Go into the unified enterprise to explore sour and delicious food

For more than 3,000 years, pickled cabbage has been like a recipe written in Sichuan and Sichuan people’s genes, and it has a lasting aftertaste. Now, pickled cabbage can be found everywhere in restaurants, supermarkets and family desks all over Sichuan.

Every March, all households in Sichuan pickle sauerkraut with pottery jars. After summer, sour and delicious sauerkraut is opened. However, this year’s opening season is slightly special compared with previous years, because there is a unique "exploration" activity held in Sichuan.

On June 30th, CCTV, together with China Communications Broadcasting Panoramic Exploration, entered the first Laotan Pickled Sauerkraut Culture Experience Hall open to the public in China, feeling the sour and delicious taste of the collision between traditional techniques and modern techniques.

This ordinary small bag contains a mellow "old altar flavor"

Sauerkraut, known as pheasant in ancient times, refers to vegetables fermented for long-term storage. According to historical records, as early as the Zhou Dynasty, Sichuan people had learned how to choose pottery jars, reconcile five flavors, and immerse mustard in old brine for full fermentation. This is also considered by later generations to be the essence of the ancient method of processing real old altar sauerkraut. After being passed down and improved from generation to generation by Sichuan people, Laotan pickled cabbage was finally known to the people of the whole country through industrialized production means.

The main venue of this factory exploration activity is Daoquan Laotan Pickled Sauerkraut Factory located in Shifang, Sichuan. Shifang is famous for its rich sauerkraut. Daoquan Laotan sauerkraut factory has a history of cooperation with Uni-President (China) Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Uni-President) for 20 years. Huang Chunze, deputy general manager of Uni-President’s Production Management Group, as a guide to the program, first told netizens about the history of Uni-President’s research and development of Laotan sauerkraut.

"Daoquan is our first partner. Before 2003, no enterprise in the instant noodle market could really apply wet sauerkraut to instant noodles. Colleagues of our R&D team put forward ideas in many directions and had a heated discussion. However, only internal discussion is not enough, so we visited the famous sauerkraut master, learned the traditional fermentation technology, tried to combine it with modern processing technology, and finally developed the Laotan sauerkraut bag. " Huang Chunze introduced.

When talking about how to integrate Sichuan traditional Laotan sauerkraut into modern technology, Zhang Ling, general manager of Uni-President’s fast food business group, said: "Before, all the instant noodles in the market were dehydrated vegetables, and there was never a wet vegetable bag, so the research and development was facing unprecedented difficulties. Vegetables have high moisture content and are easy to rot when stored at room temperature, so we use old brine rich in lactic acid bacteria to ferment sauerkraut, which produces rich organic acids, which can reduce the pH value to below 4.5, and then pasteurize it after vacuum packaging, which can ensure that wet sauerkraut bags can be stored at room temperature for more than 300 days. " It is these technical breakthroughs that have laid the foundation for the pioneering position of unified Laotan sauerkraut beef noodles. Uni-President has realized the large-scale production of convenient fermented sauerkraut through scientific and technological innovation on the basis of inheriting the traditional fermentation technology. The technology of secondary fermentation of sauerkraut in pottery altar through old brine has also won the national invention patent of "Method for Making Convenient Fermented sauerkraut" [patent number: ZL201310166781.7].

In March, 2013, chinese institute of food science and technology organized an expert group led by an academician of food science to appraise the scientific and technological achievements of Uni-President "Modern Processing Technology of Laotan Sauerkraut Series Instant Noodles". The expert group believes that this technology is innovatively combined with instant noodles for the first time, which realizes the integration of product flavor and quality with the international leading level, so it gives the appraisal of the "domestic initiative" of unified Laotan sauerkraut series instant noodles.

Panoramic exploration of the factory assembly line, revealing the process of "sour and refreshing"

Laotan sauerkraut instant noodles have been on the market for 20 years, and the exploration of unified technological innovation has never stopped. We saw in the program that the production process of pickled cabbage flavor package is mainly divided into primary fermentation, three cleaning and three washing, secondary fermentation, packaging, inspection and other links. With Huang Chunze’s explanation and the show of the program lens, the road to transformation of "green mustard" is gradually clearly presented to netizens.

