• Question: what techniques/methods do you use in your job?

    Asked by rosieapple to James on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: James Hargreaves

      James Hargreaves answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      hey rosieapple,
      i’m not sure exactly what you mean. do you mean in relation to my experiments or how i would go about creating new products.
      Leave me a comment about what you mean and i’ll reply tomorrow! 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: rosieapple

    rosieapple commented on :

    how you would go about making new products! sorry!!

  • Photo: James

    James commented on :

    Hey rosieapple,
    I just seen your comment now, and thought i’d reply before i go to bed ready for the big final vote when it all comes to an end!!

    When i start to create new products, i’m often given a “product brief” (you may have seen these in your food technology lessons). From this brief i will be given a set of instructions, these can range from what ingredients i have to use, or what alternatives i have to find and use, and these briefs will always come with a price limit. For instance i might not be allowed to spend more than 12p per portion for instance. This can make my experiments VERY tough!!

    Once i have this brief i will often go away and look at what i can use to create, i will get idea’s from cookbooks and the internet, and from my fellow scientists. Once i have found what i’d like to create, i”ll set to work and create about 6 versions of the product.

    These 6 products will then get presented to the group of “professional tasters”. From here they will give me feedback on which they like or hated, and where i should make changes. All these tests are recorded on spreadsheets so i can make flavour profiles of what people want to see.

    I will then go off and change my recipes to match the flavour profiles i have gained from the tastings, and this process can be repeated anything up to 10 times!! (Its a LOT of cooking – haha)

    Once we have found something that will work, i will prepare more samples and conduct public trials on the product to see how the general public (like yourself) likes the product. – This is the most important because if the public don’t like it, whats the point in trying to sell it?

    From these public tastings, if the results are good, i will organise a factory trial, where i will calculate the recipes into large scale production (can be anything up to 30 tonnes of food per hour), i will then spend the day in the factory watching this been made and sorting any processing problems which may occur when in a factory.

    From here we will then send samples to the customers who want to buy the product, this is often supermarkets like tesco, asda, and sainsbury. If they want the product, the factory recipes will go “live” and start to be produced in the factory, which then ends up on the shelf which you get your food in the shops!

    Hope this explains everything! 🙂