piece of ballet.

This is amazing.

The harvester and tractor must move in perfect unison...

..travelling in tandem

as the crop is gently dropped into the trailer.

But the performance isn't over yet.

Every potato must travel through another monster machine.

- It's quite the set-up, isn't it? - It is, yeah. It's impressive.

As the spuds trundle through,

this optical sorter removes rocks

and any imperfect potatoes.

How does that machine tell between a rock and a potato?

Five cameras that's looking at every individual potato

as they go through the machine

and it's saying, "You're a good one. You're a bad one."

And what's a "good" potato and what's a "bad" potato?

You get the odd one that has a bit of green on it or something.

What's a green potato?

The soil that we have over them gets washed away a little bit,

lets a little bit of sunlight in,

and it's like a little bit of a sunburn on it.

OK, so it's pretty harmless,

but we don't want that going into the factory.

Potatoes with green marks are edible

but here they go to animal feed.

Meanwhile, the spuds for the chip factory are being loaded

and I want to inspect the goods.

Right, so where is this perfect potato?

Here. This has had the right amount of sunlight,

- the right amount of rain. - And will that make the perfect chip?

I reckon so, when it goes to the factory, yes.

Well, as the potato expert, I can't argue with that.

- Perfect. - Can I have this?

- Of course you can. - Thank you.

- You got a pocket? - Yeah, got a potato pocket right here.

Potato pocket? Very fancy!

Thank you.

Not for me. I'm old school.

# I am a mountain

# And down in the valley below

# Is all that I've overcome. #

Anyhow, potato pockets aside,

just look at the size of this place!

# Oh-oh-overcome. #

This factory is spread across 50,000 square metres,

with ten enormous buildings -

and most of them chocker with chips.

But first, me and my batch of spuds

are heading to the receiving area.

Fresh from the farm,

28 tonnes of them are rolling along conveyors...

..and into one of 14 huge storage containers.

But, before they can be made into chips,

every single load coming into the factory

is put through some rigorous tests.

Oh-ho-ho!

So, Paddy, this is where we sample our potatoes.

So this is the first part of the process

where you said it's not quite as simple?

- Exactly, yeah. - Right, OK.

So what are we doing in here exactly, Mike?

So, every lorry that we get of potatoes,

we will bring a sample into this lab

and then we will test for things like natural blemishes

and we will also check for any levels

of naturally occurring sugar that come in the potatoes.

Where did the sugar come into it?

So, the sugar is made up within the starch, in glucose.

That's where the sugar comes from.

- Right, OK. - So it's naturally occurring within the potato.

Am I right in thinking...

Are potatoes just predominantly water and starch?

That's exactly right, yeah.

So, a potato generally is 20% solid,

- which is starch, 80% water. - Yeah.

The higher the sugar or starch content in the spud,

the browner the finished chip will be.

So the levels are carefully checked by technical operator

and chief test fryer Sarah Thompson.

- Are you all right, Sarah? - I'm good, thanks. Are you, Paddy?

Yeah, I'm good, ta. How many chips are there?

There's 18 there.

18. So that's usually what you get out of one potato.

No, this is 18 separate potatoes.

- You've took one chip out of one potato? - We have.

My days!

So we do that so we can get a good idea

of the colour of that complete load -

not just one potato.

Why are we frying it?

That will indicate the level of naturally occurring sugar

that we have.

In they go.

- Oh, I love that noise. - Yep.

CHIPS FIZZ

Oh, that's fancy!

It automatically lowers for a more standardised process,

so we know that every sample is the same.

These are all those things that I never thought about.

After 90 seconds in the oil,

if the test batch comes out pale in colour...

- These are looking a little bit anaemic at the minute. - Yeah.

..it means that the starch levels are in the correct range...

They are on the paler end, which is a good thing.

..and the colour of the fully-cooked chip

will be perfectly golden.

But even these pale ones must be checked

against a colour scale.

Can I just say, I'm loving this.

This is like when you go in the old DIY place,

- looking at the paint charts. - Yeah.

Where's the perfect chip on there?

Anything below that four there.

But because of the time of year we are, we'll be around here.

This is our first indication

of how we set up our manufacturing process

to deliver that consistent product.

Have they all passed?

They've passed.

Right, Mike. What next, pal?

