Secrets of Airline Food | Free Documentary

in an average year more than 300 million of us fly long haul and one thing a lot of us look forward to when flying is the food so with more than a million hungry passengers in the air at any one time how does everyone get something to eat with exclusive access we go behind the scenes at the uk's largest in-flight caterer whose job it is to keep millions of travellers taste buds tantalised on nearly 30 000 flights every year this is where food production on a mega scale you're not going to use 200 grams of chili spice because you just blow your head off meets the glamour of air travel tart lit of a butternut squash a little bit of curry spice in there how do they decide what we eat on board this is what it could turn into a potato soup and how does a meal never miss a flight there's a car on fire on the m4 so yeah it's uh yeah it's a tough day today tonight we reveal all as we welcome you to the secrets of your airline food it's 6 a.m and the early arrivers are checking in their luggage at heathrow london little do they know that just down the road it's also checking time for a food delivery on a mega scale we've got carrots we've got onions leek lettuce all kind of salads that's coming in welcome to the uk's biggest supplier of airline food an operation that must run to military precision every 24 hours 37 000 meals are made here from scratch and then eaten on planes flying all over the world whether you're a first class flyer or riding slightly further back there's a chance your sky-high breakfast lunch or dinner has been prepared cooked and packed here at donata recently known as alpha lsg so what does one meal have to endure to arrive at a passenger on one of the 82 flights the company cooks for every day it's a journey that starts painfully early in the morning delivery starts from five can get very busy you definitely have to be drawing in the queue and wait until it's your turn terry is the man with a huge task of making sure every one of the 50 deliveries from 85 suppliers a day is up to scratch over a year thousands of tons of food arrives here including 78 tons of carrots 180 tons of potatoes and 94 tons of onions the same weight as a pair of concords on takeoff and just like the supersonic plane they don't hang around all of these which you've seen here will be gone within the next 12 hours this arrival is destined for a 7 pm flight to tokyo we're going to follow every step of the journey of this mountain of food from the pallet right to the passenger's tray on the plane tonight so with the clock ticking to take off terry gets started on the first of the unusual set of culinary challenges that airline food provides it's vital that the ingredients are the right size to fit in the dishes we eat from on board which on average is a snug 10 and a half centimeters wide by 15 centimeters long so these guys they will do the check on it they may just take a bag randomly and just open it just make sure that it's within spec the chefs will do the same before they actually start cooking we have very tight quality control here and to help with that there's a very technical piece of kit a ruler so this is a graded 9 centimeter card take the ruler and just check it to make sure that well it's with inspect we have dishes which can just hold the eggs at nine centimeters you're getting carrots which are 20 centimeters then it's not fit for purpose it wouldn't look nice it wouldn't fit in a dish but for the ingredients that do make the cut for tonight's flight to tokyo they're in action immediately where all the food is cooked in the epic kitchen 160 chefs are cooking constantly here 365 days of the year for 30 airlines 25 nationalities conjuring up 15 different cuisines and they all answer to one man head chef an airline food veteran tim okay okay yeah it's massive it's really huge 24 7. we have a brigade of chefs on nights as well so it's constant there's two kitchens in the same building what you see here is mirrored next door so we've got the non-halal which is here and we've got the halau which is next door we do a wide range mashed potato to lobster thermador and everything in between while the cooking never stops for the day's flights tucks away upstairs there's another vital deadline being chased the um [Music] this is the development kitchen it might be the smallest kitchen on site but it's where 10 000 meals every year are tested and tweaked before they can even dream of making its 35 000 feet up from first class to crew food and everything in between kevin love heads up the team as a former right-hand man to michelin-starred chef heston blumenthal he knows what he's talking about we've got a great mix of chefs here from asian indian and middle eastern specialties we've got guys that worked on cruise ships and hotels all the way up to fine dining and michelin star restaurants every one of the 30 airlines that get their meals made here must sign off every new dish for their menus at a face-to-face presentation and today chef nile is prepping for one of the biggest days of the year when they will present more than a hundred meals to the largest airline in japan a a all nippon airways i love cooking full stop for 10 15 years i've been designing menus you can be encased inside this aluminium tree flowers there's not a lot else to do you can watch a movie you can walk up and down the