Inside the Factory 9x3 - Cheese Curls

In this episode, Paddy McGuinness explores the secrets of theWalkers factory in Lincoln, to reveal how it makes 500 millionpacks of Quavers every year.Paddy begins by meeting factorymanager Layla Whiting, who reveals that, despite popularbelief, cheese curls aren't officially classed as crisps! Infact, while crisps are made from sliced potatoes, Quavers aremade from the potato starch powder left behind during thecrisp-making process. Their first stop is a huge mixer wherethe starch powder is added, along with equally fine rice andsoya flours. Then they add some mild seasoning of salt,pepper, onion powder and yeast - but no cheese flavour yet.The whole lot is mixed with water to create a dough.This is ahuge and very hot factory! Comparing it to getting off a planeon holiday, Paddy exclaims, ‘this is like landing on thesun!' But he soldiers on to the next stage of production. Aftermixing, the dough is forced under very high pressure throughan extruder, emerging as a continuous one-millimetre-thicksheet. It looks more like a lasagne sheet at this stage and theprocess is nothing like Paddy imagined it would be.To ensureevery one of the snacks ends up with the famous curly shape,the dough is stretched over rollers to add tension. Then ittravels through an 18-metre-long steamer, increasing themoisture level in the dough to 40%, making it more pliable andstretchy. After being quickly cooled, the continuous sheet ofdough is sent rushing through a machine which chops it into 13millimetre by 40 millimetre pellets, at a rate of 7,900 aminute. But the pellets contain too much moisture, so they aresent through a series of dryers, bringing the moisture contentdown to 11%.Over in the frying area, Paddy learns how 1.2tonnes of pellets travel through a specialist fryer every hour.Inside the fryer, the pellets are plunged into sunflower oilheated to 200 degrees Celsius. The heat of the oil causes anyremaining water inside to turn to steam, puffing them andleaving tiny air holes. At the same time, the tension createdwhen the dough was stretched now contracts and curls up. Aftertwenty seconds in the oil, 1.8 million perfectly-formed curlscascade out of the fryer every hour. Finally, Paddy is able tosee the curly snack he knows. There is one vital thing missingfrom the snacks though – cheese flavouring. To put thatright, each one of the freshly cooked curls travels through ahuge metal drum where a precise amount of cheese powderflavouring is applied.After a welcome taste test, Paddyfollows his snacks, still warm off the production line, tothe packing department. First, a specialist machine called amulti-head weigher carefully portions out 16 grams of cheesecurls before another machine seals them neatly into aluminiumand plastic packets. Then, each packet is sent hurtlingtowards a robot which sorts them into groups of six, beforethey are packed into multipack bags.Finally, the multipacksare put into boxes and placed on pallets before making theirway to the dispatch area. There, Paddy learns how 93,600packets are loaded onto each waiting lorry, before being sentto shops and supermarkets across the country.Earlier in theepisode, Cherry visits a Walkers crisp factory to learn howthe starch from potato crisp production is transformed into thepotato starch powder used to make the cheese curls. And shevisits another factory in Leicester to find out how ten millionbags of Bombay Mix are produced every year.Meanwhile,historian Ruth Goodman learns how a group of American militaryscientists invented cheese flavouring during the Second WorldWar.