We can now release these potatoes through to manufacturing.

So, we have a radio.

If you want to do the honours, Paddy?

It's a modern world, isn't it?

Am I..? Am I releasing...?

Release the potatoes.

RADIO BEEPS

Hello. Paddy McGuinness here.

You what?

Just give 'em a minute to get over...

- They'll be a bit star-struck. - Yeah, yeah.

Untether the taters.

Thousands of freshly-dug, muddy spuds

are starting their journey to becoming frozen chips.

We've unloaded them off the lorry.

- We've tested them for their sugar content. - Yep.

And we're here now. How long have we been at this, Mike?

So, at this point here, we've been 30 minutes.

So, 30 minutes.

So you're saying in another, what, 90 minutes, hour and a half,

they're going to be on the back of a wagon and done and off?

Exactly, yeah. Frozen, finished, in the bag, ready to go.

I mean, I know we're against the clock here, Mike,

but before we go any further,

you've got a plate of chips -

what are you putting on them?

Brown sauce, all the way.

Tell you what,

it's amazing how quickly you can go off someone.

LAUGHTER

Brown sauce? On chips?!

To get rid of any residue from the field,

the potatoes tumble into a destoner...

..which floats the spuds in water

and sinks any remaining stones.

Then it's onwards into a washer

to remove the last bits of soil.

Oh, there they are!

Spotlessly clean!

- They've just had a lovely bath. - Yeah.

What's the next stage now, Mike?

Because I know we've got to keep this moving.

We have, yeah. So that's me done now.

So that's where my responsibility ends.

And I'm going to hand you over to my production colleague, Ashley.

Ashley. Right.

Lovely to meet you, Mike.

- You too. - Apart from the brown sauce. That's unforgivable.

Great, I'll follow the potatoes.

My spotless spuds are as fresh as, well, a daisy...

..and are now sorted by size.

Any that are too small for chips drop away

between the rollers to become other products.

The rest continue at a rate of 50 tonnes every hour...

..straight to the peeling area.

Production director Ashley Bowsley is the man in charge.

You all right, Ashley?

- All right, Paddy. - Pleased to meet you, mate.

Nice to meet you.

I tell you what, a bit noisy up here!

Oh, it is. The reason it is is because this vessel,

it's a steam vessel.

Hang on, I thought I were coming to the potato peeling bit.

Yeah, this is. So what we've done with technology, we've changed it.

So, rather than a person using a potato peeler,

we now steam peel our potatoes.

You steam peel a pota...

I have never heard of this in my life.

How does that work?

The potatoes go into a vessel into here,

the steam is injected.

The potatoes are made up of 80% water,

and what happens is the water behind that skin

is then heated up and the steam is generated behind it,

and then it explodes the skin off the potato.

The steam is added at such high pressure

that it quickly heats the water under the skin of the potatoes.

The pressure inside the vessel is then released,

causing the water to suddenly expand,

loosening the peel from the flesh of the potato.

That makes perfect sense.

I can't believe no-one's thought of that before.

How long have you been steaming your spuds?

That sounds wrong, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, we steam the potatoes

for between 5 seconds and 15 seconds.

What a time to be alive.

That is a modern way of peeling a spud!

The taters are lifted into a washer,

which removes any loose skin before they tumble out.

32 tonnes of squeaky clean, shiny spuds a minute.

Me and Ashley have been getting on famously,

so I wonder how he'd feel about a little day trip.

Do you know, I know we're in Scarborough.

Do you get down to t'seaside much?

Every now and then I get there.

Oh, I love it. I mean, obviously, fish and chips are the main thing

but I do love a sugar doughnut, Ash.

Let's hope he takes the hint.

I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

Meanwhile, Ruth is several steps ahead of us,

50 miles down the coast,

discovering the origins of this belter of a dish.

- Lovely. Cheers. - You're welcome.

SHE CHUCKLES

Fish and chips by the seaside.

You can't get a much more British institution than this.

But where did our passion

for deep-fried fish and chips come from?

To find out, I'm meeting food anthropologist Dr Mukta Das...

- Mukta, hello! - Hello!

Oh, how lovely.

..on Cleethorpes' historic pier.

This is the British seaside, isn't it?

- Fish and chips in a breeze. - Overcast.

THEY LAUGH

This looks fabulous.