plane but ultimately the food is so important it's a key contract worth millions and with multiple caterers for the airline to choose from it's crucial for niall and his team to impress right we do two presentations a year to a a started approximately about two months ago where i received sheets from a a um asking for us to present certain dishes and also to present suggestions to add more pressure ana even win awards for their food and with a whopping 42 million hungry passengers a year nile has to be on top of his game the offering and showing them a muse boosh this is a disciple have prior to take off maybe a little just to get them in the mood for their main courses we'll be showing a caviar service from the caviar service we go on to appetizers get a selection of main courses roasted salmon with shrimp a tomato walnut vinaigrette the passengers expect this for mayonnaise one dish for these guys can contain up to 55 ingredients so they're going to need a hefty shopping list it's not like your shopping list my wife wouldn't go and do her shopping there's 700 items every ingredient is essential to the success of our dishes nyle has definitely got his plate full and when you're prepping airline food that plate has got some very precise dimensions along with the size of the ingredients each dish must be no more than 3.2 centimeters high to fit in the cards on board and no more than a minuscule 250 grams in weight more weight on a plane the more fuel is hoofed up and with as many as 868 trays on board just an extra 50 grams on each plate could drain enough fuel to stop a plane getting within two miles of the runway yeah excellent put it into one of these please superb and remember they're not doing this purely for the love of food evan and the team must make sure they're getting as much bang for their buck as possible when choosing what food to fly take the humble olive this is a two kilo box if we were to divide that by let's say a 50 gram portion quick maths would say that i'd get 40 portions once it's drained if we lose say 500 grams of oil that's actually 30 portions so that's a big difference we've lost quite a lot we've got 650 grams if you scale that up if that's on every aircraft that we do in all cabins the cost of that is pretty huge every single ingredient for every dish must pass this test before it gets its boarding pass for the menu and if kevin gets it wrong here then it will be a disaster if the meals are multiplied in the thousands in the big kitchen downstairs the stakes of getting it wrong couldn't be higher one little error like that can expand into thousands of pounds almost on a daily if not weekly basis of loss to the business as the team continue their prep upstairs back down in the kitchen it's all systems go although it's still 12 hours to the tokyo flight and there's one breakfast favorite hoping to make it that's being cooked on an epic scale the omelet i'm use a 40 liter 50 liters egg per day i make it for different reliances different omelets over her seven years here natalia has broken many an egg and made nearly a staggering 1 million omelets today's 400 and plus 10k already which i make it money in time sometime make it 500 sometimes before i make it 800 my record [Music] another dish that's destined for the tokyo flight tonight is the business class fillet of beef like every dish that's cooked here it will be cooled before being reheated on board in the aircraft oven but before it's cleared for takeoff it must pass the green light of kitchen boss tim and senior sous chef rafal and they go to extraordinary lengths to make sure the food will taste just like on board when we do this we're reheating the aircraft oven so what we're tasting now we know this is what the customer is going to be tasting because it's been reheated in an aircraft oven for a set period of time that's good the trick is to make sure that when the passenger sees it in front of them it's just as though it's just been cooked for them on the aircraft it's tricky enough in the restaurant to do this right but when you think about it to do a reheat is really another level really good nice one for most of us it won't be filet de birth under the tin foil but the economy meals get the same taste test we just got a selection here stir-fried prawns we've made fried rice cocoa van you've got a balsamic beef that's right yes okay so we've have a taste bad for the stir-fried forms yeah flavors in here device is really good spicy that's good there's a man who loves his work but it's a serious business making sure the thousands of meals in tim's kitchen taste and look exactly as they did when starting live in kevin's development kitchen upstairs and supersizing meals comes with a warning they will make a recipe for three or four people then what i do is we times up all the ingredients in there if you're gonna times up every single item in a recipe a lot of it will work except for the spices the herbs if you're using one gram and you want 200 times that you're not going to use 200 grams of chili spice because you just blow your head off so then what we do we will get it cooked and we will tweak that before it goes live so good honestly it's so good i'm tending like a broken record but i'm telling you that that is such good food this really cheers me up every time in a normal year more people are flying long haul than ever before which means