14 Entrepreneurs Who Built Food Empires | Big Business Marathon | Insider Business

From the family that made Tabasco a household name The Halal card that became an international franchise We travel the world to meet the

food

entrepreneurs

whose ideas have become

empires

Our first stop is New Jersey, where Pat Lafrida transformed his father's butcher shop at the source of meat for America's best restaurants. Many steaks begin in this dry aging room containing 15,000 of Pat's best cuts. It has to stay at 36 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent humidity, otherwise everything will spoil or freeze and Pat could lose millions as the meat ages, the moisture evaporates. and muscles break down, but we know the dry aging process is at work when we see the protein has sunk from the bone and the fat workers carry the meat to the portion section.

Master butchers get to work on everything from Tomahawk to New York steaks. strips cutting them exactly how each restaurant wants Pat trained most of these butchers himself the ones you made this morning were beautiful oh yeah there really are no buttons in the schools the restaurants will ask me Pat where you get your butchers like us don't get up because we make our own bushes they only need a few tools to do the job in most people's hands you will see boning knives with this you could basically do all the work until you get to cutting the fillet and that is where you want a scimitar knife and what makes it a butcher knife as opposed to a chef's knife.

We have a protective corner, but certain cuts require the use of a band saw. It is ideal for cutting bones or placing high volume orders as quickly as possible and only master butchers. can operate them, it will probably be a good two and a half years before they reach a band saw. Workers then load everything onto trucks if the customer is local. Pat's team can deliver within a few hours. The Press Club Grill in New York City takes in thousands. of pounds of Lafrida meat per week, owner and chef Franklin Becker showed us how he prepares a boneless ribeye.

Yeah, I try to season it pretty aggressively and let all that salt soak into the pores of the meat and then I go. On an infrared broiler, this steak doesn't take long, it's pretty quick, in just five to six minutes you'll get a juicy medium rare, so you'll see the fat start to caramelize, okay, you let it rest and then the meat will reabsorb everything. . those juices and when you cut it there won't really be anything left on the board, that's when a steak is perfectly rested, that's when you know you cooked it right. One of the most legendary steakhouses in New York City.

Peter Luger has been buying cuts of meat. by Lafrida since 1998. Peter Luger has earned his reputation as a New York City institution. Frankly, he worked hard. I think he starts with our attention to detail in the selection of each piece of meat that comes to this restaurant. The highest quality steak we can buy shines with just a little salt and a little bit of butter, we cook the steak to order and send it piping hot to the guy, that's it, but Lofrida doesn't just supply fine dining restaurants in 2004, Pat purchased the company's first burger machine to make burgers for a new fast casual chain that was about to open Shake Shack Pat created a special blend with no frills or added fat for the new chain.

Shake Shack still uses Pat's recipes today and Lefrida still supplies burgers for over a hundred of their locations. Each burger starts on the main floor. Two thousand pounds of Angus beef are poured onto conveyor belts and machines spray them with diluted vinegar. which kills potential germs other machines grind and mix the meat the ground beef goes to burger forming machines that can make 200 different mixes the workers need to move quickly the company produces over 200,000 burgers a day it gets quite hectic and frustrating at times when it gets overloaded but every day is a different challenge Mel's Butcher Shop in Tenafly New Jersey is one of Melanie Landano, the owner of Pat's loyal customers, orders up to a hundred pounds of hamburgers a day for the restaurant.

We use Pat Lafrida's original blend, which is a short rib brisket. Mixes for special events. If a customer requests dry brisket burgers, we get some. People request a 45-day dry burger. Anything you want, Pat will make it for us once we put it on the grill, we leave it on the grill and a lot of people like to press the meat and then all the juices come out. what I do I turn it once I leave it and let it cook and then I let it sit here on top of her daily customers Mel also cooks burgers for four local schools on Monday morning alone grills over 200 burgers for students from five or six cases At Mel you also buy lefrida skirt steaks ribeye cheesesteaks and meatballs here are our lefrida meatballs this goes with this penne meatball just warming up this is your grandfather's recipe and they are delicious I'm Italian so I don't use any other any other meatballs that don't be Pat Le Freedom, if I don't have time to make my own, family recipes are still an important part of frying.

Pat's great-grandfather opened a butcher shop in Brooklyn in 1922, after moving the operation to Manhattan's growing Meatpacking District. Pat's grandfather took over and started Pat lafrida met the suppliers Pat began learning the job as a child my favorite times were cutting meat with my grandfather on my left and my dad on my right, but Pat's father insisted on for his son to try a different career first that he didn't want. for him to work those hours, he didn't want me in that environment. Pat spent nine months working as a stockbroker but then left that job to join the family

business

, a decade later Pat would be named CEO and now my dad can't wait for my son to go to college and come back and run the

business

. family when Pat joined in 1994 the company had 44 restaurant clients now they have 1,600 and are posting annual sales of $270 million we are several hundred times larger than we were in 2021 Pat I opened this new $20 million facility to keep such a massive operation running.

Pat has to be more than a manager, although he does everything that comes, he works on pollution, he works with us, he goes to the table, he goes to see the customers, he oversees everything, it is something that I would love to do and I think a lot For me, it's a relaxing moment even after so much growth. Pat believes there is room for more. This facility produces about 250,000 pounds of product per night and has the capacity to probably triple or quadruple that, so we

built

it with the space to be able to expand from there.

Every cheesecake that comes out of this machine costs twice as much as it did a few years ago. Juniors produces cakes and packages 5 million cheesecakes a year and the companies have used the same recipe since the 1950s, but it has become much more difficult. First there was a shortage of cream cheese, you can't make cheesecake without cream cheese, it's impossible and now inflation has caused the prices of other ingredients to skyrocket. I've been doing this. for 33 years and I have never seen a moment like this and I can say that if my father were alive, he had also never seen a moment like this now that he expects a tough work ethic from all of his employees, not the sandwiches.

Great, I'm wrong, third generation owner Alan Rosen takes us behind the scenes. It's like watching a baby being born to me and watching Juniors continue to release their famous cheesecakes in the face of ever-shrinking margins here in New York City. Juniors is an institution, but Cheesecakes are actually no longer made in the city in 2015, the company moved to this New Jersey Plan when we took over this building because we didn't have the space to do it in Queens. 240 workers prepare millions of cheesecakes and layer them. pies here every year, it's no surprise that each batch starts with the most important ingredient.

This year we will probably use about seven million pounds of cream cheese. Juniors partners with artisan Heinz, the maker of Philadelphia cream cheese. Workers unwrap each of those giant blocks of cream cheese. and pour them into the bowl so far we have cream cheese we have sugar we have eggs still to come we have some heavy cream a little vanilla and I think that's it it's a simple thing the workers roll these giant mixing bowls towards the assembly line to speed up production Allen added automatic depositors it is pumped here to here this is going to take out exactly the right amount first the workers place a slice of vanilla cake, not graham cracker crust, in each mold we use cake on the bottom because this It's a recipe my grandfather created in 1950.

It's a lot of work just to make the bottoms slowly, the pump works its way through the entire batch of dough dropping perfect portions into each mold and then this guy removes the excess air in this line. I'm making strawberry swirl cheesecake, the swirl used to be done by hand, but this robot took over the job in 2017. The cakes are then baked, but this step also has a unique touch. Many bakeries use rack ovens where you simply slide the entire rack in and slide the entire rack out. It doesn't work for our cheesecake. His team bakes the dense cakes in a water bath.

Distributes heat evenly. The bottom of the cakes does not burn. They rise like a soufflé. You can see how. The cakes are literally on top of the pan when they are golden brown the workers take out the trays and pour out the excess water, then they test the internal temperature, they take temperatures for

food

safety, but I can see with my eyes after they have rested, the cakes are ready. We didn't move, we don't make jiggly anymore, the young people who use this reused pizza oven do it. Bakers can heat the pans enough to release the set cakes.

Allen keeps it at a warm zero-degree temperature inside, but it's not just plain cheesecakes or swirls in this freezer. The company makes dozens of different flavors of cheesecakes, layer cakes and desserts, the chocolate mousse cheesecake is topped with a stack of moose dipped in a waterfall of chocolate and topped with mini chocolate chips. There's also pumpkin layer cake, cheesecake robots, and bakers work together. To freeze it, the tops of leftover cakes are ground to make the crumb that surrounds the edges. All finished and cooled cakes converge on the packaging line from the Pumpkin Cheesecake to the 24 Mini Cheesecake Variety Pack.