So what was it, then, that gave rise

to the unrivalled popularity of fish and chips?

We can't really be 100% sure about the history of this dish,

but we can be sure that it wasn't an entirely British invention.

And, in fact, possibly the most compelling origin story is

that fried fish came across to England with

the Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal.

Sephardic Jews began to arrive

in London at the beginning of the 17th century

fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, which persecuted people

who didn't share its Christian faith.

And with them came one of their favourite foods -

fried fish.

Initially, it's the food of an immigrant population,

- and then gradually it spreads out. - That's right.

By the middle of the 1800s,

fried, and very likely battered, fish

began to appear as a popular street food.

It took its place among the jacket potatoes and the meat pies

and everything else.

- Jellied eels. - Jellied eels.

Absolutely.

To discover how a simple fish snack became

one of our most celebrated national dishes,

Mukta has brought me a couple of miles up the road

to the industrial port of Grimsby.

So what's so special about this dock, then?

These docks were the first docks to

incorporate both the port plus railways.

So this was an all-in-one,

- we're going to build a dock with railways? - That's right.

The once-small fishing port was expanded in the 1850s

to include its own railway, running straight from the docks...

..so freshly-caught fish could be loaded onto waiting trains

and sent all over the country.

Grimsby became one of the largest fishing ports in the world.

Would it have been as busy as this?

Yeah. Around the first year of operation, they were landing

and processing around 3,400 tonnes of fish,

about double the amount from the year before.

And, within ten years or so,

they were processing about 20,000 tonnes of fish.

Good grief.

By the 1870s, technology was advancing out at sea as well,

as the traditional sail power of most fishing boats was replaced.

What you had were the introductions of these trawlers.

- As you see here... - Oh, it's a steam trawler.

That's right. And they're larger,

so they're able to go out for longer

around Greenland, around Iceland,

and then just capture as much as they can through their trawl.

And then the fast clippers and cutters would then

ferry these fish back and forth to be sold in markets like this.

That's a well-thought-out system.

This industrialisation of

the fishing industry made fried fish much more readily available,

and so it became an affordable meal for the masses.

So we've talked about the fish - what about the chips?

There are chip restaurants that emerge at this time

in the Victorian era.

So not fish and chip, just chip?

Yeah. It becomes a really classic working-class staple,

where you have chips deep-fried

in the same way that you'd have fish deep-fried.

So, the two are happening separately.

When did they come together?

The crux of it is when we have an emergence of

the sort of new technology of deep-frying.

In the late 19th century, the development of new,

larger deep fat fryers meant that for the first time

fish AND chips could be cooked side-by-side -

much like they are today.

And so you have the birth of this new type of establishment

that combines both fish and chips.

Arguments remain about where the very first fish and chip shop

was opened. But one thing's for sure -

they proved a big hit.

By 1910, there were more than 25,000 around the country.

That said, it still doesn't explain one thing.

And what about the seaside? I mean,

I definitely associate eating fish and chips with the seaside.

When did that begin?

The same railways that transported fish across

the country would have been the same railways

that would have carted people into seaside towns.

And here, with the fish and chip industry growing as it did,

this would have been the ultimate

sort of holiday food for those folk as well.

We're at the seaside, we've had our fish and chips.

You know what we need now, don't you?

- What's that? - An ice cream. Come on, I'll treat you.

Oh, I'll have a 99 and two Funny Feet, please, Ruth.

I'm still no closer to getting a plate of chips here.

Here we are. Oh!

My freshly peeled potato pals...

I can see how they keep flicking up.

..are passing through ANOTHER optical sorter.

Cameras detect any naturally occurring green marks and bruises

revealed by the peeling

and it flicks them off using computer-controlled levers.

Oh, there's another!

Wahey!

I mean, I could stay here all day.

But time is ticking,

and while the blemished spuds are sent for animal feed,

me and my pristine potatoes need to get a wriggle on.

Now, your mate Mike from earlier told me

the whole process is going to be two hours, Ash.

How far into this are we now?

So, we're currently 65 minutes into the process.

Um, excuse me, maths, but I think

that leaves 55 minutes, doesn't it?

And they're not even chipped yet.

At home, I'd have parboiled these fellas hours ago...

..but Ash has something more high-tech.