even more of us are making a reservation to dine at 35 000 feet and what we get to eat on board has become an obsession with social media full of mile-high meal reviews i had pasta the only ever vegetarian option is pasta really really nice not too spicy but spicy enough really lovely so keeping passengers happy with their grub is serious business how's the world winner today yeah it's going well very well labels good yes sarah is on the front line keeping passengers and the airlines happy so she knows what's what when it comes to our love it or loathe it feelings about airline food a lot of people sit on the airplane and that is the beginning of their holidays what you see there what you eat what you taste starts you know whether you're going to have a good day or a bad day for a lot of people they may think this food wasn't great on this carrier i'm going to try a different carrier next time you know so it can be very important but no matter how fast or talented the chef to feed tens of thousands of people safely a day you need some serious tech step up another secret of your airline food the mega blast chillers they are the next compulsory stop-off for every dish including the food signed off by tim for today's tokyo flight there's a quick method to cheating the food it's very important to be safe for the food and to be safe for for customers [Music] each blast chiller blows cold air over the cooked food rapidly cooling it down to below 8 degrees and out of what's known as the danger zone where bacteria can boom [Music] it's not rocket science but it was first discovered by nasa in the 1960s when investigating safe food for space travel [Music] so all the process we checked with the probes for example that one is still not right to remove because it's too high temperature is in the danger zone yes this is dangerous from this point on all the food must be kept below eight degrees until it's ready to be reheated on the plane [Music] while the food chills downstairs the temperature in the development kitchen is heating up as the team still have dozens of dishes to prepare for their big presentation chefs nile and danny are ironing out their strategy for a first-class dish they're hoping will wow the airline very neatly put the akira the salmon row eggs across there tiny palette knife we don't want to get any fingerprints on the plate or on the roulade while at the back of the kitchen chef manabu is working on a seven-course japanese showstopper this is a part of kaiseki style japanese meal this particular course is a highlight for a lot of japanese as everyone knows we love raw fish according to the specs i need three three pieces of 10 grams for kaiseki style we normally pick odd number rather than even number the reason being is that the number starts one which is odd number so it's considered to be better than even number which is two sort of hidden meaning to it [Music] airlines often use their food to show off their culture and traditions while british airlines will often lay on a cream tea on a japanese airline it can be sashimi with a story when we dish small particular dish we always think about how the story goes so with these vegetables you make kind of mountain it has to have a bit of height so it looks nice you need nice color to balance you put yellow and yeah so we hope hopefully it goes well meanwhile danny and niall have gone fully french this is a sea bass uh roulade so we have a sea bass phillip which we've um we've taken the skin off and we're just batting it out now gently to trying to get the right dimensions then we're going to put 30 grams of a scallop and lobster mousse inside some cauliflower puree that we've made some seasonings some lemon juice and it goes with a carrot sauce a different cauliflower puree and salmon roe it could be quite intricate the work for a a on this on particularly on the first class as it should be but sometimes airline food can even go above and beyond first class a few years ago we had to go and support air force one to do a presentation one one the president of america was in ireland we do have a customer that have quite a special service let's call it where they they provide for their passengers it's its own little cabin essentially and they can have pretty much anything they want in there that can be anything from the finest beluga caviar to alba truffles or it could just be a box of fried chicken or a pizza i'm gonna garnish with the salmon row being as careful as possible it's all about finesse and lastly we're gonna garnish with the dill which gives a lovely bit of color and vibrancy and here we have the complete dish it oozes quality quality but what do the airline food connoisseurs themselves go for when they fly on board i'd like to eat the finest foie gras personally probably it's not going to happen i'd like to have a bottle of bollinger it's not going to happen i love airline food i eat it all the kids everyone's i'll say if you don't want it give it to me pass it over i just love the whole thing i'm a bit of a sucker for a bacon roll and a beer i really enjoy that when when i go flying i don't think you can beat a bacon roll and a beer really 11am and back in the kitchen downstairs the food for today's flights is on the move again along with hundreds of other ingredients they've left the blast chillers and have been waiting patiently before entering the plating