Member Article

Food company springs into life

A Teesside company is gearing up for Chinese New Year by making an amazing two million spring rolls on behalf of some of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains.

The chances are that if people buy chicken, duck or vegetable spring rolls from their local supermarket in the coming weeks, they will have been made by SK Chilled Foods.

This is one of the busiest times of the year for the Middlesbrough-based company, which is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of chilled and frozen snack foods.

From their state-of-the-art development kitchen in Wynyard, the company’s four chefs have been honing and perfecting the recipe for their spring rolls in time for the Chinese New Year – the Year of the Sheep – which officially starts on 19th February.

With the largest spring roll they make measuring 14cm, the two million they will make for the Chinese New Year alone would be enough to stretch from Middlesbrough to Birmingham. In an entire year the company will make around 58 million spring rolls – that’s enough to stretch from Middlesbrough to Beijing!

Jeremy Faulkner, Managing Director of SK Foods, said: “Oriental food is one of our specialisms so Chinese New Year is always a very busy time for us, with our supermarket customers wanting to ensure their shelves are full of a range of delicious Chinese meals.

“Our development chefs spend a great deal of time and effort testing out various recipes and then tailoring dishes like spring rolls to meet the exact needs of our customers.”

Spring rolls get their name because they are traditionally eaten during the Spring Festival. They are a Cantonese dim sum dish of cylindrical-shaped rolls filled with vegetables, meat, or sometimes something sweet. Fillings are wrapped in thin dough wrappers, then fried, when the spring rolls are given their golden-yellow colour.

Marek Blonski, Executive New Product Development Chef at SK Foods, says: “There is an art to making a good spring roll. The key is always using fresh ingredients and ensuring you get the right balance of meat, vegetables and the sauce/spices that can enhance the flavour.

“So, for example, with a duck spring roll, you need to use a hoisin sauce whilst with a chicken spring roll, it is better to use five spice. Regardless of the type of spring roll, it is the vegetables that really make the dish and they need to be crunchy, so that is why we use vegetables such as carrots, cabbage and water chestnuts.

“It’s also important to use the correct batter mix so the pastry that holds the filling remains crispy when cooked.”

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Traditionally, celebrations last 15 days with families preparing by cooking food, buying gifts and preparing their houses well in advance.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Shaefer .