Destined for Costco workers. Place each cake in a box. Stick a label on it and place it in an even larger box that goes into the freezer a second time. All this will disappear in 30 days. Right now there is enough space, but I can see that maybe next year we will need even more space. This is circulating out there. Across the country, most six-inch cheesecakes end up in one of the 12,000 supermarkets stocked by Juniors, from Wegmans to Kroger Publix Stop and Shop ShopRite. Allen's grandfather, Harry Rosen, opened the first Juniors location on Election Day 1950. He said that if "We are going to be a great restaurant in Europe.

We have to eat excellent cheesecake. Some people eventually guess that my Grandfather named it after his two sons Walter and Marvin, my father, my uncle, but you know, Jews don't really do young things, so there's that." a bit out the window over the next few decades Junior's popularity skyrocketed, it wasn't long before celebrities and politicians started investigating these iconic slices, we started a mail order business, in the late '80s, it's Well, before mail-order food was a thing and people were calling from Florida and California then in 1995, we met QVC, they were doing a search for the best produce in America, state by state.

We kept going and I think we sold 2,400 cheesecakes in about six or seven minutes. Currently, Juniors has four restaurants in the New York area in a short time. service at LaGuardia Airport, a direct-to-consumer business and a booming retail presence. Oh, we are definitely the largest cheesecake company in New York, so the biggest seller in our restaurants is strawberry cheesecake or New York style cheesecake. Visitors from all over the world visit for a slice, yes my name is Marvin, I'm from Germany. Cheesecake with brownia explosion. I think it's like a complete meal, but keeping up with all this demand for cheesecake hasn't been easy even for a giant like the young ones.

In 2020, the pandemic shut everything down. In restaurants, I kind of joked with my mom that luckily my dad was before thedeath, you know, he had passed away before Covet because Covid would have killed him, not because of the disease, but because of the fact that his restaurants and his babies weren't doing what they were supposed to do. In some cases, 14 or 19 months when companies directed consumer sales actually doubled, but then came the great cream cheese shortage of 2021. Last year we started like we found out and all of a sudden, Jason calls me and says there's no cream cheese, I ask, what do you mean you can't make, you can't make cheesecake without cream cheese?

A cyber attack hit a cream cheese factory in Wisconsin. It wasn't the Philadelphia facility, but the craft faced growing demand and supply chain issues. On its own, the company had difficulty sourcing starch thickeners and packaging materials without cream cheese. Allen had to close the factory and the team lost a couple of large orders and a couple of orders for us or trailer loads of about 70, I think. £70,000, so it's a big deal. I was sweating quite a bit at the beginning of 2022. Craft had restored the supply of cream cheese to the Juniors, so we are one of the largest users of cream cheese in the country just in time for inflation to catch up with all the ingredients. right now, from eggs to heavy cream, but cream cheese is definitely the most expensive ingredient we use right now.

Allen says the price Juniors pays for cream cheese has doubled from $50 a pound to more than $3. I know it's based on butter markets and dairy prices are very high right now and that's why it's affecting the price of cream cheese. Everything has increased. The workforce has obviously increased. Junior sales have recovered to pre-pandemic levels with 110 million in expected sales. this yearbut costs have risen so dramatically that profits in the restaurant business and in the wholesale business are way down Allen said profit margins fell six percent oh, it's brutal no, there's no doubt it's time hardest of my life.

I mean, I've been doing this for 33 years and I've never seen a time like this, so Alan made the decision to raise prices, the cost of our product has literally doubled, cheesecake doubled, no We can double our prices, that's impossible, but Allen says higher retail prices haven't stopped customers. For many years, ever since I was a kid, restaurants around where we're from ordered this cheesecake to be shipped to Oklahoma City, but even if food costs continue to rise, Allen says he'll never touch the recipe, you know. that we had to move. people around and reschedule but we're not going to change any recipes here that will never happen we'd rather not make cake listen we have a 72 year history of making cheesecake the same way we're making it exactly the same way forever without judging that so , how do you plan to stay afloat with those robots and then with new products, from cheesecake shakes to updated cake flavors like this Strawberry Christmas Cheesecake that's so good?

Ultimately, Alan says diversification has helped him weather the storms of recent years. Of course, Juniors has the restaurants, but what it makes from supermarket sales is quickly catching up. I would say it's about 50 50. Restaurants generate about half of the company's volume and this generates about half of the company's volume. I think the fact that we are diversified is what saved us, but is this business sustainable if food prices continue to rise? You know what the situation will be in the next three months. I think it's sustainable because I firmly believe in our business and how good we are at it. and that people will always want a cheesecake that goes from sweet to spicy, we headed to Louisiana to learn how the mcelany family turned Tabasco into one of the biggest hot sauce brands in the world.

Tabasco grows peppers just for seeds inside this greenhouse abroad. We are also looking for plants that produce red peppers of the richest colors, perfect size and flavor too. Christian Brown is the great-great-grandson of founder Edmund McHenney and the company's agriculture manager. Yes, everything looks good. There are no signs of aphids. He sends only the strongest seeds. thousand Tabasco farms around the world Tabasco says its peppers are native to the Amazon in South America, are about six times hotter than a jalapeño, and are small, only one to one and a half inches long and weighing one gram each because the peppers are so small and are easily damaged the machines do not harvest they are all hand picked Tabasco harvests 10 million pounds of peppers a year this footage is from Louisiana but the process seems similar abroad they sprinkle salt on the peppers and They use a giant machine to grind them into a paste.

The farms ship the beat back to Avery Island through the port of New Orleans. This puree is actually from Peru. We have 50,000 pounds of Tabasco Mash inside that container, bulk in this pump, siphoning the mash into white oak barrels. They are 60 years old, most of these barrels here are essentially a used Bourbon barrel. I really don't have the answer. I know it works and we've been doing it for over 150 years so I won't change them together to fill and seal each one. one truck will fill up to 110 barrels, but they can't overfill them because if you have too much pressure, sometimes those lids come off, sometimes those lids come off overnight.

It's a really simple solution, just move it to the next barrel. It can take 30 minutes to finish a row as they are old the barrels do not have a perfect seal so workers pour salt on top this allows gases to escape while limiting oxidation the salt on top is just an additional protective layer there is a imperfection that will help the team stack each barrel by mash origin so that this entire bay, going as far as possible to reach the walls, has approximately 1100 barrels of Columbia 2022. The mesh releases a lot of gases during fermentation, so There is a small valve at the top.

It helps relieve the pressure you have to have some ventilation process or it's going to explode and that happens sometimes like a ghost from Tabasco, they come here at night and open the lids and we come back and there are six or seven that we have to fix after three years , the puree inside will stabilize, shrink and darken. We can see that it was

built

at this level here and you can start to see rings on the side of that barrel where the mesh goes down even though it's shrunk, the aged mash is still there. not very spicy yet, but it is spicy, so let's remember that this is 10 times hotter than the real sauce next time.

The puree is pumped to the blending room here, the peppery smell will hit you right in the back of your throat, I could see. like getting Mist, I guess every day really hits you, that's how I put my kids through college, so I'm fine with that. I love it. Morris Montgomery oversees the mix, but he doesn't rely on anything. The Army veteran makes sure all the sauce tastes the best. The same thing even though it comes from all over the world, I try to make three or four different countries and put them together so that they can be like a little Colombia, Peru and a little bit of Ecuadorian Honduras.

He adds vinegar and mixes everything for up to 28 days. The tanks are mixed at the same time as the strainers remove the pulp and seeds from the pepper. Nook will take a sample for the lab to test for pH and then the Tabasco sauce is ready and ready for the next step of bottling Kalua, that's where John Simmons comes in. and I am also a member of the 6th generation of the macaroni family to make Tabasco sauce. John's Factory fills up to 700,000 bottles every day, from minis to the iconic five-ounce, and also produces nine different flavors, from the original red to the habanero Sriracha. is the company's fastest growing today, the machines do most of the filling, capping and labeling, so a bottle will go through in about 13 minutes, they put the bottles together and pack them into cartons.

We are doing it really in the shipping room, so we have products for Germany, Japan, Sweden, Taiwan, the Canary Islands, South Africa, usually all these freshly packaged products leave the warehouse in three weeks, while the sauce is definitely global. Avery Island has always been home, this was where founder and former banker Edmund McHenney first grew the little red peppers, bottled his first hot sauce in 1868, sealed it with wax and sold just under 700 bottles on the Gulf Coast. , each of which cost one dollar. He named the brand Tabasco after the Mexican state known for the production and export of spices.