rooms these two massive areas see up to sixty thousand items a day come together to transform into the dishes we eat in the air and with the clock constantly counting down to take off they must all be kept an eye on enter martin the airline food number cruncher what we've started to now do is to use tablet technology in order to be able to track those items at every moment in time over a year our tablet technology is actually holding the data and the information for over 33 million individual items that we've actually produced natalia's omelets and tim's fillet of beef are both here but now they're out of the blast chiller it means there's a constant threat of food falling into the danger zone for ammar and her colleague darshan they've got to get a move on for the food to make the flight safely this is the business class we are making but in this point they're going three portion there are strict time limits to plate each flight to keep the food safe to eat and if the team take too long the only destination for the meals will be the bin the job is very small that doesn't go like 10 15 minutes if it's corny then over 45 minutes we can't put outside beef 140 grams two asparagus 30 gram type of sauce and then 20 gram wild mushroom the one which we put it over here and one red pepper this is epic scale cooking with mega tech tracking the meals weight as well as keeping an eye on the temperature so it doesn't rise into the dreaded danger zone this is safe dish is complete there's seven hours till takeoff and with the food plated up it's time for it to fly the nest of the kitchens across the yard to get ready for travel but not all meals that arrive here have such a quick trip in fact a whopping 84 000 frozen meals are delivered from off-site every week this goes on many different flights all stored in here we use a slacking process 24 hours before it goes on the aircraft we put them outside in the children environment outside the freezer so make sure it's not frozen once we load it on the flight so with today's meals defrosted it's time for them to be united with the rest of their fellow trade travelers every single item on the tray placed in front of a passenger gets brought together here when you walk from one end to the other it takes quite some time and if you start stopping and looking at all these corners and nooks and crannies you know two three hours later you get back to where you start from every three seconds a tray is assembled including nearly six million bread rolls a year from a simple bap to a brioche bun it's the amount of items that we're talking about not just your hot food but it's the bread and the butter and the cheese and the cracker and this dessert and and you know this this little yogurt with this spoon in there and a so many different components just to make that one tray [Music] that's one of the core hors d'oeuvres smoke salmon kevin and carleed are busy checking the newly arrived meals for the tokyo flight these two know the airline food game inside out they're about to celebrate their ruby anniversary working together here for 40 years there is that odd occasion where we have a little bit of a barley but it's life but we're we're great we've been well yeah that's a lot of the most marriages it's longer in my marriage while khalid is on the business and first class yeah that's business class beef that's three portions for three passengers kevin is on economy because you've got um visible curry for japanese choice and the western we have chicken that's the first choice and second choice this one is a beef with that ginger unless we have seafood we have a ratio we have a chart which tells us percentage buys what we need to put in [Music] while these meals have had a smooth journey so far there's always some ingredients that just don't like flying [Music] that's good top chef and development kitchen boss kevin love has had to learn a few secrets of the airline food game which don't apply to conventional cooking this is a good example of a classic economy meal we've got a very simple chicken mash vegetables and and the sauce in there even creating this frequent flyer can cause havoc for airline chefs when you're in the air it's a it's a fact that you lose about 30 of your taste buds so that's to do with aircraft noise it's to do with the dry atmosphere because of the recycled air air pressure it's a bit like you've got a cold with the risk of dulled taste buds chefs like kevin must find a way to pack a punch for the customers while keeping the costs down taking this dish as an example there are a few tricks we can do smuggled into the sauce the dish has a secret ingredient loved by airline chefs we use umami rich ingredients so mami is found in tomatoes it's found in anchovies seaweeds parmesan and what it does it just boosts that savory flavor i've got kombu here this is a british seaweed it's packed full of umami chicken breast is a firm favorite but it's a battle to keep moist we're always combating a dryness in in airline food because of the dry atmosphere and the ovens and cooking quite an old technique brining what the brine does is it travels through the meat and flavors the meat on the inside that just helps keep the meat a little bit more moist so chicken will sit in there for a few hours and then we wash it off just going to finish it off cooking in the steamer and not forgetting the mash that