We need to put 'em through our pulse electric field machine,

which softens the potato up ready for cutting.

Pulse electric field.

So, where are these magical electric things happening?

It's that small machine which looks tiny and it literally

- goes through there in seconds. - How does that even work?

So what that does is it sends electric pulses into the water.

That then softens the potato up for us

so allows it for us to cut the potato easier.

The amount of stuff what goes on

with a humble chip in here is amazing!

So, what we do now is we actually start cutting the potato into chips.

Now, let me show you.

So I'll get a potato off the line.

So, what happens now is the potato will come down here.

- Yeah. - OK? It'll come into this, what we call a tube.

- What this does... - Hey.

I call it a tube as well, funnily enough!

We all call 'em tubes, Ash!

What we call a tube

and what we call a potato.

That's a tuber.

THEY LAUGH

- Right, so it goes into this tube. - And it comes through here.

What's that called again?

- A black tube. - A tube. Yeah, right, OK. Yeah. - OK.

So, it actually comes through the tube at 60mph.

- That's going some. - Yeah. - Why so fast? - The reason is, is so then,

when it goes into our cutter box, it goes through here

and then it's cut into chips.

Can I pick that up? Is that all right?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

So, all them are razor sharp

and that's what the potato goes into.

See that in there - they're all sort of staggered.

I can see exactly the size

of the chips and everything.

I can totally see on there.

So, in there now is the chips

totally cut, what we'd all recognise on our plate.

- Yeah. - But where can I actually see them?

- That's in the next bit. - After you, pal.

Four cutters are chopping 100kg of spuds a minute

before they make their big entrance.

# You're so golden

# You're so golden. #

PADDY LAUGHS

There they are, the little rascals.

Look at them!

Just marching out there.

A whopping 1.7 million chips

tumble down this waterfall every hour.

# You're so golden. #

- Can I grab one of these? - Yeah, go for it, Paddy.

Very exciting. Here we go. Let's have that little rascal there.

Look at that beautiful chip.

Perfect size.

So that's what we're looking for.

- What we've got is a clean cut. - Yeah.

And the reason for that clean cut is

because of our pulse electric field machine.

It softened that potato up.

And then what we've got is then a nice, clean-cut potato.

So now, is it just a case of freezing them

- and getting them out there? - No, no. So after here,

what it goes into is a water flume

because what we're trying to do is stopping

the oxygen attack the potato.

Is that so they don't go brown and discoloured?

So, imagine, like your apple at home where you bite into it,

- you leave it on the side, it starts to go brown. - Yeah. - In effect,

- that's what happens to the potato if you leave it out. - Got it.

How far into the process are we now, then?

- So, we're 67 minutes into the process. - It feels like now,

cos I've seen the actual chips, it's doable.

At the beginning when I met Mike and he said two hours,

I was thinking, "That's not achievable."

But I think we're on it.

I think we've caught it up, Ash.

- Right, go on, lead on to the next bit, pal. - Come on, then, Paddy.

Come on, Paddy, follow me.

I'll take it with me.

I've got to say, it does feel like

we're getting into the groove of making chips at last.

# D-I-S-C-O

# D-I-S-C-O

# D-I-S-C-O. #

Oh, look at that. Like a little disco. What have we got here?

So what we have is another optical sorter.

- And what is it doing, then? - So what it's doing is it's looking

for the natural imperfections in the chip,

OK? So they're not harmful or anything like that.

This third optical sorting machine also uses high-speed cameras

to detect the contrasting colours of blemishes caused

by bruising or sunburn

that have been exposed by the cutting process.

What it does is, if it sees anything that's not the natural chip colour,

it'll then shoot that off with a blast of air.

And the camera's spotting each one of them?

Every single one it takes an image of, yeah.

I mean, they're going that fast that

when I'm looking at it you can't even tell they're chips.

It just looks like yellow things.

Where do they go to then? What happens to those,

the ones with the little bits

of black and the little bits of green on?

So, we save every single chip.

The machine then siphons off the blemished chips

for a separate sorting process.

So, they're coming down to there, all the little bits

and different colours on them - bits of green, bits of black,

- bits of brown. - Yeah. And then, after there,

what it does is go through another camera which takes

an image of that chip again.

This final camera pinpoints

the exact location of any blemish that needs to be cut out.