Edmund obtained a patent for it. and in the early 1870s he was selling his bottles in the US and even in Europe and then he started to take on a little steam and get bigger and bigger when in a four hour period we're going to double and then a little more than Edmund did. For his entire life, Edmund lived on Avery Island, which is a natural salt dome that rises 163 feet above sea level as the highest point along the US Gulf Coast. respite from raging hurricanes for Mcelhenney Descendants who still called the island home, but it is now at risk Louisiana's coast sinks an average of a third of an inch per year on average between 1985 and 2010 the state lost about a football field of wetlands every hour when the land subsides is most vulnerable to storm damage it changes drastically from one storm to another depending on where it makes landfall you can see the deterioration of the marsh.

Heath Romero is the land manager for Avery Island. He said that when Hurricane Rita hit in 2005, it turned this island into a lake and parts of the swamp were destroyed. After Rita the company built an 18-foot Levy with a pumping system around the factory, if we put in control structures water to prevent salt water from reaching the cypress trees, they also planted tall grasses for protection and you can see that we recovered all this swamp that was open water at one time, but it is a slow process, especially as the home of Tabasco enters another season of hurricanes.

You can't wait for someone else to help you. You have to act on your own and try to protect what you have now. Head to New York to meet the three founders who turned a food truck into an international business. A generous helping of golden yellow rice sits beneath 12-hour marinated chicken, seared until tender. Grilled gyro meat cut straight from the upright fish packed with crispy lettuce and tomato. onions and peppers along with a few delicate slices of pita served soft and hot on the stove, but it's the extra creamy secret white sauce, a notoriously spicy red sauce, that made Halal Guys' chicken and gyro dish and the New York legend, the word Halal refers to a specific way of butchering meat in the religion of Islam, but in New York, because of this food cart, people also use Halal as an abbreviation for a whole collection of sandwiches and plates.

Street Meats combos, the most famous of which is a dish with just five key ingredients. like one of my favorite foods to eat so I came here the first time I can remember and ate it and I fell in love instantly and it was like one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life so far yeah I feel like home. yes, combination, make sure the combination plate starts with a layer of golden yellow rice that is made from scratch off-site before heading to the cart. This basmati rice takes the longest to prepare, stirring for over 45 minutes and made in 40-pound batches, enough to fill 60 to 70 plates, but it's actually the chicken that requires the most care and attention, always.

It is marinated for 12 hours and although the recipe is secret, Middle Eastern street meats generally use a marinade of herbs, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper, the Halal Guys wait to chop the chicken until it is fully cooked, this way it stays tender and becomes as juicy as possible after cooking and well done, we cover it with the pita bread, you will get the taste of chicken and pita bread, then comes the beloved Shiro meat, which is half cooked On a vertical rotisserie, another secret recipe, the seasoning will likely have a blend of traditional gyro spices like salt, pepper, paprika, and oregano.

Cook and shave as soon as the meat turns a dark brown color using a mechanical slicer instead of a knife because it is faster. and more consistently on the cart, the gyro chips are placed on the stove and cut into equal squares. Initially, Halal Guys serves long shaving gyro meat like many other halal food vendors, but they switch tosmaller pieces to keep up with demand and finally, but perhaps most importantly comes this question: white sauce everywhere, yeah, like all over the chicken place, okay, no problem, like a lot, you got I have to get the sauces, most importantly, the white sauce.

Personally, I never asked the exact name, but that really makes the food right. I think we all call it white sauce carts around town have tried to imitate the recipe, but Halal Guys says no other place has cracked the code based on takeout white sauce packets that are this creamy substance. a combination of mayonnaise, black pepper, vinegar, salt and a few other ingredients, but one thing we are sure about red sauce is not for everyone. We call it 9-1-1 hot sauce because it's so spicy. Personally I haven't tried it. What ever, I don't eat spicy, I can't tolerate spicy, the sauce has a Scoville rating of between one hundred thousand and one hundred thirty thousand, which is over 40 times hotter than Tabasco sauce, the cart guys won't let you leave without tell him You know how spicy it can be and I recommend taking a couple of packets to go instead of sprinkling too much on the plate.

I love white sauce and I love spicy, so I will definitely love red sauce too. I will recommend both next time. have a barbecue, okay wait for this barbecue, oh man, 30 years ago there were a few Halal cards in Manhattan until the Halal Guys opened one on West 53rd on 6th Avenue, it didn't take long to win over customers, especially taxi drivers They were looking for an easy way. to eat Halal at that time they didn't find Halal food in New York City, so they came up with an ideal idea: there are many Muslims here, why can't we offer complete Halal food for Muslim caddies?

And it started like this, now street meat. It's everywhere, but those taxi drivers have spread the word about plates and gyros, specifically from the Halal Guys. You have offers for taxi drivers. Okay, like better prices, a couple dollars cheaper or something like that. Not to mention, there's even an express taxi line just for drivers. It's unfair, but this is their policy: if you're a taxi driver you don't have to wait in line, you just jump from here and we'll give you your sandwich, whatever it is. Keep it up, so Halal street food has become a staple for New Yorkers in a right of passage message for visitors.

The cart has been praised by magazines, radio stations and celebrities. Something you have to try is like no. you could go to New York and not try it hello guys they remind you of home love sweetness not sweetness spicy oh my God, the chicken is so tender, the rice is exquisite and the sauce is white. I would die for the white sauce. How the white sauce complements the chicken and the spices it is marinated in. I really loved it. I'm sorry I didn't try it before. I'm going to spend the rest of my life eating more in Louisiana Madison McIntyre shows us how she built a crab business that makes about half a million dollars a year.

These crustaceans are big business for Louisiana, bringing in $300 million to the state. economy and you end up all over the U.S. Do you ever take a bite but can you help yourself, especially when it's hot? But this industry didn't even take off until the last few decades in the 1980s. Some rice farmers took a huge gamble and experimented with crab farming. who lived under their fields and it paid off in just nine years Madison McIntyre has built one of the largest crab companies in the state handling up to 4M pounds a year we never imagined it would reach this level nor was it our goal, it just happened organically, but because the farmed crawfish industry is so young, it's like the Wild West, unregulated and fast-moving, so how exactly did Louisiana rice farmers come about?

How to Harvest Crabs and Why They Stay in Such a Tough Business Crabs are freshwater crustaceans related to lobsters and shrimp and are native to Louisiana river swamps, swamps and rice fields like this one and if you look closely you will see some holes. there's one right here they get all kinds of names crayfish Mud bugs come out of the mud literally from late September to October rice Farmers flood their fields and the crabs emerge from their burrows hungry in November you can start trapping them in rows of traps nicknamed Junior goes out on the Crawfish boat which has no steering wheel and everything is controlled by pedals at his feet.

Armed with thick gloves, empty each trap. You have only seven seconds to throw a trap load with more bait. and drop it back into the water and that's how much ground you cover between each trap. He has to move quickly so the crabs don't die in the Louisiana Heat Junior. It's pretty fast. He's much faster than me. This table helps them eliminate any. Unwanted bugs and separate the crabs by size, the smaller peelers can fall through here, you know they're going to go from down here and then into these bags, but the big opportunity for crabs didn't even come until the 1980s.

Profits of rice farmers were failing, so we looked for Another source of income took a big risk and grew crayfish along with the grain. Fourth-generation rice farmer Jim Johnson was one of them. They work almost perfectly together. There is almost no better combination of vegetation than crayfish. The rice plant provides a wetland for crab breeding. and shade from the sun and houses microorganisms such as algae larvae and worms, the crabs will feed on them. The crab poop then fertilizes the fields and the two growing seasons align perfectly when farmers harvest the rice in which the crabs have been safely roasted. mud, once the rice is harvested, the crabs emerge from their burrows with babies for the winter, ready to be harvested and eaten soon, buyers from across the South, from Texas to South Carolina, begin devouring the mud bugs, which were once just a local food. represents more than half of Jim's business and with nuts and margins in the rice industry over the years, crab not only complemented him but no agriculture thrives today, crops are an important part of economies like In Welsh Louisiana, all crabs in the entire nation are grown within a 35-square-mile radius of this area from November to July.

Rice Farmers end up with tons of crabs cut into bags like these Junior and his team will load them onto trucks and They will reserve them at the crab dock in the summer months they have to Weigh the bugs out of the mud and place them in the cooler within three hours or else the heat could kill them and dead crabs breed bacteria. Once cooked, they are technically still edible, but the meat falls apart and doesn't taste as good. Madison pays farmers about a dollar for rice. 25 a pound for his catch, unlike most crab sellers, he doesn't come from a farming family.