has a little-known habit of behaving badly on board mashed potato generally has a tendency to split when it's reheated so i've got an example here of a very waxy potato with quite a high water content and this is what it could turn into potato soup we have to use a very a very dry fluffy potato this is one ingredient on one dish on one airline it is that that insane [Music] back across the yard in dispatch it's six hours to take off for the tokyo flight [Music] here 82 flights a day all queue for departure [Music] everything needed for onward travel is loaded from here even the ice to keep your wine or fruit juice cool all thanks to this machine every year it churns out nearly four million slabs of dry ice to chill the carts [Music] time may be ticking down to take off for today's meals but they still can't leave dispatch 70 trucks and 50 vans are the crucial link to the airport running back and forth more than 200 times a day but before any of them get filled up with today's meals they must unload every single thing from their last flight and there's a lot to shift every day they drop off 30 000 cups 35 000 plates and 47 000 bowls at the washroom here eight mega washers pump through nearly 10 000 items an hour if any rubbish on the floor ask the cleaner after they start first class yeah it's a military operation that needs an army of 40 staff today they're led by jagjit nearly 75 to 80 flights we cater a day it's a lot of pressure we have to wash on time and deliver on time in the production area below downtime we can deliver on time to the airport oh meet the deadline i'm excited for that [Music] as well as washing on an epic scale jagjit's team must deal with the constant war on waste from picky passengers we can't control here the people what they eat on the airplane any open any bottle of wine or coke anything we have to put in the recycle machine that's it any food waste come offload from the aircraft we have to dump in the compactor area three compactors take a mind-boggling 20 tons of waste a day from the washroom over a year the same weight in fuel could fly you around the world 19 times this was your glasses tea coffee cups and the plastic dishes so everything we put in the competitor along with the liquid leftovers the waste is turned into energy that generates electricity for nearly 1 000 homes a year [Music] it's an epic task that never stops but maybe just the right man for the job finish everything all time deliver everything to all time that's all [Music] uh wingy can you go around getting plastics off it's decision time for niall and his team i shall just space them out for you yes that's okay i think we've got all the canopies and the muse let's keep it flowing they filleted flipped poached and pureed and finally after 300 hours of prep they're nearly ready for all nippon airways to give their verdict on nearly 200 dishes i'll be leading from the front there my right hand meant i mean i look at it like i'm a surgeon they know my next move i put my hand out and i'll have my knife given to me if something needs garnishing they will be there they're two steps ahead of me this is serious stuff a a will be bringing a vastly experienced and highly respected team of chefs whose opinion on the food is paramount as it's one of the airlines she looks after sarah has the inside scoop on what they'll be looking for they'd like it to be professional if it's organized you'll see when nyle's laid out the food it gets laid out in such a way that's how they like it they're coming in but the proof is in the tasting and as soon as the a and a chefs arrive it's straight to work tartlet of a butternut squash with a little bit of curry spice in there volavon so you know it's coming back into fashion of olive ons the airline is judging both western and japanese food for flights up to nine months in advance and each dish must look taste and weigh the same as when it flies and to give the chefs the ultimate airline food experience there's a familiar sight in order to show the customer as close as it would be to what the passenger gets we will reheat everything in the airline oven although the food might not taste how we'd expect it when chefs are tasting here they have to be mindful of how it will taste in the air so we've talked about umami and using different ingredients to to boost savoury flavors that'll be encapsulated in pretty much everything we've got we've got here there's a lot of flavor in this dish which i i thought about when when designing this even though prep for today is taken two months the visiting chefs have the power to immediately change anything they don't like the smallest of tweaks are leading to some drastic changes we're looking at the the canopy the first service and we had a few items there that the chef thought might clash with the menu items that he's chosen for the appetizers and the main courses so it's just having a look at what items we've got there that we can either create a whole new canopy he's also checking the weight it could be that the combination of the three he's chosen takes him slightly overweight or slightly underweight and next door in the japanese room there's also changes afoot is one of the 70 dishes he and chef yoshi created for the a a chefs to judge and it's a hit it was received well chef was happy with it but there has been a bit of tweak because there was a duplicate of