- What does it take to be a recipe developer
creating new chip flavors for mass market?
We're here at Frito-Lay headquarters
to meet the culinary team behind all
of the Lay's potato chip flavors.
You may remember the Do Us a Flavor campaign,
where you could submit chip flavors
that you want Lay's to create for you.
I submitted a few, they did not get approved.
But we are here to go into their flavor lab
to see how this process works.
What happens after you submit that flavor request.
- Research chefs is a new field
that companies are now using a lot more
than they ever did before.
This culinology field
- Culinology.
- Is blending of, culinology,
blending of culinary arts and food science.
- I never knew that existed.
- Which is what we do, yeah that's what we do here.
- Yeah.
We're cooking from real food.
Mainly so that they can get a real, laser target idea
of what the final product should taste like.
- You and I have both, you know, done a little bit
of research and development to come up
with new menu items in the restaurant.
We need to produce a chip that tastes
like chicken and waffles.
Where does that begin for you?
- Well it begins with consumers telling us
that they want a certain flavor.
Chicken for the fried chicken has to be brined.
- [Katie] Right, how long does this brine?
- [Jody] Overnight.
- So it's dry, batter, dry again.
- Yeah but the last dredge needs a little batter in there.
So I'm just gonna.
- Ah.
I have not seen this before.
- Gives an exterior texture.
- [Katie] Flaky crispy.
- It's completely different from that point
than being in a restaurant.
You're under time pressure, you gotta just cook.
Here we gotta slow it down.
We've gotta overthink it.
We don't just have one chef what they think
is the best chicken and waffles.
We have three.
Everyone will decide which on best fits
this concept and the brand.
Then we'll recreate it and we'll get
a set of experts in the room who all have
highly sophisticated palates.
The chefs and our seasoning team,
and the flavorists.
That's an actual term.
- There's a seasoning team and flavorists?
- Flavorist will taste it from
a really analytical standpoint.
What are the individual flavors you're tasting?
What time order are you tasting them in?
What level of intensity do you taste it at?
What does it do after you taste it in your mouth?
Does it rise, does it fall,
you know is it gone with the last swallow
or does it linger through the finish.
They will use all that information
and the culinary gold standard to create the seasoning
that goes on the chip that will actually venture on.
- Make it to the end.
- In the restaurant you'd be wanting that
to have like the perfect texture.
Texture and appearance really don't come
too much into it.
It's really all about the flavor.
There's no ambiguity, there's no question,
this is the flavor we want you to reproduce.
You know what's really surprising?
Okay let's take a simple thing.
Ketchup.
If we poll consumers in the United States,
where ketchup is the number one condiment,
they do not want it on a potato chip.
Canada loves it on a potato chip.
- Really?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- That's so interesting.
- It's insane.
- What are some of the most out there flavors.
- Oh man.
- You've been asked to develop?
- Oh we did turducken.
- Ooh.
- You know and for those that don't know about that,
it's a chicken inside of a duck, inside of a turkey.
Dirty rice.
- A turkey, that is a monstrosity.
- In the UK one of the winners was Cajun squirrel.
- And that made it onto a chip?
- In the UK.
- I'm glad we're not playing around with that one today.
- Now we're gonna make the gold standard
for the Greektown Gyro.
Beef rib-eye.
Lamb shoulder.
Parsley.
Cilantro.
Onion, garlic.
And a whole bunch of Middle Eastern spices
as za'atar, turmeric, curry powder, coriander.
It's also got something that is the sciency part of this
which is transglutaminase.
- Never heard of that.
- Meat glue.
- Meat, I have heard of that, I've used that.
- Okay, it's an enzyme that binds protein to protein
and then it turns out just like
a gyro off the spit when we're done.
- [Katie] Oh my gosh there it is.
- This is a modified tzatziki.
More in the Middle Eastern rather than the Greek arena.
- [Katie] Okay.
- When we were doing this research to get this right,
we were losing some of the lamb flavor in the final dish.
So we decided to make a little concentrated,
here give that a whiff.
Concentrate lamb jous.
- Wow.
I have never seen this before.
- No and you probably.
- No I won't.
- Won't ever see it again.
- We cook here in a way that we would never cook
in a restaurant 'cause we couldn't afford it.
That was about two pounds of meat
and little bone scraps roasted until they were like totally
all caramelly brown, meat juices that were caramelized
on the bottom of the pan.
We had a flavor not too long ago,
West Coast truffle fries.
- Oh wow.
- Gold standard.
Would've sold in a restaurant about $150 a plate.
- Right.
- You know for fries.
Yeah, not gonna do that in a restaurant.
- No.
- But they were really good fries.
- [Katie] Right, right.
- [Jody] Chicken and waffles.
- Oh my gosh.
I immediately smell syrup and then savory.
- Yeah you know cut it open.
- [Katie] Oh my gosh.
- [Jody] Beautiful chicken.
- Look at that.
Sweet, savory, crunchy, salty.
Butter, maple syrup, chicken.
- Now taste the chip.
- I'm like, I can't.
I just spent the whole day in here with you.
(laughing)
And I still, it's like blowing my mind.
I'm gonna confirm that.
You were mentioning before, the order of tasting things.
When you're eating chicken and waffles,
the waffle is your base.
When you're eating the chip,
you get the waffle flavor first and then the syrup
creeps in and then it's a little savory.
That's so specific and intentional I'd imagine.
- It is very intentional that the timing
of the flavors in your mouth when you eat the chip,
is the same as what you experienced
in the original real food.
Because that's how you're supposed to taste it.
- Right, you're having the same experience eating it.
(upbeat music)
It's so good.
- Hard to think.
- [Katie] Wow.
- Working here has really.
- Wow.
- Kind of fine tuned some of my cooking.
- Right you can really hone in on what you're going after.
- You know and I'm documenting everything.
So I'm like you know fine tuning.
- All right now for the chip version.
- Telling you it's all about.
- It's exact!
Like these are dishes on their own are really really good.
- Yeah.
- It certainly translates to the chip.
In fact I'm just gonna keep eating them.
- We're injecting or surrounding
this art of culinary with science.
- And certainly when I see these chips on the shelves,
what it takes to get them there is mind boggling.
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(crunching on chips)