In 2014, he and his friend Charlie started selling them from their truck in New Orleans at an abandoned gas station and We would, Mr. Crayfish. spending the weekend there was so successful that he bought more trucks and expanded into a wholesale seafood company Enterprise Parish, while many crab companies focus on just one part of the process. Madison does it all together with his dog June, he grows his crayfish and buys them from 36 other rice farmers. He also owns a company that transports the catch, a processing plant and restaurants that eliminate the middleman. We now have a little over 60 employees.

We drive 14 trucks seven days a week. 24 7. Madison washes some of his catch in this hundred and fifty thousand dollar machine how many times have you had every day every day? Yes, but you get used to it as if it doesn't really hurt, not only do they have to wash their fingers, they have to be careful with runaways. Another escape artist, so yes, the crabs have to go into the refrigerators immediately after washing to keep them alive until they are sold. Madison tries to move the largest, high-quality crabs within 12 to 24 hours, but that's not always easy - it's all done with practically a handshake.

There are no contracts, you have to be careful because people can buy all your crabs at the beginning of the season and then as soon as the catch increases they can leave you and buy them from someone else. Crabs may get stranded in these coolers. With a lot of pressure, the smaller, low-quality crabs are easier for him to move because Madison simply sells them to himself and then sends them to his brother's Bridge Factory to process the tail meat. Workers begin unloading the crabs from the trucks starting at 4 a.m. Throw them into tanks and remove any dead or weak ones from the top, then give the Mud Bugs a wash.

A conveyor belt drops them into a giant steam basket using a track system. A worker carefully lowers the basket into a vat of boiling water. Just like lobsters, crabs come in alive for the best flavor, which is why it's so important to keep them kicking up until this point, it only takes two minutes to cook them and then Madison and the team crack them on this steel table and take them to the peeling room Leona Williams has been peeling here for 50 years. I learned this when I was 30 years old. She leaves school, yes, sometime until one in the morning.

Well, you break your head and then you pinch your tail. This is your meat. She feels good to make sure the veins are out, sure she can feel about 40 pounds a day and you have to be a little quick on that, that's the only way you can make money. They pay them 250 per pound. Uh, no, I'm not saving this. My sister here is a little faster than me. The team in the next room vacuum seals the Tails into one-pound bags because the competition is so tough. Madison didn't tell us where she sells them, but she said they end up all over the United States.

She also sends tail meat and whole crabs to three restaurants she owns in the state, where they prepare all kinds of Louisiana delicacies. Crabs have been an important part of southern Louisiana culture for centuries, according to the Native Heritage Project that the Houma Indians named themselves after the word crayfish and used it as a symbol of war in the 19th century. A wave of French Canadians settled in Louisiana after being expelled from Canada by the British. They became known as the Cajuns and brought their lobster recipes with them, but they were lacking lobster here. Traded for crayfish in the 1960s, the crawfish had their own festival and Creole restaurants were adding them to menus in New Orleans.

It was definitely a Louisiana delicacy. In reality, it didn't get much further than the state. Since then, crayfish have definitely gone national, but locals still cook them. on staples like etouffee wedding and Boyles Madison business partner Charlie Johnson uses a Cajun style of cooking on his crab boils, make sure the drains are closed, this is a liquid boil so I'll add it to the water. First you boil the corn and potatoes, drain them and then cook the crabs at the end right there, when the tail starts to separate from the head, there is a little white line, you can see the meat, which is usually a telltale sign that they are ready, while New Orleans steak chefs add dry seasonings. water crabs boil out here.

The Cajuns throw in the dry seasoning after cooking them, close that cooler and leave them to steam. I think the magic happens in the cooler, that's when they start absorbing those condiments here, people stop by. the restaurant until late at night, Cajuns love their sauce too. At Nova, they don't use any sauce with their Factory weigh station and restaurants. Madison has become a major player in the crab industry. We are building a new facility that is going to focus on airlifting crayfish, but its success has not been without challenges as the industry has flourished over the past 20 years, many people have tried to get in on the action by 2019, the number of crawfish farms in the state had doubled and then came inflation Madison says costs skyrocketed 40 last year fuel alone cost him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars more than normal, that's a lot of money that would have been a profit, yes, the work is quite high and we have mostly foreign labor. 95 of their staff are working in the US on a Visa, I think we also have to house them and pay for transportation, you can't find local or American labor that works as hard as these guys do, next to we.

Madison says almost double the minimum wage we'll set. 15 and 18 hours a day, seven days a week, so it is very demanding, we cannot see ourfamily so much during the season, but they don't get to see their family at all. Rising operating costs and low margins have forced dozens of Louisiana crawfish companies to close and thus people who came just for the get-rich-quick scheme or who didn't make it right now due to the difficult the market is. Madison says the size of her business has helped it stay afloat. You know, we could absorb that. Those blows, but unfortunately many people couldn't change.

We don't get big salaries. Madison said Parish Seafood Wholesale made five hundred thousand dollars in profits last year and paid itself only a salary of twenty thousand dollars. She also says he invested more. Eighty percent of the profits go back into the company, so if something breaks or if the refrigerators break down, we have backup, everything you know, backup trucks, backup ice machines, backup freezers, refrigerators As a backup, we have multiple forklifts that are just luxuries because in an industry where one Bad season, you know? In the next five or six years it will be very lucrative to be back in this industry because only a handful of people will do it.

Arts in New York, what are crawfish for Louisiana? We take a look inside Utopia Bagel's kitchen to see how this shop churns out a hundred thousand of them a week. Workers begin the baking process at 3 a.m. and continue well past lunchtime, but according to owner Scott Spelman, the guarantee of a fresh Hot Bagel is why Utopia Bagus stands out. From the thousands of other shops in New York City that I have saved time and time again, you may have tried a bagel, but once you try my bagel, you will never eat another bagel. We visited Utopia's Kitchen in Queens, New York, to see how it's made.

Bagels in such big batches. It all starts with a 41-year-old dough recipe that uses a birthday pan. It is a very old way of making a bagel. Most bagel shops today use brown sugar, but to make a good quality Bagel you need this ingredient. Then they add salt and a big spoonful of Puratus bagel improver, so that softens the dough on the inside and leaves the crust crispy on the outside. Then they start filling the mixer with New York City tap water, but it has to be the right temperature. They tend to use water around 60 degrees 62 63 but water temperatures can change as it gets hotter and colder throughout the year, so it's time to add 200 pounds of all-purpose flour, a small portion compared to what that they have on hand.

We're looking at about 7,000 pounds of flour, almost a two days supply for us that will use up all of this flour and this is actually just one of my mountains of flour. The final ingredient is yeast, but for Flavored Bagels the recipe may change slightly to include eggs, sugar, or freeze-dried cranberries, depending on the flavor. There is no set time for when the dough is finished mixing, according to Scott, it takes an eye. attentive and ears of experience, it's something you call when it's ready, how long have you been making bagels? 18 years Daniel has been rolling for 18 years you need to understand the temperature in the air you need to understand your machine you work with how long to mix all of these things are such important factors in what happens to our bagel Once the dough reaches the Desired consistency is It is cut into sections and transferred to the rolling table where it is then formed into a large frame.

We could make up to 15,000 Bagels in a day and this will make approximately one thousand Bagels. They cover everything with a sheet of plastic to help soften the dough before they roll it and it's just a five minute process that allows the dough to connect to each other a little better, they're saying hello, how are you? Basically, all of those ingredients are doing that right now, at any given point, there are four expert rollers in. On the other hand, these expert men have between 15 and 27 years of experience perfecting their craft. Something Scott says is an endangered species.

There is no school of Rolling Bagels at this time and these people are experts in their field. Listen, I think Derek Jet said it best. If you put 10,000 hours into something, you're a professional and Daniel has definitely put 10,000 hours into it, these manual rollers take about an hour to an hour and a half to individually cut the roll and twist about a thousand bagels, it takes some type of character because it's so tedious you're cutting the same thing over and over again and I can tell who's rolling which bagel by the way they close their bagel and form it together.

Daniel has that little bit that I noticed about Daniel's role and so I can see that you know those were Daniel's bagels and that gives each bagel his own personality. Our bagels are like snowflakes. We are all individually different and that is what makes us special. Once the bagels are rolled, they are placed on these plastic-covered racks and left. to ferment for half an hour, then move to one of three refrigerators to ferment for at least 24 hours. What we're going to do now is open these bagels because we still have to reduce the heat to stop the growth of these bagels that we spread. to stop the review where a lot of places tend to extend that test to make the bagels bigger.

