In Wigan, Gregg Wallace visits an enormous soup factory, which produces two million tins a day. He follows the production of vegetable soup, from a pea harvest in Yorkshire right through to the finished soup going into cans and being dispatched. Along the way, Gregg watches as a five-tonne avalanche of peas – around a million individual peas – is frozen within two hours of being picked. He mixes up three tonnes of veg and 500 gallons of tomato sauce and watches as they are combined and packed into 10,000 tins. Gregg is astonished by a 27.4m-tall pressure-cooking tower and surprised to learn that for every one degree drop in temperature in winter, the factory observes a 3.5% increase in soup sales.\n \nMeanwhile, Cherry Healey is measuring the vitamin content of fresh and frozen vegetables. She finds that her sample of frozen peas have six times the vitamin C content of fresh, while sprouts do even better with 800% more. Cherry travels to a rock salt mine outside Crewe, which supplies half of all salt used in the UK food industry, and runs an experiment to see if soup could be the answer to staying fuller for longer.\n \nHistorian Ruth Goodman is cooking up a batch of ‘soop of buttered spinach’ from the 17th-century cookbook of Robert May. This is the first reference to a recipe for soup in English, but the resulting sweet, vegetable puree doesn’t resemble soup as we know it today. She also heads to Poplar in east London to a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Here, Ruth discovers that the notion of the soup kitchen originally began in 1795 as a response to a countrywide harvest failure.
Source: BBC 2
Series 8: 6. Bath Bombs
Gregg Wallace visits the colourful and fragrant Lush factory in Dorset to learn how an astonishing 14 million bath bombs are produced every year.\n\nCherry Healey visits Loughbo ...
09-10-2024
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 ...
02-10-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 4. Stuffed Pasta
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 ...
25-09-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 3. Jeans
Gregg Wallace visits two factories in Italy and Wales to explore the fascinating secrets behind how Welsh jeans brand Hiut make their trousers, learning how denim cloth is made ...
12-09-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 2. Jelly Beans
Gregg Wallace explores the Jelly Bean Factory in Dublin to reveal the incredible processes it employs to make ten million colourful little sweets every day.\n\nCherry Healey vis ...
05-09-2024
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 ...
29-08-2024
BBC 2
Series 5: 7. Pots And Pans
Gregg Wallace is in France at an enormous foundry that produces a cast iron pot every five seconds. He follows production of casserole dishes from the arrival of 20 tonnes of cr ...
25-08-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Mints
Gregg Wallace visits a factory with a menthol scent - the Polos factory in York, which produces 32 million mints every day and contributes to the 19,000 tonnes of mints per year ...
15-08-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Rice Pudding
Gregg Wallace explores the Ambrosia factory in Lifton, Devon, to reveal how it makes up to 360,000 rice puddings every single day.\n\nCherry Healey is in the Po Valley in Italy ...
06-08-2024
BBC 2
Series 7: Vegan Sausages
Gregg Wallace visits a Yorkshire team that churn out up to 90,000 vegan sausages a day! Heck have been making these bangers since 2018, and the process is surprisingly futuristi ...
30-07-2024
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 8: 4. Stuffed Pasta
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 ...
25-09-2024
BBC 2
Series 8: 3. Jeans
Gregg Wallace visits two factories in Italy and Wales to explore the fascinating secrets behind how Welsh jeans brand Hiut make their trousers, learning how denim cloth is made ...
12-09-2024
BBC 2
Series 4: 2. Toilet Roll
Gregg Wallace explores the Manchester factory that produces 700,000 toilet rolls a day. He begins 940 miles away in Sweden, where the raw material - wood - is harvested from a s ...
16-08-2020
BBC 2
Series 8: 2. Jelly Beans
Gregg Wallace explores the Jelly Bean Factory in Dublin to reveal the incredible processes it employs to make ten million colourful little sweets every day.\n\nCherry Healey vis ...
05-09-2024
BBC 2
Series 6: 5. Chairs
Gregg Wallace visits the Ercol factory in Buckinghamshire, an area associated with furniture making since the 19th century.\n\nWe Brits spend a staggering £300 million pou ...
15-02-2023
BBC 2
Series 8: 6. Bath Bombs
Gregg Wallace visits the colourful and fragrant Lush factory in Dorset to learn how an astonishing 14 million bath bombs are produced every year.\n\nCherry Healey visits Loughbo ...
09-10-2024
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
Christmas 2017
In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman explore the fascinating factory processes and surprising history behind favourite festive treats.\n\nGre ...
23-12-2022
BBC 2
Series 6: Mugs
Gregg Wallace visits the Denby factory in Derbyshire, which has been making pottery since 1809. We Brits drink a staggering 195 million mugs of tea and coffee every day, so Greg ...
16-05-2023
BBC 2