In The News

Have a recipe for 20 but need to serve 200?

Paula Kerr, Fall River Herald News Staff Reporter

 

“My goal as a food scientist is that you’ll never know it’s frozen because it’s as good as fresh, if not better.” – William Bigelow, director of research and development, Blount Seafood.

 

You head a corporation that owns upscale restaurants in posh waterfront locales and it has become apparent that the seafood chowder isn’t exactly tantalizing taste buds.

 

Sure, given lots of time to experiment, your executive chef could come up with something better. But there’s no guarantee his recipe could be replicated with any consistency at each dining spot.

 

Better call Blount.

 

It’s what an increasing number of upscale restaurateurs – large and small – are doing these days to ensure consistency and quality in menu items from seafood chowder spiced with roasted sweet potatoes to old fashioned split pea soup to white lightning chicken chili. And nevermind that the company also offers sauces from seafood scampi to chicken cacciatore to mussels marinara, as well as prepared seafood such as crab cakes, clam strips and breaded scallops.

 

This is all turning the seafood purveyor in Fall River’s Industrial Park into a major player in the frozen soup and sauce game.

 

“We were a small, nice, fuzzy soup company we’ve grown,” says Will Roff Jr., manager of the spotless 65,000-square-foot plant. “We’re starting to get noticed. Now customers are coming to us,” says William Bigelow, director of research and development for Blount Seafood.

 

“But it’s not unusual to drive three cases of soup to Block Island,” counters Roff. “It’s our commitment to the customer, they trust in us,” agrees Bigelow.

Bigelow and chef Jeff Wirtz are point men in this endeavor, practicing – in a gleaming test kitchen with Vulcan stove and granite-topped serving station – what is known in the industry as culinology.

 

It’s the blend of culinary arts and food science that allows a company like Blount Seafood to take a recipe for, say 10 servings of clam chowder and turn it into a recipe for 100 servings, all the while preserving the taste and consistency even after it’s frozen and reheated.

 

“My goal as a food scientist is that you’ll never know it’s frozen because it’s as good as fresh, if not better,” says Bigelow, who holds a master’s in food science from the University of Rhode Island.

 

“The chowder could separate and once that happens you’d never get it back. It would taste fine but lose its eye appeal,” says Wirtz, a graduate of Johnson & Wales University.

 

So the pair put their heads together and get cooking to bring a new soup to a restaurant’s table, develop a line of soups and sauces for private label clients or simply expand Blount’s own line. Each learns from the other.

 

Wirtz can tell Bigelow what happens in even the best of restaurant kitchens when a cook, told to re-heat the chowder, fires up the kettle and wanders off. Thus they virtually abuse the product –leaving it on the test kitchens steam tables for a day – to make certain it can withstand the rigors of the back of the house.

 

And Bigelow can tell Wirtz how to use a natural flavoring to make his broccoli soup taste cheesier without altering the recipe – something he didn’t learn in culinary arts school – to make certain it can withstand demanding palates in the front of the house.

 

While they make it sound easy, it’s not. “I don’t think there’s ever been a product we’ve developed in one try,” says Wirtz. “That was good at least,” quips Bigelow.

 

We just developed a shrimp soup for a very large customer with 200 restaurants and it took 15 tries,” says Wirtz. “Fifteen is an average. Sometimes it’s up to 30,” says Bigelow.

 

And of course not every soup or sauce is a winner. What’s produced has to have the approval of the other company’s executive chef, as well as its sales and marketing team, because they know best what their customers want. “Ten samples to get it to their chef and it dies,” says Bigelow.

 

It’s labor intensive, and that’s another reason restaurant chains and private labels hire Blount to do the work. And once a soup is approved the company also will produce it in batches relatively small for an industry where 500 to 600 gallons at a time is the norm. “We have our own volume requirement, but it’s significantly less,” says Wirtz.

 

The research and development team at Blount uses the same formula when adding to the company’s own line. Bigelow and Wirtz banter about the latter’s idea for crab cakes – yes, they make those, too – done with chili peppers and mango.

 

“A little experimentation, fun to work with,” says Wirtz, adding however that before any thing is done the sales and marketing team visits customers to determine the potential for such an item and suppliers are contacted about pricing and packaging. “Should we launch it or put it off until the world s ready for Jeff and mango and crab cake?” says Bigelow.

 

But all the product enthusiasm in the world would count for little if it were not for the back of the house, in this case the plant that was gutted and renovated to the specifications of Ted and Todd Blount, the father and son who are chairman and president, respectively, of the family firm dating to the late 1800s.

 

“We built a lot of this for growth,” says Roff. “We’re hoping in five to 10 years to outgrow this.”

 

As he, Bigelow and a visitor suit up for a tour of the plant, Roff explains that everything from removing jewelry to donning hairnets to washing and sanitizing hands is necessary to ensure a pristine product. And a security badge must be swiped to obtain access to the production floor.

 

It, along with the spotless nature of the facility, is something both company and customer require, as do the various regulatory agencies that govern food safety.

 

Huge areas hold dry ingredients like spices and wines, while others contain chilled raw ingredients like fresh beef and greens. Much of it is as natural as possible.

 

Bigelow points out that only pure cream – free of extenders and stabilizers – are used. “It just tastes better,” he says. “And we can’t just say we have an upscale product if the first ingredient is manufactured.”

 

The star of the tour is the preparation room – chilled to 50 degrees – where ingredients are broken down into batches for cooking.

 

“If there’s a new product, research and development will be out here,” he says. “It wouldn’t automatically be made in 200-gallon batches. There’s a scale-up process because this is not an exact science.”

 

The preparation room also affords clients the opportunity to see their product take shape and give sign-off approval. “They get a level of comfort,” says Roff. “This where we show we can produce.”

 

Once the soup is cooked – in computerized stainless steel kettles – it is sealed in four-pound cryovac bags and run along a conveyor belt and under a metal detector. The latter is a food industry  requirement these days.

 

It is imperative, according to Bigelow, that the hot soup, cooked at 170 degrees, be frozen as quickly as possible to ensure a fresh taste. One freezer alone can do 5,000 pounds an hour.

 

Samples from each batch of soup are set aside for second-day testing that examines solids distribution, physical characteristics, viscosity and microbiological factors.

 

When a batch clears, it’s released to Blount’s distribution center in East Providence, R.I., where it’s picked up by wholesalers for delivery to restaurants.

“We’ve never had a batch fail microbiological testing, but we’re ever vigilant,” says Roff. “We never let our guard down,” says Bigelow.

 

Blount products are available for individual purchase at the company’s retail store in Warren, R.I., which is also home to its shellfish processing facility.