ingredients it's go back to soft kaiseki style you shouldn't really have the duplicate of the ingredients so make it more exciting for a diner while the chefs continue to deliberate back in dispatch it's half past three and the ingredients that arrive first thing in the morning are finally ready to depart for the airport and the tokyo flight hi chris uh what's my next job three two six at 8 55. and today making sure no meal will miss their connection is logistics controller chris we have about 10 flights all going off the dock within an hour two trucks per flight so you're looking at 20 trucks an hour being so close to one of the main routes into london means the risk of disruption is high and today there's trouble on the roads there's a car on fire on the m4 which then causes a lot of buildup of traffic in the local area that then affects us because it takes the trucks a lot longer to get to the airport it also delays them coming back as well so it has a double impact on us yes tough day today with today's flights raring to go will they get to their gate on time back at the presentation i can bring it out now do you want to see it now right it's time for nyle and danny sea bass dish to take center stage so the chefs are now quickly even preparing the product to bring out to show the chef and that's the way it rolls sometimes and it keeps the chefs on their toes too so it's good beautiful another dish [Music] so the sea bass [Music] okay thank you thank you the dish is cleared for takeoff no changes brilliant they want to keep it no changes so we're delighted i'm really pleased that he said it was you know he's more than happy with it so this is that's the reward for the hard work the day is finally over over 100 new dishes will soon be multiplied in the thousands to fly high around the globe it's 4 pm and crunch time for the food flying to tokyo no matter what the obstacle it must leave the dock three hours before departure but first driver jose and flight coordinator kevin have three tons of food and equipment to load onto the two lorries for the flight as everything's actually loaded in numbers every trolley will have a position number one when we go on the aircraft it's all followed suit 102 103. which all fillers on because i've got to make sure the right number of trolleys on board everything is on me to make sure it's correctly loaded with the lorries sealed for security all right it's all good at the airport passengers are already starting to arrive for check-in time for jose and bodyguard to the meals kevin to hit the road sometimes can be a long time to get there right now it's okay but sometimes could be very busy we just have to drive very carefully so that everything gets there in one piece back at dispatch chris is keeping a close eye on jose's journey thanks to a gps tracker on the lorry this will be our route into the airport you're never safe we're always watching so here we're just approaching the security gates just like the passengers every vehicle entering the airport must clear security even for something as harmless as an omelet [Music] even the slightest error on that paperwork come in and they'll refuse entry to the airport and they'll be turned back and we'll have to obviously recheck it and reseal it again and that could cause massive disruption if we do delay boarding sometimes that can mean a financial penalty which is why we try so hard to prevent the delay of the aircraft but not today he's just going through the cargo tunnel now the team only have one hour to get everything off and on the plane it's time for some precision parking he's just going to position himself by the back door and then guide us to it it's so on him on this at this moment so on him makes a mistake then we all in the bad state so with crates in position it's time for the final hurdle [Music] all of the last flight is loaded up for jagjit's washroom back at base [Music] what i'm doing now is checking make sure the air chillers are on to keep the food at the right temperature food securely out of the danger zone and all the cards and ovens loaded just as the passengers are arriving at their gate all the food is on board catering is done and we're ready to go job done [Music] just a couple of hours after takeoff somewhere over sweden at 35 000 feet it's the final destination of an unbelievable journey for tim's beef and natalya's omelet to see it from from its beginning stages it's raw stages to in the kitchen designing it having it costed and then maybe six months down the line if i'm lucky enough to see it flying and that's superb you can't ask for anything else to be honest i still don't know how we do it it's insane how many departments there are that all come together and get these flights off the ground it's just mind-boggling [Music] from veg being measured first thing in the morning to flying out that same evening and repeat it thousands and thousands of times a day it's a never-ending cycle for the most frequent of flyer [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 151,228

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, airplane food, logistics of airplane food, logistics of plane food, plane food, whats behind plane food, secrets of your airline food, airline, airline food, plane meals, plane meal prep

Id: Ikiun-3ngjc

Length: 48min 42sec (2922 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022