And in here is a big cutting wheel, OK?

You can't see it in there

because, obviously, we've got all the blades.

But what it does, it cuts every single piece out.

I mean, that's a lot. And again, at the speed they're coming through,

how's it cutting them out?

So, inside what you have is these two blades, OK?

- There's not just two of these, there's thousands of blades. - Yeah.

It uses air pressure

to push these blades out and cut them natural imperfections out.

So in there, that's going to be doing that at, like...

You're not even going to be able to compute it

- because it's just that fast? - That'll be milliseconds, that.

And then I can see all the little bits that have been cut out.

Can you see that? Look at that.

That's been cut off there.

Are they binned, then? What happens to them?

Nothing's binned. So, all the small bits will go to animal feed,

so we don't put anything into landfill.

OK. And also, listen, me,

where I grew up in Bolton,

all those little bits we're calling imperfections -

the little green bits and the little dark bits -

- they are edible. - Oh, yeah, all of them are edible.

- They just don't look the best on the eye, do they? - No, all of them

- are completely edible and you can eat them. - Beautiful.

Well, with all this chit-chat,

I'm definitely starting to feel a bit peckish.

I were talking to Mike before about your favourite

sauce on chips, and it got a bit heated.

But, really, when I think about it,

I know it's not technically a sauce,

but you've got to start off with vinegar.

Nah, not for me. I don't like vinegar.

- You don't like vinegar? - No, I don't like vinegar.

I've got Mike with the brown sauce and you with vinegar.

Where's all me friends in here?

I love vinegar! In fact,

Cherry's doing a bit on vinegar now.

- More, please. More, please. - More?

More, please.

Oh, get it on there, Cherry.

More. More? More.

You can't buy class.

More, please. When!

Banging.

SHE GASPS

Oh!

I also love a lot of vinegar on my chips.

It's the perfect pairing.

But have you ever wondered how exactly is malt vinegar made?

I'm visiting a factory in Middleton, Greater Manchester,

where they know a thing or two about making vinegar.

Sarson's have been producing

this ultimate chip condiment for over 230 years.

Graham Houghton is the technical manager.

- Graham, lovely to meet you. - Nice to meet you too.

I love the vinegary smell in here. I just wish I'd brought some chips.

Oh! We can sort some of those later.

I just couldn't get them in my suitcase.

Thomas Sarson began making

the original vinegar in 1794 and,

despite some high-tech kit,

the factory uses surprisingly similar

methods today to how they made it two centuries ago.

I can't wait to see how you make it.

- OK. Shall we go and have a look? - Yes, please.

Production starts as it always has,

with the main ingredient...

..milled malted barley.

- OK, so what's in here... - Woo! Look at that.

..is a bed of barley with water.

- OK. - It's around about 63 degrees C.

- And what's happening is the enzymes which were in the barley... - Mm-hm.

..they start to break down the starch into sugars.

This is quite similar to making beer, is it?

It is. It's very similar to the beer-making process.

Before factories like this dedicated their business

to vinegar production,

it was made by brewers, who collected excess beer

that had soured and sold it as a by-product.

We are historically a beer-drinking culture.

- Yes. - Hence they go hand-in-hand.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's why we're famous for malt vinegar in the UK.

Just like making beer, the barley

and hot water mix is strained,

producing a golden-coloured liquid...

- Cheers. - Cheers. - Bottoms up.

..known as sweet wort.

I'm mean...hiya.

- It's good, isn't it? - It's good.

It's so sweet, but it's also malty

and it's got those sort of fruity flavours to it.

- It's almost like a syrup. - Yeah.

And that's exactly what we want at this stage.

So that's going to become vinegar?

It is going to become vinegar.

- Can I bring this? - Yeah. - OK.

HE LAUGHS

The transformation from sweet wort to acidic malt vinegar

begins inside these steel fermentation vessels.

Yeast is added, which gets to work for six days,

turning the sugars into alcohol through

the process of fermentation

before the liquid is moved to huge wooden vessels.

These here, they're Siberian pine, about 50 years old.

Does it help with the flavour?

We think it helps to round and mature the vinegar.

And again, part of the uniqueness and heritage of our process.

The fermented liquid, now known as bright wort,

is similar to a barley ale

and it certainly packs a punch.

