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Documentary series. Gregg Wallace explores the Nottinghamshire factory that produces 250,000 jars of curry sauce each day. Cherry Healey helps harvest chillies.

Gregg Wallace explores the Nottinghamshire factory that produces 250,000 jars of curry sauce each day. Gregg is making a supersized 3,000-kilo batch of tikka masala - enough to feed 25,000 people. He loads in almost half a tonne of yoghurt and cream and ten other ingredients, including 30 kilos - or 10,000 cloves - of garlic. He deploys an unusual kitchen implement - a hosepipe - to get his ingredients into the cooking pot and heats it for 30 minutes. Then he checks it for colour against a decorating colour chart. Finally his jars head into a pasteuriser for a second two-hour cooking session.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is in Guntur, the chilli capital of India, where they sell 3,500 tonnes of chilli each day. She helps to harvest the chillies on a typical small-scale farm, dries and packs them down then follows them through processing into chilli powder. Cherry also gets the lowdown on cooking rice with four foolproof rules which ensure it comes out right every time, and learns how to beat the burn if you have overdone it in the curry house. It turns out that milk is the right choice because the fat dissolves the capsaicin that is responsible for that burning sensation.

Historian Ruth Goodman finds that our passion for curry is around 370 years older than the supposed invention of tikka masala in a Glaswegian restaurant in the 1970s. She recreates a 1747 recipe for rabbit curry, and learns that the word 'curry' itself is a misunderstanding of the Tamil word 'kari'. And she re-examines the early convenience curries of the 1970s and talks to the British Asian housewife whose curry crusade helped to make high street curries closer to Indian home cooking.

59 minutes

Last on

Tue 16 Jul 2019 20:00
BBC Two except Wales & Wales HD

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Christmas 2016

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Inside the Christmas Factory

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Clips

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:05

    The Aston Shuffle

    Can't Stop Now

  • 00:05

    Take That

    River

  • 00:08

    Editors

    An End Has A Start

  • 00:20

    Rang Puhar Carnatic Group

    Tillana

  • 00:22

    Talvin Singh

    Butterfly

  • 00:24

    Katy Perry

    California Gurls (feat. Snoop Dogg)

  • 00:25

    James Arthur

    Prisoner

  • 00:28

    OneRepublic

    Kids

  • 00:36

    Milky Chance

    Ego

  • 00:38

    Ed Sheeran

    Don't

  • 00:40

    Dua Lipa

    Be The One

  • 00:42

    Milky Chance

    Stolen Dance

  • 00:56

    Eliza and the Bear

    Natives

  • 00:43

    Little Mix

    Beep Beep

  • 00:47

    Petite Meller

    Barbaric

  • 00:49

    Dua Lipa

    Lost In Your Light (feat. Miguel)

  • 00:51

    Of Monsters and Men

    Empire

  • 00:57

    Noah and the Whale

    Give It All Back

  • 00:58

    Jamie Lidell

    Figured Me Out

  • 00:59

    Kygo

    Carry Me (feat. Julia Michaels)

Credits

Presenter Ruth Goodman
Presenter Cherry Healey
Presenter Gregg Wallace
Music Steve Tait
Sound Geraint Lewis
Sound Simon Cross
Director of photography Chris Titus-King
Camera Operator Rhys Plume
Colourist Tim O'Brien
On-line editing Jamie Home
Re-recording mixer Michael Wood
Runner Celeste Harper-Davis
Runner Natalie Chodakowska
Production Coordinator Rachel Drew
Production Coordinator Lily Jane Stead
Production Manager Samara Friend
Editor Martin Sage
Editor Ruth Horner
Editor Tim Hansen
Assistant Producer Katie Louise Clarke
Assistant Producer Fran Jarvis
Producer Phillip Smith
Executive Producer Jon Alwen
Executive Producer Sanjay Singhal
Director Emma Pound
Series Editor Amanda Lyon
Production Company Voltage TV Productions Ltd

Broadcasts

  • Tue 14 Aug 2018 20:00
    BBC Two
  • Sun 19 Aug 2018 19:00
    BBC Two except Scotland & Wales
  • Wed 22 Aug 2018 01:15
    BBC Two
  • Tue 16 Jul 2019 20:00
    BBC Two except Scotland & Wales

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