Gregg Wallace explores the Dell Ugo factory in Hertfordshire to reveal how it makes 500 million stuffed pasta parcels every year. \n\nHe’s following production of one of their best sellers, crab and crayfish raviolo, and what better place to start than at the intake bay with a delivery of frozen crayfish tails. Factory manager Cesra Da Rocha explains that they receive around half a tonne a week of the freshwater crustacean, enough to make over two hundred thousand individual raviolo, the slightly bigger cousin of ravioli. \n\nThe delivery is wheeled over to the factory’s kitchen area, where Gregg meets one of the owners, Charlie Ugo. Charlie tells Gregg that, along with crayfish, the other key ingredient is crab. They use a mixture of both white and brown crab meat to balance out the flavours. Before the crab goes into the mixer, Gregg helps to add parsley and coriander, mayonnaise, salt and the crayfish. Then in goes the crab, followed by blue whiting, which is a fish from the same family as cod and haddock, adding a fish stock flavour and texture. Then it’s lobster stick and lemon juice, followed by some very specific mixer timings: 32 seconds in one direction, then 32 in the other. Breadcrumbs are added, and it’s all precisely mixed again. \n\nWith the filling made, it’s time for the pasta, made from special flour milled from durum wheat, which is higher in protein than traditional flour. When the flour is mixed with water, the proteins within the flour combine to form strands of gluten which turns it into dough. The more protein, the more strands are formed and the stronger the dough will be. The factory needs a strong dough to withstand the rigorous processes used to turn it into raviolo. At this factory, they make fresh pasta dough, which requires egg. The ingredients are combined with water, but the mix is nothing like a finished dough yet; it’s too dense, so it’s sent through a specialist machine which folds and kneads it to make it stretchier, before a set of rollers creates two separate continuous sheets of pasta. After passing through two more sets of rollers, the pasta is eventually taken down to the perfect thickness for making into parcels. \n\nWith the pasta made and the filling ready, it’s time to make the raviolo with the help of another clever machine. Gregg watches on as the two pasta sheets enter a stuffed pasta-forming machine. As they pass through, 15 grams of the fishy filling are deposited at precisely spaced intervals, before the pasta is pressed together and cut out by a roller at a rate of 280 a minute. Then the stuffed pasta parcels are sent through a tunnel, where they’re blasted with steam, pasteurising them. The pasteurisation process not only kills microbial activity to extend shelf life, it also sets the gluten stands within the pasta dough, holding them in place and stabilising the shape. Then it’s a quick journey through a drier and into a giant chiller, which brings their core temperature to below four degrees Celsius. \n\nFinally, ten raviolos are portioned into individual packs, and they head to the dispatch area, where they’re loaded into waiting lorries before being sent the length and breadth of the UK. \n\nElsewhere, Cherry Healey visits Cromer on the Norfolk coast to discover the traditional fishing techniques still used to catch the crab for Gregg’s stuffed pasta, and she conducts an intriguing experiment to find out if the music we listen to can affect how we taste food.\n\nHistorian Ruth Goodman learns how Italian immigrants in Bedford helped to build Britain, and she tucks into the extraordinary origins of gluten free food.
Source: BBC 2
Series 7: Crumpets
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24-07-2024
BBC 2
Series 5: 8. Soup
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14-07-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Pork Pies
Gregg Wallace explores the Vale of Mowbray pork pie factory in Northallerton, Yorkshire, which began making pork pies in 1928. He visited the factory in May 2022, following prod ...
10-07-2024
BBC 2
Series 5: 2. Wax Jackets
Gregg Wallace is in South Shields at a clothing factory where they produce 650 waxed jackets a day. He follows the production of water-resistant jackets from the arrival of 500- ...
02-07-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Jaffa Cakes
Gregg Wallace visits a Manchester factory that churns out 6 million Jaffa Cakes every single day - 1.4 billion per year. Cherry Healey is in Jaffa, the city responsible for grow ...
26-06-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: 1. Diggers
In the first episode of this supersized series, Gregg Wallace and Cherry Healey get special access to a factory that makes as many as a hundred iconic yellow diggers every singl ...
20-06-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Buses
The red double-decker bus is a global icon. They carry millions of passengers every day across the capital and are as synonymous with London as Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palac ...
14-05-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 10. Paint And Wallpaper
Gregg Wallace explores the Farrow & Ball factory in Dorset to learn how they produce up to 200,000 litres of paint and 10,000 metres of wallpaper a week. They make 270 different ...
15-03-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 9. Sofas
Gregg Wallace explores the HSL factory in West Yorkshire to find out how they make more than 5,000 sofas every year. The huge site has 250 staff dedicated to furniture making. G ...
08-03-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 8. Chocolate Bars
Gregg Wallace is in the UK’s city of chocolate, York, exploring how the Nestle factory makes more than eight million bars of chocolate every day. The bar he’s follow ...
01-03-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Crumpets
Gregg Wallace visits the factory making 432 million crumpets every year. Crumpets are a British classic made from a precise combination of ingredients, using some clever chemist ...
24-07-2024
BBC 2
Series 6: Tortilla Chips
Gregg Wallace visits the biggest tortilla factory in Europe. The Coventry site covers more than 21,000 square meters, the size of three football pitches, and makes 60,000 tonnes ...
21-06-2023
BBC 2
Series 7: Trains
When he was a child, Gregg loved playing with toy trainsets. Now he’s got special access to learn how the ultimate model is made: a huge 187-tonne, five-carriage electric ...
15-10-2023
BBC 2
Series 4: 9. Pencils
Gregg Wallace is in Germany, at a historic factory which produces 600,000 pencils a day. At materials intake he is astonished that the main material in a pencil is not lead, but ...
16-04-2019
BBC 2
Series 8: 10. Paint And Wallpaper
Gregg Wallace explores the Farrow & Ball factory in Dorset to learn how they produce up to 200,000 litres of paint and 10,000 metres of wallpaper a week. They make 270 different ...
15-03-2024
BBC 2
Series 5: 3. Croissants
Gregg Wallace is in France at an enormous croissant factory where they produce 336,000 of the flaky pastries every day. He follows the production of croissants from the arrival ...
13-09-2023
BBC 2
Series 8: 5. Stout
Gregg Wallace explores the secrets of the Guinness brewery in Dublin to reveal how it makes two million litres of Irish stout every single day.\n\nCherry Healey visits a water t ...
09-02-2024
BBC 2
Series 5: 2. Wax Jackets
Gregg Wallace is in South Shields at a clothing factory where they produce 650 waxed jackets a day. He follows the production of water-resistant jackets from the arrival of 500- ...
02-07-2024
BBC 2
Series 3: 6. Soft Drinks
Gregg Wallace explores Ribena's Gloucestershire factory. It turns 90 per cent of Britain's blackcurrants into soft drinks, producing three million bottles a week. Gregg takes de ...
24-07-2022
BBC 2