There's a misconception that bigger bagels are better and they're not even close, you see each rock has about a thousand bagels so you're looking at ten thousand fifteen thousand bagels right before. your eyes and this is just one of my refrigerators where we keep the bagels here is my second refrigerator again you have shelves of bagels one two three four we have about seven eight thousand more bagels so this is basically where we will keep our daily bagel preparation Now it's time for fun and games. I'm going to start baking some bagels. We will always have two people working the oven, so there is a Kettleman that we will call to control the flow of the bagels into the oven. kettle and then there is the guy in the oven who will be your director, but the cattle is the one who has ultimate control because he knows when the bagel is ready to come out of that kettle, it is very important that once the bagels have been boiled appropriately, they leave. to wild boars that have been pre-seasoned with the appropriate flavors, such as poppy, sesame or the very popular mix of everything, now all of these are, yes, they are very spicy, but if you look at me, I am constantly dipping my hand in water to eliminate some of that heat now here again is where we put both sides so we are seasoning both boards on both sides after the workers carefully cover each Bagel move the boards to the oven now why do we put them on boards?

Because if we put these Bagels on directly, they would stick to the board they are being cooked on. We put six bagels on a board. There are 16 boards that will go into the oven. We have a 1947 Marshall oven. It is the heart and soul of my business. We can produce up to a thousand bagels per hour after a few rotations around the oven. The boards are flipped so the bottoms of the bagels cook evenly and then they are ready to be taken out and served to customers. See how they are. Look at it, look at the color of this Bagel, look at that beautiful crispy crust, yes my son always does the detonation test, but he feels that cross look, look at the steam coming out of that bagel altogether.

Utopia Bagels offers 30 types of bagels and various sandwiches such as bacon and cheese eggs or classic blocks. 43 staff members make up Utopia Bagels and they all work like a well-oiled machine to serve the 3,500 customers who visit the store each week. busier weekend Saturday and Sunday we could have a The line lasts eight hours straight, but you make me cry for my customers because our fan base is like no other. It's like a reference point. Everyone has been coming here for over 50 years. It's like a home for everyone. It's the atmosphere. It's the people. He is the owner.

Everyone is very friendly here and when you walk in you feel welcome. Everything's fine. I've been to other bagel shops, but there's no place like home. Scott treats you like family when you come here. Utopia Bagels is the best. The most important thing about our Bagels. It's here and I get excited, but it's the heart and soul that every worker here has, heart and soul, it's really something I live for and something we work on, you know, my passion for making people smile with our food and what we produce is It's a joy to me, it's really foreign cookies that started at farmers markets now.

George Kwan and his team have grown the business into multiple locations. That's how they make twenty thousand cookies a month. George and his team source ingredients from all over the world, whether it's grass. Fed with butter from New Zealand, chocolate chunks from Europe, or macadamia nuts from Hawaii, each affects the way these cookies bake and taste. The store's best seller is its most classic version, the chocolate chip cookie with sea salt. This recipe uses a mixture of locally sourced white and brown sugar. Ground organic flour, grass-fed butter, and milk chocolate and semisweet dark chocolate. Different chocolates give different nuances of flavors, so it gives them more complexity, so it sort of counteracts the difference between the sweetness of real milk chocolate versus the semi-bitterness of semi-change a chunk, each cookie is coated with a pinch of sea salt because when it hits your mouth, it hits it in a way that you're expecting inside the cookie and then you're tasting the sweetness and the saltiness in combination with another.

The popular Pismo cookie is really nice and gooey, but with the crispy exterior, this one requires a lot more prep time than the rest. Each s'mores cookie we make is made up of broken graham crackers which we would break up by hand and then place it manually finally each cookie is packaged in plastic so customers can see exactly what is put inside also keeps them fresh and soft I feel like It's sticky it's like it's big I can taste it's organic like it's good ingredients Initially, bang cookies didn't attract customers because of the cookies, but rather because of the name of the store itself.

We wanted a name that could attract attention because we had no marketing funds at all. We wanted something that was quirky because new players in the farmers market so we decided to call ourselves bang me Bakery from the beginning a lot of customers were looking I was like it was a real name like yeah let's try the cookies now they changed the name. to be a little more kid friendly but the customers kept coming it's 5 26 what time did you get along 410 because Jessica got the pizzeria she said we have to try them, they're amazing and please let's get her a T-Shirt and With so much demand, Band Cookies has already opened two locations in Jersey City and they have plans for more to come, which means more cookies for customers across the country who have already shipped them to states like California, Alaska and Hawaii.

Here at this noodle shop we caught up with Jason Wang to see how he grew a casual Chinese restaurant into 12 locations in New York City. Head to New York and you will find several Chinese noodle shops spread throughout the city with the wide noodles hand plucked from the shop celebrated by Anthony Bourdain this place is amazing this place is great come from here now this is the Central Kitchen where it is prepared from zero the popular lamb dish with spicy cumin. Spicy cumin lamb is a dish found quite frequently in most parts of mainland China, such as the north. parts especially, but to put the lamb together with our wide noodles, we are the first to do it, that's because you guys saw the noodles with lights or felt that New York would respond to the noodles with the lamb, you know we were good, something eat something lamb let's make this dish, so that's my favorite, right, and then the noodles are my father's favorite because he's a noodle fan, he doesn't like rice very much, that's how the noodles came about it starts like that. simple dough mix made with flour, water and a little salt and then how long can it sit before you have to take out three fresh shirts so David recommends letting it sit for 10 minutes but if you ask Jason, Should I tell you 20 minutes? to rest once you take it out I'm pretty consistent he changes his mind all the time it's like a year ago a year ago he'll have standards like this and then yesterday he'll say I want to change the weights for this and but one part of the process never changes the way The noodles are tossed, each serving is pulled out to order if pulled out early and set aside, the noodles will lack their signature chewiness, how do you know when it's held far enough?

Ideally, five feet, that's fine, but I just step, there you go, that's it, there you go, that's right, yeah, a reference after stretching them. Jason cuts each noodle in half and throws it into the boiling water so we find one that was better because it just carries the flavor. a little better, the noodles are always perfect, stay ready, but they tend to be niceand tender, while the protein may not be the star, the most popular dish at xiam Famous Foods simply wouldn't be the same without them to make the lamb Jason and his father set aside seven ingredients.

This is a young foreigner. David speeds up the walk by adding the lamb first and turning it almost continuously. You'll see I'm doing a combination of that and the idea is just. To prevent the meat from sticking to the sides because that means it burns, David then adds the rest of the ingredients and a tablespoon of the restaurant's chili oil, which famously flew off the shelves after the New York Times will recommend it to readers in May with a proprietary blend of 30 spices, that's where this dish's signature flavor and spiciness really comes in: the lamb is sliced ​​thin so that each piece really absorbs all that cumin, chili and spices, yes, it smells good, it smells amazing, do you want to try it? now or do you want to try it, okay, yes, yes, do it, do you want to have a chocolate, go ahead guys, we are casual here, no pressure, just in case, very tasty.

No, I really thought it was going to be so spicy. in your face like it's exploding, it's very accessible, yes, it's very accessible, chancia's flavor profile, you know, Xi'an cuisine is not to burn your mouth, that's not the gulf, it's a fragrance, you know, so you have all the fragrances you have. A lot of spice seems intimidating because it's very red, but that's part of the presentation of the dish, but when you eat it you know it's not that spicy, no, it's very fragrant, that's the perfect word to describe that before the noodle mix with Lemon Jason adds more vegetables, a tablespoon of noodle sauce, and more chili oil.

Xiaan is actually a very historical city in China, the Silk Road actually starts in Xi'an and ends somewhere in the Middle East, so there are a lot of people going. There is a lot of culture from different parts of Asia and beyond that comes to the city, that's how it has affected our food. You know, it's very cosmopolitan in terms of flavors, although it's still considered Chinese food, of course, but thousands of years of history have made it. has become something of a unique kitchen, well it was once a small fancy restaurant that has grown into 10 locations and as the restaurant grew so did its loyal group of customers when we finally opened every team had like two, three times a week. going to websites to see the ingredients to make our own like homemade, but I didn't mean that I didn't get to that, then they came out with the cookbook, oh, I already have the cookbook, yes, that's the guide with the what work. corner and our back door is today back doors how often do you come four times a week?

This is the most vitamin D I have taken in five months. Okay, all the chili flakes hold my lips. OMG, I'm pleasantly surprised. about how it's not too spicy Jason has this sign at the restaurant that basically says that you shouldn't order something that isn't spicy because his dishes are made and cured in a way where the recipe values ​​in the spice is something essential, that It's the flavor. You're ordering this dish and honestly the added bonuses are the tender lamb that is wonderfully marinated and delicious, and a honestly addictive chewiness to the noodles. Look at the way it's coated, you wouldn't get the flavor and impact of this sauce. without the noodles, the noodles are there to go with that sauce and like you, it just carries that flavor throughout this whole dish, so it's like a nice spiciness, it's really really good, it's a reason to come to New York , oh yes, it sure was.

