A real saucy pair
INSIDE THE FACTORY BBC2, 8pm FISH and chips might be our national dish – officially. But unofficially, we all know it’s curry, right?
Over our lifetime we will each spend over £30,000 feeding this spicy habit.
Whether it’s a korma, a biryani or a tikka masala, we just can’t get enough of the stuff.
This brilliant series once again clobbers us with endless statistics, each of which will astound you.
And while we all wait for MasterChef to return to our screens, it’s a chance to enjoy the many, many bad jokes of Gregg Wallace.
Helping a factory worker to weigh out over half a tonne of Greek yogurt and cream for a curry sauce, a blue hair-netted Gregg quips: “How dair-y?” Get it?
Then, more worryingly, looking at the vat of mixture, Gregg declares: “I kind of want to strip off and get in.” Fortunately he doesn’t.
Gregg is making a batch of tikka masala at one of the country’s largest cooking sauce factories, which churns out more than 50 billion jars a year. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is treading on chillies in Guntur, the chilli capital of India, where they sell 3,500 tonnes of the hot stuff each day.
She also gets the lowdown on cooking rice with four foolproof rules, as well as joining a samosa production line.
And historian Ruth Goodman reveals that our passion for curry began around 370 years ago, well before the supposed invention of the tikka masala in a Glaswegian restaurant back in the 1970s.
Not ordering a takeaway doesn’t get tougher than this.