In a fermentation process, fresh mustard will undergo full-time fermentation for more than 81 days, which can make it lose its green flavor, and lactic acid bacteria can gradually decompose nitrite and reduce it to a safe level.

In the process of three cleaning and three washing, the pickled mustard will go through three processes of machine washing and three manual cleaning, which not only reduces the salinity, enhances the palatability, but also strengthens the quality control of each sauerkraut.

Followed by the secondary fermentation process, sauerkraut enters the traditional old altar with small neck and big belly with the old brine, and the anaerobic environment of sealed fermentation is very suitable for the development of lactic acid bacteria. According to Huang Chunze, the old brine of Uni-President Enterprise is a dominant microbial flora formed after long-term survival of the fittest, which is conducive to the fermentation of sauerkraut to produce acid and exude a sour and pleasant flavor. Huang Chunze said: "Only through the fermentation of traditional pottery jars and old brine can it be called authentic old altar sauerkraut."

In this regard, Xie Junxian, a famous China cooking teacher registered by China Cuisine Association, also said in the program that insisting on using the old altar and old brine is a kind of inheritance of traditional cuisine, a kind of persistence in respecting ingredients and maintaining good hygiene habits. "The old altar and old brine are old crafts and old feelings that we can’t lose."

Workers work in the secondary fermentation area.

In the process of packaging and inspection, the role of science and technology is further highlighted, such as advanced automatic packaging machine, pasteurization, professional quality inspection, special personnel stationed in the factory, and proprietary food safety testing center & HELIP; … The display of each craft can make netizens feel the Excellence of uni-president enterprises.

Since it was opened to the public in 2013, Daoquan Laotan Pickled Sauerkraut Factory has been visited by many groups of consumers every year, and has accumulated more than 30,000 people so far, which has played a role in promoting the inheritance of traditional skills. Zhang Ling said: "For the healthy development of Laotan pickled vegetable industry, Uni-President also applied to chinese institute of food science and technology in conjunction with several manufacturers in the industry to formulate the group standard of" Quality Management Standard for Laotan pickled vegetable production ",with the aim of adding a guarantee of safety and delicacy to consumers. Let the whole industry develop healthily and sustainably and help the upstream mustard planting industry flourish. "

In addition, Uni-President also adopts the management method of "national factory playing a chess game", which is characterized by unified management, unified standards, unified technology and unified processes. In this factory exploration program, we connected with two supplier factories in Haibin, Guangdong and Tongxiang, Hubei, as well as the instant noodle factory in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, so that the majority of netizens can further understand the "unified layout" of the unified enterprise. In the connection of the instant noodle factory of Guangzhou Uni-President Enterprise Co., Ltd., Li Liming, director of Guangzhou Uni-President Production Department, said that the factory is not only the largest production base of Uni-President enterprise in China, but also undertakes the task of producing export products. The domestic and export production lines are parallel. Although the packaging patterns on the two lines are different, the products in them are exactly the same, and the taste and quality control of the finished products are exactly the same.

Uni-President’s domestic and export products are the same sauerkraut package.

This two-hour factory exploration program not only tells the history of Laotan sauerkraut, but also shows the complete production process and strict production standards from multiple angles and scenes. In the expert forum, we talked about how to ensure food safety when making pickled vegetables with modern technology. Chen Gong, president of Sichuan Food Fermentation Industry Research and Design Institute, said that such as Daoquan Laotan Pickled Vegetable Factory, there is a traceability system from raw material planting, production and processing, storage and sales to the use of instant noodle raw materials in unified enterprises, which can better ensure food safety. "Before today, I also visited the site, and the whole factory was clean and standardized. When you scan the bar code, you will know the relevant information of the manufacturer and the pickled cabbage package in the production process. Every link can be traced back. " Chen Gong said.

This factory visit program not only unlocked the "delicious password" of mustard from vegetable field to factory, but also let more people see the innovative spirit of Uni-President and its sauerkraut package suppliers, and understand the heavy responsibility of industrial development and rural revitalization behind a small sauerkraut package.

Uni-president also said that in the future, it will continue to open the industrial production process to the public, show the public more secrets behind the "sour and refreshing", and show the company’s own more real initial heart, perseverance and intention.