It's worth a stop yeah try it you won't regret it as an Asian kid you know Chinese kid you're not supposed to go to restaurants but I don't regret it at all you know that after 10 years of being in the business. I feel like it was the right decision, it's not just about financial reward, it's about making an impact, it's about people recognizing what we are doing as a way to start our culture, which is actually worth more than thanking or wash. 1916 by Abraham Orwasher, a Hungarian immigrant determined to bring quality Eastern European breads to his local community Since it was sold to its current owner in 2008, the company has expanded two physical locations in addition to a massive wholesale production facility that manufactures bread for some of the older ones. restaurants in New York, all right, today we are in the Bronx at Orwasher's Giant Factory, this is where they make the bread that is sent to some of the largest restaurants and supermarkets in the city and we are going to take a tour behind the scenes. to see how it's all done, thank you, you know, the hair net looks great on everyone, I really like it, it reminds me of a lunch lady, that's exactly what you're giving me right now, it looks great, the opposite pose to you, ready, yeah. the factory is divided into three separate areas for mixing, shaping and baking, so now you have the water starter and the flour and it is being incorporated and shortly we will add the yeast and then the salt, this could make a lot of bread. a lot of dough, how many loaves do you think you'll get from something this size?

Well, I mean, right now we're mixing a couple hundred pounds, so basically you could get probably 150 loads. Once the dough is mixed, it makes its way. in the shaping room Bakers and machines work together to shape 40 different types of dough daily, which will produce more than 150 different types of bread products in total. They make everything from classics like ciabatta and sourdough to more original options like nutrient-packed raisins and sunflower. spelled seed before the molded dough is ready for the oven makes a stop in the humidity controlled fermentation room here you go, oh it's like a sauna in here, well not quite, I mean it's good for my pores, though after From fermenting and fermenting for various periods of time, depending on the type of dough, everything eventually reaches its final destination in the oven room, so you have your deck oven and your three convection ovens or rack ovens, and here It's where all the bread is baked and then we move it around a little bit, we throw it out, the freshly baked bread is delivered first thing in the morning, seven days a week, well I'll take one, how about this guy here? him at home with me it's all yours bread fresh out of the oven just for me oh my god this is amazing thank you so much you're welcome Keith this was excellent.

I really appreciate you taking us behind the scenes, we had a lot of fun. thanks, next we meet a Sicilian father and son duo or turn their shop into a huge business producing thousands of pounds of cheese every week. I've been coming here for about 20 years and it's the best Italian food on Arthur Avenue. months of nails I've had so you can travel all over the country, you know, all over the world, there's no better mozzarella than Thanos, hey guys, I'm Spencer and today we're on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. I'm super excited because we're headed to Casa de la Mozzarella, this place is known for their epic hand pulled mozzarella and amazing Italian sandwiches, so let's go check it out and meet the king of mozzarella.

Upon entering Casa de la mozzarella, you will be instantly transported to Italy. The narrow store is filled with dry goods. pastas, hanging cold cuts and, of course, lots of mozzarella that the owner and his son prepare from scratch every day with countless awards and media coverage. Oracio Karchoto and his son Carlo are now local celebrities, but they didn't start out that way. The story is just incredible if you think about it, I call it the American succession, the American dream. You came here from Sicily. He was about 27 years old. My mother said that if you want to marry me you have to move to this country.

He came here without knowing English. and slowly and surely he built his name through sacrifice through hard work sweat no, I did it little balloon, everything's not bad, okay, you're not crazy on God's part, no one out there there was nothing, no one gives me a paint to make you feel like a like. proud proud of myself, yes, in the first few years after moving to America, Orazio worked odd jobs and finally ended up here when the original owner of the store wanted to retire, he helped Orazio buy the business, he officially became Mozzarella House in 1993 and the family's success has skyrocketed since then thanks mainly to the fact that their mozzarella is really good from the beginning.

For me, mozzarella is like an art. I find food strange, of course, in general, but for me, you know, we start with a blank canvas, as you saw, we start from just a box of curd and then we mix it, we mold it and then we just form different things and like come along the process we will form different shapes, we will make Balkan Genie as we are doing now by knotting it. We will make mozzarella and stuff things with prosciutto in the typical and famous burata that has been so famous. It's so simple but it's not one of the reasons they are so successful.

It's pure dedication in the early days. Orazio did everything himself, working non-stop. to ensure that his products had consistent quality now that Carlo is around, he can finally take a small step back. I learned from the best. I guess I don't know if I'm over them yet, but we'll see in a couple of minutes. Remember. what I said that for me mozzarella is an art because look how we just started we started with a cardboard canvas and now we have a finished product while everything starts the same the finished product could be one of several things and last but not least nutrition mozzarella and here is Casa Mozzarella, we have a model that says like this, it's just different, just different, that's why I say it's just different, we want to keep it different, it's just different, make sure you remember obviously we had to put it to the test one two three wow , Spencer, honestly, it's just different.

I think, what do you think is just different? What is that material like? This is how we do it. Do you have any words? So yeah, it's just different. Greetings. It really was different. And yes the mozzarella. It was so good on its own I couldn't leave without trying it on one of the store's signature sandwiches What are your most popular sandwiches? the most popular sandwich boy is what you say the closet the Kaza for sure it's mozzarella sun dried peppers a little balsamic glamor it's like you're going to McDonald's the Big Mac is the way to go thank you we'll do this like real New Yorkers and we'll eat it on the street because that's how we do it here oh yeah, that's exactly what you want in a sandwich, the mozzarella is obviously the main event, I mean, that's why we're here today and it's definitely the most you taste on a sandwich, but for some reason it's not overpowering, it's creamy, it's light and then of course you get a little bit of that sweetness from those sun-dried peppers that really brings it all together, it's like that, a little salty from the creamy meat from the mozzarella and then a little sweet from all those peppers. wrapped in this beautiful bread I could eat this every day uh the cheese is amazing the prosciutto is really great the sandwiches are huge they keep you full all day it feels really authentic it feels like I could be in Italy now same.

I represent what this city can do a man comes here from the countryside with a dream he creates the dream he passes it on to his son I always always told myself these two main things in life make yourself proud make your parents proud and when I go out and for me the greatest achievement will be that people say hey Paula, how are you? Well, look, just remind me of your father and I don't think we need the New York businesswoman who became famous for her pasta toast right now. magical pasta adventure to a pasta adventure Chef Missy Robbins has two Michelin stars under her belt after the success of her first solo work Venture Lilia an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn that recently opened Missy pronounces it like her name but is spelled differently Robins initially learned the art of making pasta while living in Italy, but today it's New Yorkers clamoring for a table at his Brooklyn restaurants.

My friend Josh Beckerman, also known as the Food Wizard, is a famous food Instagrammer, the bar magician and I knew he was the right guy to help me with missy, hey guys. I'm Ali from Insider and it's Josh Beckerman, the food wizard, and Ali. I wanted to take you today to one of my favorite restaurants in all of New York and probably the United States. Missy, okay, let's do it. Listen, do you know Ally well? I told Ali that this is my favorite pasta restaurant in America. She had never been here before. I've been to Lilia.

I love it so I'm dying to drive. Why haven't you been here? It is a very difficult moment. Well, you already know people we can help you with. I'm dying to look around and see the magic happen. Alright, where do you want to start the room? Yes, the pasta room is where Missy and her team make 10 different types of pasta every day. The walls have windows so that both diners in the restaurant and people passing by on the street can see how the famous pasta is made, so these are the Oakys. WhichWhat he did was cut two sheets of pasta and here we have the filling, which is a combination of ricotta with milk and juice. and Ricotta cow's milk and she goes all the way and then covers the second sheet and then just pierces them with a little ring here apparently there are some people saying that I invented the shape, it's not true, you know what I would call that shape a circle and so what is happening here?

These are really cool, so they're called malaritas. These are little handmade Sardinian pastas, each one of these is made by hand, so you just take your little thing and press your thumb really hard so that it rolls up on itself. Okay, there you go, great, you got it, let's try again. What is Josh doing? Yes, he's fine, ready, one more, ready, yes, press and move. Okay, it's harder than it seems. Yeah, imagine how these guys feel. I can try? I eat raw pasta all the time. Look. this really good I created a new shape it's called doodle pasta doodles they hired you once we learned how to make pasta it was time to learn how to cook it let's make chickpea pappardelle with chickpeas rosemary garlic lemon why not?