Inside of here is 9.3% alcohol.

That sounds very strong.

It is very strong. But we need that strength

because what we're trying to do is convert

the alcohol into acid,

which is what makes vinegar.

Cor!

You can taste the alcohol in that, can't you?

- You can indeed, yeah. - You really can.

Next, the boozy liquid is piped into another set

of wooden barrels, where it's mixed with something called acetobacter,

a live bacteria,

along with another unusual ingredient which Graham

has set up for me in this glass container.

So, what we have here is a smaller

version of the big barrels.

Inside this is wood wool.

- Wood...wool? - Wood wool.

These are shavings from the larch tree

that helps impart a roundness

of flavour to the vinegar as it passes through.

- It has a very particular smell. - Yeah.

- It's very fresh and piney. - Yeah.

Wood wool has been used to add flavour to vinegar

for more than 200 years.

Inside the wooden barrels,

the alcohol liquid is passed through the wood wool

and the acetobacter bacteria many times.

What we're doing is we're giving the bacteria alcohol,

which they need as food, which they then consume,

and that converts to acid.

So, the bacteria are eating the alcohol

and that is reducing the alcohol level and increasing the acidity?

Increasing the acidity.

That's so clever.

So it's a really organic process.

It's a living process

and those bacteria will do the magic for you.

And what's left is vinegar,

which leaves the traditional part of the factory

for the high-tech bottling hall.

And after all that, here we are.

- Yep. Would you like a taste? Yeah, I would! - OK.

- Freshly brewed. - Yep. Freshly brewed.

- Fresh Sarson's. - To the bacteria!

Cheers!

Phwoar! That will blow your socks off!

I wouldn't want a pint of that,

but my goodness is that punchy and delicious.

And on your chips so well.

Right. To the chippy!

HE LAUGHS

Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root

# Send me on my way Send me on my way. #

I'm getting ever closer to tasting a few chips meself.

But it looks like I've got to get through an obstacle course first.

Here we go. Oh, crikey!

Not made for people our size,

- these, are they, Ash? - No, they're not, Paddy.

Out the way, son.

I'm trying to make a TV programme.

# Send me on my way

# Send me on my way

# Send me on my way Send me on my way. #

My freshly-cut chips are travelling along

yet another massive system of conveyors, drying out as they go.

My word, it's just chips as far as the eye can see.

I mean, I'm in Northern Heaven here.

Look at that. How many steps do you get in a day

walking round this factory?

So, to get around this factory, it's 6,000 steps a day.

Oh! Which means we can eat more chips.

- We're burning it off. - Definitely. - It's a win-win.

And we've got further to go yet,

as we're following my chips to the drying area...

..where they're blasted with hot air,

reducing the moisture content from 80% to 70%.

Look at that now.

They don't look as damp as the last time I saw them.

So, the whole idea is that this chip is now a little bit tacky,

ready for the battering process.

- Batter? - Batter, yeah.

It's a nice, light batter

that we put on to give it that crispness.

And also, it gives you that nice colour.

Honestly, I never realised they had that on.

That's got to be a really thin layer of that.

Who knew? The batter is made from wheat flour,

water, a pinch of salt

and turmeric and paprika extracts,

which give it a golden colour.

And then what you have is air blowers,

which then takes off any excess batter on there,

so then it gives us the right amount of crispness.

My battered chips are ready for their big moment...

..in the most enormous fryer I have ever seen.

Ah, here we go.

I can see 'em dropping in there for a little fry.

Yeah, so what we've got is a two-stage fry.

I know how to fry chips at home,

but why are you doing them in two stages here?

What's the reason?

So, the first stage is we seal the batter onto the fry.

So the whole idea is to get that crispness right.

The second stage is then making sure

we then cook it further to get the right internal texture.

Both stages happen inside this monster fryer,

where vegetable oil is heated to 185 degrees Celsius,

doing the job in just 50 seconds...

..before they emerge.

Er... Are them the ones up there?

So up there, Paddy, is where the chips will come out of the fryer.

Unfortunately, we can't get up there for safety reasons.

I never let health OR safety get between me and a mountain of chips.

Ash. Please, don't... Don't...

Sam, come round here. Come round here.

Luckily, one of our crew's cameras can get us a closer look.

Sam, take that up, son.