You guys come back here and do it with me. What people don't often realize about cooking pasta is that they want to undercook it in this part so they can finish cooking it in the pan. I used to go to this place in a Tiny. In a town in Tuscany and I had a pasta that consisted of chickpeas, rosemary, garlic and cheese, and for some reason I've been thinking about it ever since, 19 years ago, and finally put it on a menu. I don't know why it took me so long. Josh, how excited are you now for this beyond, beyond, this is a dream come true, toast to a magical pasta adventure, so a pasta adventure at the end there's that little lemon zest dress at the end , subtle but perfect, you see why I wanted to do this for 19 years.

I love the story behind it because I feel like I'm transported back to you, you know your time in Italy and yes, every dish to me has some sort of reason why it's available. I think there's a familiarity with My Cooking that makes people feel like they're eating something they know, but they're eating it in a slightly more refined way than they might necessarily do at home, but it makes them think about things that they might have grown up, finally it was. It's time for the Moment of Truth trying the pasta oh here it is oh it looks amazing it smells amazing oh my goodness they are beautiful thank you so much sheep's milk ricotta inside the ravioli I love that you are trying it right now the Target book adds that little bit of salty fish flavor lemon is a very addictive dish I can't, I have to go for more you know what I always say Ali is The diet starts tomorrow hmm I take pictures of everything I eat, yes, and I set my Instagram to Foodie Magician anyway I want to take a nice photo of this spaghetti, so could you turn it over?

Oh my gosh, this is awesome. This is beautiful. It's good? I know you are very jealous right now. This is super tasty. the other one was a little swept away, but the fennel in this one gives it a really nice touch. I like, you know, a little licorice, yeah, a little earthy, then you have these Sicilian almonds that have just the right touch of nutty, almost nutty, you got the words right. Out of my mouth, my favorite reaction I'll ever get from anyone is that I was in Italy and this is better than anything I ate there.

I mean, I learned how to cook pasta in Italy and I've studied it for the last few years and I think when people have just been there and can feel like they're back in Italy eating food that's just as good or in the same league or better for me, that's the biggest compliment or when people say this reminds me of home. to Brooklyn We tour Green's Bakery to see how the owner built the largest bobco wholesaler in New York City. If you go anywhere in the country, if people know anything about uh babka or you say the word babka, they're going to think vegetables and Let's think about New York City Green's Bakery is a third generation family business based in Brooklyn.

It's actually New York's largest babka wholesaler, selling its legendary bob to some of the city's most iconic delis and markets. Replace Green's packaging with your own, whether it has our name on it or not, you'll find it's Green's vodka, so if you've ever bought a baka bar in New York City, there's a good chance it came from Greens, the 70-year-old business. produces approximately 4,000 loaves a day six days a week their babka comes in two flavors: chocolate and cinnamon and the chocolate babka is the best seller from the basement kitchen to a factory we're here in Brooklyn to see behind the scenes of how Green's works The bakery turned its vodka into a legendary institution The foreign bakery was born from the traditional recipes of Hana Green, a Holocaust survivor who came to the United States from Hungary after World War II when she brought her family to the United States in 1948 her sweet braided babka.

The recipe also came in tow Hannah Green began making babka just for friends and family when she first moved to the Lower East Side, then Green began selling her deliciousness at her son-in-law's restaurant called Green Enactment in Williamsburg in 1980 as a dessert called Kokush cake's customers and neighbors fell in love with its cake and asked for it non-stop. She didn't really see it as a business, but as a way to help people in the neighborhood and share the love that her son would go to. going to the local supermarket and taking empty boxes and bringing them back so I could deliver them to people and suddenly it became the basis and format of a business model after 10 years of fulfilling orders from the restaurant basement Greene's family decided to move to Brooklyn in 1991 and opened its doors.

The vegetable vodka you are going to eat today will be the same vodka that you would have eaten 50 years ago with vegetables. It's the family recipe. It is the same product as Anna Green. that she was making in her downstairs kitchen over the past few years, the Greens have expanded their inventory to include other Jewish and Eastern European pastries like arugula and honey cakes, but it was really their staple product that paved the way for its success, its traditional homemade style. Babka Babka starts with simple ingredients like sugar, flour, oil, water, and eggs, and contains absolutely no butter or dairy.

All ingredients are mixed, kneaded, and shaped into balls of dough. Green vodka is made in two ways: by machine and by hand. First, the dough is flattened in a rolling machine. Once the dough has the proper thickness, it is inserted into an automatic pastry production line. Depending on the flavor of the babka, liquid marble cocoa or cinnamon is sprinkled on the dough, then the large portion of dough is cut in two and twisted into a roll at the end, two workers braid the dough to form the legendary babka shape. Green workers package the products and prepare them to be delivered to grocery stores, markets and delicatessens across the city and country with the overwhelming aroma of chocolate and cinnamon filling the air of the bakery.

I couldn't wait to get my hands on the legendary Bop gum, it's my first ever trying the edible insect industry has taken off in the last few years here in Ontario we learn how one company built a cricket empire most of these crickets will be shipped by mail in a powder that can be used as flour, it's good, you can't even taste it or you can eat them whole like chips, this one has barbecue flavor, although you might be thinking that's a strange choice because crickets actually contain more protein than beef without any environmental damage that many manufacturers and

entrepreneurs

were looking for, safer and more sustainable. sources of protein to add to your product and for us it has been a great help to our business, as a result, we went into entimo Farms of Canada to see how they turn Bugs crickets into brunch for most of us, crickets are just the soundtrack of our summer nights.

But Darren Golden and his brothers thought they could be used to create a new source of sustainable and nutritious food, simply by reinventing how we can feed a population of 9 or 10 billion people on an overpopulated planet. They now harvest around 50 million crickets per week and our goal is to triple production in a year. The most complicated thing is that there is no real manual in terms of this type of scale and density. There is no manual. It is resolved as you go. No one has farmed crickets in the wild on this kind of scale before it all starts here, where the crew covers boards with a mixture of moist soil and peat making mud pies and pregnant females flock to lay their eggs.

It may look like just dirt and a few grains of rice, but in reality there are probably thousands and thousands. of cricket eggs there and in this room, around 15 million eggs from 900 different species, Darren could choose from. He chose the tropical house cricket because of its simple feeding requirements. It is a cricket that develops well in high densities, it grows very quickly and is a super delicious cricket, every part of this cricket is edible and also has nutrients such as fiber, iron and calcium. After about nine days, the eggs hatch and will remain in the nursery for about two weeks.

Crickets definitely require a warm and pleasant environment as they are cold-blooded animals. Their metabolisms are controlled by temperature, so if you keep them on the warmer end of their preferred temperature, they will grow faster and then once they are big enough and ready to handle life in the big grow room , we will transfer them from the nursery to the growing room. Only a crew of five is needed to maintain this IE mill colony. The crickets had a mixture of corn, soy and some flax. On average, crickets were killed by almost a thousand pounds of feet per day, which often surprises people because you think of crickets as crickets.

Tiny little animals but, of course, when you have 10 or 15 million of them, they consume a good amount of food to put it in human terms. 15 million crickets is almost double the population of New York City, but growing all these crickets is even more sustainable than raising pigs, poultry or cattle to produce just one kilogram of beef requires the staggering amount of 22 000 liters of water, and to produce the same amount of protein from a cricket only a few hundred liters, growing crickets also has other advantages, so one of the interesting things about insects is that there are very, very few diseases that are transferable from insects to humans, which is very different from agricultural mammals or chickens and crickets do not have any known viruses or the species that we produce do not have known viruses that can affect them and of course there are certainly no zoonotic viruses or viruses that can cross species the three Entimo barns can produce 9,000 pounds of protein per week, enough to meet the daily protein needs of about 80,000 people overall, most of our customers are integrating it into a finished product such as a the dog eats a dog treat or sells it as Cricket powder under a different brand or puts it in something like a superfood smoothie mix, bakes it into other baked goods and other snacks, even his poop is a usable product and , as you can see, the floor is covered. with cricket manure it is called brass and is an excellent fertilizer, the farm can produce about six thousand pounds of manure per harvest, these crickets will live their entire lives before becoming food, so from the time they hatch Hatching to harvest is approximately six weeks. the big difference is that at six weeks a cricket is fully mature, it has lived its life, laid bread and laid eggs for us and would be dying in a few days anyway, now is the time to see them turned into food , our raw reception room. of the crickets come from the farm, the insects are rinsed and then sorted to make sure there are no farm leftovers in the mix, then they are spread evenly on trays and put into ovens to roast, so that to get the powder, moisture has If it is below a certain percentage, we find that if it is above that percentage it is very difficult to grind it, while some are left whole and sent for seasoning and packaging, most will go into this industrial grinder until They look like brown and then they will be manually packed into boxes. of 25 pounds each every day turns 15,000 crickets into 500 pounds of dust.

The secret sauce is really in the metrics where it's in exactly how your setup is done, in the feeding ratio to the surface area of ​​the eggs and it's kind of like a giant recipe. and everything has to be perfect for it to work the way we work, but there is still room for improvement at this time, the internal process is mostly manual and that must change if they want to increase production, which is why we are analyzing Solutions more automated that will allow usproduce three to four times what we are capable of doing now. n2o Farms hopes this will also help reduce costs and make its products more affordable.

Cricket flour sells for about twelve dollars per four ounces, which is 45 times the price of all-purpose flour, but it's not really the price that is holding back the perception of some customers in North America about the Insect food is certainly a challenge and it is one that we are struggling to deal with in Asia, a food that is already popular. and Aaron is confident the appetite for crickets will only increase. The very exciting thing about insect farming is that scale-up is super fast. Each cricket lays approximately 600 eggs, and in a crisis event, if we needed to increase our production, we can do so.

Really very fast Nigeria is the world's largest producer of cassava or cassava. The root is a staple food that is made into fufu and gari here. In some regions it accounts for up to half of calories consumed, but it is at home in all parts of Africa. So popular because it resists drought and pests. The root is high in calories. Rich in vitamin C and can replace more expensive starches such as wheat or rice. Experts say areas where cassava is grown are less likely to suffer famine Today, cassava is finding growing markets in Europe, North America and Asia, touted as a versatile, gluten-free superfood, may become valuable exports as ethanol for biofuel sweetener and starches like tapioca for bubble tea, but most of the cassava Nigeria grows never leaves the country, so it could be losing billions in global trade.

The challenges affect their entire supply chain, from farm to factory, as a cassava must be processed in less than 48 hours or it rots, but most processing plants are hundreds of kilometers from the farms. In 2015, the country had lost $600 million worth of cassava due to deterioration. Yamisi businesswoman Iran Loya says she has found a way around the problem: she launched a processing company called Sultry International and has since landed clients such as Nestlé and Unilever, but now that we are becoming industrial there is a huge demand for the crop so that farmers can get a good value. for its crops, can Nigeria fix its supply chain enough to feed itself and profit from a global export market?

Yucca is a shrub with edible roots that is native to South America. The raw root can be poisonous. In fact, it contains cyanide, but more than 4. 000 years ago, the indigenous people of the Amazon River Basin discovered that grating, straining and cooking cassava made it safe to eat. Portuguese colonizers first introduced cassava to Africa in the 16th century and then, in the 1850s, when formerly enslaved Africans returned to Nigeria, they brought cassava cooking methods with them. From Brazil, Europeans encouraged the cultivation of cassava. cassava in Africa because it was hardy and could help prevent famine during this time.

New ways of cooking roots emerged across the continent. In Nigeria, they ground and dried cassava pulps into flakes called gari because it is fermented gari that helped harvested cassava last longer over the centuries. The roots replace the native yam as the main food source throughout the continent. Almost every family has cassava in their backyard to make Gary or Fufu, whether they are rich or poor. Today Nigeria produces more than 60 million tons. a year, but experts say farmers don't grow it efficiently, so they take home only a dollar a day. It is grown on very small plots, so the benefits of economies of scale are not obtained.

Large-scale farmers generally farm more delicately. crops such as corn, rice or wheat because they can be more profitable than cassava. Those who grow cassava often do so because they have no other option. Cassava can withstand poor quality acidic soils, needs less fertilizer and water and is generally cheaper to grow, but due to inequalities. Soil machinery and tractors cannot reach many cassava fields, and because they harvest by hand and grow seed varieties that do not produce as many roots, Nigerian cassava farmers have some of the worst yields in the world, meaning They harvest less per acre, but Yamisi believed he could change and spent years saving money to open his own cassava processing business in 2005.

Sensual International we started with 17 farmers, the youngest of them was around 55 years old. Some of them have started now, blessed memories, she grew up as farmers. so they could buy and farm more land together as this almost 500 acre farm ERS has gone from one acre to an average of around 20 acres today brought in foluke adelike as Director of Agriculture to introduce new stronger varieties of cassava on their farms associated this is a new variety and it is known for its good starch content and it has a better size, the roots are big, so you can see that it is very big.

Jimisi has also been able to introduce tractors to some plots, speeding up harvesting by 150 percent because these farms are harvesting more cassava, you miss can pay more, she eliminated the middlemen and pays farmers directly almost four times more than in the open market. Now farmers know how much they will earn from their harvest even before planting. We have been able to move farmers. From less than a dollar a day in the last 10 years to around 10 a day today, all of their efforts have received a lot of attention over the last 18 years. It has partnered with 10,000 farmers in the office.

Around 6,000 are men. There are around four thousand. the women, after lifting a load of enormous Roots workers, throw them into trucks bound for the Sultry processing plant. Ninety percent of the country's cassava is consumed locally, mainly asgari, and Fufu aderoju adijat has been a Gary producer since 1995. Every day his factory processes two or three. Trucks full of cassava, foreign workers peel and wash the incoming roots, then grind, press and fry the cassava to make gari's signature flakes. Peeled cassava must be soaked for three days to make the basic Fufu accompaniment, pounded, sifted and drained before forming a Foreign paste is sold for five cents a piece, you miss out.

However, he imagined processing cassava into much more valuable products such as starch and sweetener, but faced another great challenge in getting these roots to factories, since cassava is almost 75% water, perishable and can spoil. in just 48 hours. harvest, so it basically needs to be processed somehow almost immediately, but most factories are close to cities, down long roads in poor condition. I thought that farmers traveled 200 kilometers, 300 kilometers and before they got there the crops were bad or the trucks broke down until recently, forty percent of the cassava grown was lost due to deterioration and the processing plants were not operating at capacity. , so yamisi tried something different, so I decided to move the factory to a place that was close to the farmers but far from the customers because once the cassava is processed it does not spoil so quickly nowadays Sultry handles 100 million kilos of cassava a year in factories like this this is the area where the reception is done that is ogubo odega Florencia the manager of the plant the loader who brings piles of cassava drops it into these silos the belt takes the cassava to the dry cleaners that remove some preliminary depth and sand the dust a wet wash finishes the cleaning process and goes into the peeling machine so that more pills can be removed from the cassava those peels will be used as animal feed there is a cheaper alternative to corn feed , then the crusher cuts the cassava into smaller pieces, the final process with cassava starch or flour can be turned into a series of products, from cakes, breads, noodles, condiments for Nestlé and tapioca pearls for bubble tea.

This is also the first sorbitol factory in all of Nigeria, the sweetener it creates can sell for more than 10 times the price of raw cassava. Unilever uses yamisi sorbitol to make products such as toothpaste and mouthwash. Imagine how many of us there are in Nigeria or in Africa and you would think that all those imported to Africa come from Asia and yet, We almost wipe our mouths every day, whether we are poor or rich, while big clients have helped it become one of the largest processors in the country. It has not been able to export much.

He ships his sorbitol internationally, but has had no luck. exporting flour or starch and is not alone Nigeria is the world's top producer of cassava, but ranks 59th on the global list of exporters in 2021. Thailand earned almost $1.3 billion from exporting cassava despite producing less than half that of Nigeria that same year. just a million dollars not that the demand does not exist the global market for Sorbitol is expected to increase as more people turn to sugar-free products Nigeria actually has to import 95 percent of its starch because demand exceeds production Rising wheat prices due to the war in Ukraine have increased interest in cassava flour and then there is ethanol, a valuable biofuel also used in beer, winemaking and pharmaceuticals.

Some estimate that cassava ethanol production alone could earn the country billions, but the ultimate problem is adoption. Yes, cassava is an important food. basic, but Yamisi says not enough Nigerians know that it can also be processed into lucrative export products. Now the government has done things to help increase domestic demand, but experts say it needs to invest more to boost exports and producers have told us they want more government support. like building better roads near farms and increasing investments in new varieties of cassava because you, miss, think that sexy is proving that cassava can really work.

I remember 12 years ago, Farmers with Farm, then we had to call the cows to come and eat everything. buy but now that we are becoming industrial use there is a huge demand for crops so farmers can get good value for their crops if Nigeria can process and export more it could tap the huge economic potential of cassava . We grow the most cassava in the world now we are ready to take our place in the foreign foreign global state