Let's have a look.

Look at that - lovely stuff.

They're a bit paler than what I thought they'd be

coming out of the cooker.

At this stage, we've not actually fully cooked them,

because that's what you do at home.

- Part-cooked? - Yeah. - Makes sense,

because obviously you get them on the tray at home, in the oven

and then you finish them off.

- Yeah. - So after that, where are they going to?

So they're going into the freezer.

Sam, move along a bit, son. Move along a bit.

They're going into the freezer. Beautiful.

- Right. Shall we crack on, Ash, get to the next bit? - Yeah, let's go.

There's a cat up in a tree outside.

Go and give it a lift. Right, come on.

The sky-high chips are 95 degrees Celsius

when they travel into the freezer.

But, after 15 minutes...

..they emerge at a chilly -18 degrees.

And I've not packed me extra socks.

Oh, my days, Ash!

I definitely know we're in the frozen section!

Well, there they are, pal.

Frozen chips, exactly as I know them.

How long are we in the process now, then?

So, we're about an hour and 35 minutes into the process now.

So these are now oven-ready chips?

These are all oven-ready, yeah.

Which leads me on nicely to a mate of mine, Ruth.

She's done a history of the gas oven.

I can tell the way you look at me you've got electric. Let's go.

Before the 19th century most people cooked on fire,

whether it was a coal-fired range or an open hearth.

But with the arrival of a brand-new fuel

our kitchens would change forever.

And that fuel was gas.

I've come to what remains of Fakenham gasworks in Norfolk,

an industrial relic from the Victorian era,

to meet engineering historian...

- Hello, Ruth. Pleased to meet you. - Hello!

..Dr Nina Baker.

What a place.

Oh, Nina. This is fabulous!

You often hear that word, don't you, "the gasworks".

This is a gasworks?

This was how gas was made for over 100 years here.

What we're looking at is a load of ovens.

They were known as retorts and they were full of coal

and they were heated up without much oxygen

so that the coal gave off a mixture

of hydrogen and carbon monoxide

that was used to make what was known then as town gas.

So all these pipes are collecting the fumes that are coming off?

Yeah.

Unlike natural gas,

which forms over millions of years underground,

this man-made gas was stored

in distinctive ring-shaped gasholders

which, by the 1820s,

were a common sight in most large towns and cities.

It was piped underground

to light factories,

streets and, by the 1840s,

homes as well.

So gas lighting becomes,

for a short period, THE form of modern lighting?

Absolutely. It really takes off

and suddenly everybody's got gas in their home.

And once you've got gas for lights

then people start thinking, "Well, what else can you do with gas?"

Or, "How else can we sell gas to you?"

By the 1880s, an invention that could really boost gas sales

was gradually becoming more available -

the gas oven.

- All these cookers. - Oh, look at all these cookers!

Gas manufacturers like London's Gas Light and Coke Company knew

that if people embraced gas cookers they could sell more gas.

The problem was, most people

were very comfortable with their solid fuel stoves.

If you'd cooked on a coal-burning range,

you would recognise the cast iron. You might not have any idea

how to use the gas, but it would look like a cooker.

It has this little oven with gas flames at the back...

LAUGHTER

..and you could hang your Sunday roast.

Or you can use it to bake a cake in the traditional way.

The cookers were connected to gas piped into the home,

providing an instant flame and offering

the potential to replace dusty coal-fired cooking -

if would-be customers could get past their fears.

There was concerns about whether the gas

would make the food taste weird, about safety.

Why were the people so worried about it, then?

You've got to control the flame more constantly,

that you can go away and leave coal but you can't really with the gas.

Everybody knew gas was dangerous -

that it could gas you

and that it might explode.

Gas companies were desperate

to reassure the public that careful use of gas was safe

and that cooking with it was the future.

With uptake still slow, they took action

and in 1888 put the call-out to a group of women

who would become known as "lady demonstrators".

Here we have the International Gas Exhibition

at Earl's Court

and a lady demonstrator on the Imperial Stove Co's stand.

And these were well-known cooks of the period,

often with published cookery books.

And they did tours of different parts

of the country giving cookery demonstrations.

The gas companies realised that, at the time,

it was women who ran the home

and who better to convince them

of this new technology than other women?

So, part of the convincing was to get the lady demonstrators

to talk to the housewives direct

and show them how to use the gas cookers

and show them that their sponge cake wouldn't be spoilt.

- So this is women talking to women... - Absolutely, yes.

- ..and that's part of the point of it? - Yeah.

But these women were using skills

that far exceeded a basic cooking demo.

The lady demonstrators

had to have quite a bit of technical knowledge.

The gas company in your area would send

a lady demonstrator to visit the home

and she would show you how to dismantle the cookers.

So there was physics, all about how the gas actually was made,

how it worked, how the cooker worked.

By taking on roles traditionally reserved for men,

these women - soon known as lady demons -

helped to sweep aside typical gender stereotypes.

And this is a socially acceptable way

for women in the early part of the 20th century

to be interested in scientific subjects.

Yeah, absolutely.

The role of the housewife was changing

and the lady demonstrators really made a difference.

The demos helped to break down barriers

for women in the workplace,

but the strategy also worked for the gas companies.

So convincing were the lady demons that, by 1920,

new applications for a home gas supply had trebled.

Gas ovens are everywhere.

- People stopped being frightened. - They did.

And it was the technical women that really changed it.

Clearly, there was nothing to beat women talking to women.

Here we all are with our gas cookers.

Lady demons cooking on gas.

Right, where's my mate Cherry? She's in here somewhere. I know she is.

Hey, excuse me. I'm looking for Cherry Healey.

Don't know if you've seen her.

She's about that tall, very chatty.

No. I'll find her.

My chips have been frozen at -18 Celsius.

Now it's a race against time to get them bagged up.

As they hurtle towards the packing area,

they cascade into 11 weighing machines,

each measuring a 1kg portion of chips

before they drop down to meet Cherry -

our very own lady demonstrator.

Oh, the bagging machine.

- It's amazing how they... - So, Paddy,

I spent a bit of time in the packing room

and they've talked me through how it works.

So, they've weighed the chips upstairs.

1kg. It falls down.

It's this, like, never-ending stream of packaging.

This machine cuts it and seals it. 65 bags a minute.

And then it goes down onto the conveyor belt and off it goes.

And do you know what the best bit is?

You know how much I love air fryers.

- Come with me. - Right.

So, on the bag it says you can

air-fry them as well as oven-cook them.

I...

I've nothing to add.

Right, I'll go and brew up.

Does she ever take a breath? Anyhow.

Our freshly-bagged frozen chips are loaded,

12 bags at a time, into cardboard boxes...

..stacked onto pallets

and sent to dispatch,

where, after several subtle hints,

Ashley has finally sorted me out with a nice, thick jacket.

Without stating the obvious, Ash,

- it's freezing in here. - It is.

In here, we'll be at -18.

Minus... It feels it!

So, the whole point of this now

is it needs to stay frozen, cos now the chips are frozen.

There's nobody around. Is it fully automated?

Yeah, so everything is automatic.

The pallets come in on automatic tracks.

It then fills up to a full load, which is 26 pallets,

and then it's automatically pushed onto the trailer.

How many are we putting on the back of that one?

1.7 million.

Brown sauce Mike said, when I first met him,

two hours in total.

Where are we up to now?

We're bang-on the two-hour mark.

Good man. And I like that -

no gloves on - proper.

Normally, it's a...bloke with a pallet truck.

Pump truck. Is there a button? How do we get them going?

- I'll give the signal. - All right, OK.

High-tech - love it.

Right. Thank you very much, Ash.

But, as it's absolutely freezing in here,

how's about we get in the canteen and get those chips warmed up?

Come on. Off you go.

Well, they said it would take two hours and,

bang-on the dot,

1.7 million oven chips are leaving the factory

near Scarborough...

..heading out across the UK to be enjoyed

with everything from sausages and beans

to pies and pasties...

..and I can't wait to try some.

Look at this, Paddy - a great big bowl of chips.

Oh, the fruits of our labour!

Do you know what?

It's what the country were built on.

Oh! So fluffy inside. Mmm!

HE LAUGHS

I've been waiting to do that all day.

You know what's missing?

- Ketchup. - Ketchup. - Yeah, baby.

Let's go get some.

# There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis

# Just like you swore to me that you'd be true

# There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis

# But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you

# I said, he's a liar and I'm not sure about you. #