I say tomato, you say?
Tomato.
And he should know.
Meet heir to the Red Gold Tomato Throne, Colt Reichart.
It's all we do, it's just tomatoes.
And Colt knows how to make a really good salsa.
But before we get started, he wants to get one thing clear.
Don't put green bell peppers in your salsa.
Just chilies.
Okay Colt, duly noted.
Red Gold Salsa has been around since 1942,
and so they know what they're talking about.
No kidding, the company harvests over 400,000 tons of tomatoes each year.
One out of three cans of tomatoes purchased in the United States is made here.
And some of those lucky red fellows get to make their way into Red Gold Medium Spice Salsa.
They're number one bestseller.
It all happens here in this 420,000 square foot facility.
Well actually, it starts at Red Gold's 53 tomato farms,
which are spread across 14,000 acres in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.
Now that we've cleared that up, Colt.
So first, diced tomatoes are brought into the line.
Which is an important first step executed by John.
I'm an ingredient handler, and part of being an ingredient handler is dumping tomatoes.
Well, let's get dumping them then.
Forklifts hoist 2,500 pounds of fresh, farmed diced tomatoes into the blender.
These are about 26, 2700 pounds each.
The machine carries on with the heavy lifting and hoists tomato paste into the ribbon blender.
Looks like we need some water.
That's one of this water.
I want to share it.
No thanks, Colt. I meant water for the paste.
While the tomatoes do their tomato-y thing, let's pop over to Juan.
Juan mans the drum hopper, which transfers ingredients into the batching tank.
We put about 800 pounds of peppers.
Peppers? What? I thought that was a no-no.
Colt?
There's three types of chilies in our salsa, which makes it very unique.
And those are the jalapenos, the green chilies, and yellow chilies.
Okay, just chili peppers, right?
We don't use green bell pepper as a filler, so it gives a real good salsa taste.
Got it. No bell peppers.
Five pounds of cilantro and 10 pounds of garlic are scooped out and added to a pre-prepared vat
that consists of 100 pounds of powdered onion and 20 pounds of salt.
There's one again.
He pushes some buttons and these ingredients are swiftly lifted and poured into the batch tank.
Another pre-prepared vat is on its way and this one houses over 1600 pounds of chilies.
But no bell peppers.
Just chilies.
455 gallons of water is pumped into the vat and the tomato blend follows.
Hopefully it's a good vat.
It will be.
Earlier we learned that it's all about the tomatoes and not all about the peppers.
Don't put green bell peppers in your salsa.
We saw this get dumped.
Then we saw this get mixed.
And now it's going to get cooked.
As the mix moves through this system of pipes, it's heated to 200 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent spoilage
and sterilize the ingredients.
From here this salsa blend is de-airated?
It takes all the air out of the product and that keeps the color up.
The de-airator uses steam to rapidly lower gas concentration and remove oxygen.
Freed gases are vented out.
It makes it stay red because oxygen will make it turn brown.
Brown salsa?
No thanks.
While the de-aeration magic happens, so does the de-palatizer.
The de-palatizer basically takes a big pile of empty glass jars, blows them up and each layer is taken off one by one.
And the next is going to a bottle rinser.
It turns upside down and blasts them with ionized air to make sure there's nothing in the jar.
And then from there they go to a glass inspector, which is an actual manual process.
Gilda looks for any imperfections in the glass that could potentially cause breakage further down the line.
Remember that salsa we made earlier?
Well it's time for it to meet the jars.
Yeah.
Jars are filled at a rate of 300 per minute, saucy.
As jars move into a capper, which, well you know, caps.
The lids take a ride down this wicked machine.
Jars are blasted with hot steam and a cap is screwed on to each.
And here's the smart part.
Steam is used so that when the jars are eventually cooled, a vacuum seal secures the lid.
Like a hermetically sealed container.
Completed jars move into a cooker cooler?
Tell me more.
I'll let the professional handle this one.
It's going to be a unique cooker cooler because it's all in one.
The very first stage of it will be hot rain, we call it hot rain, it goes from hot to neutral, then to cold rain.
Cold rain will start cooling that product to make sure it doesn't burn.
And it'll also start forming the vacuum on that product.
Cooker cooler, whatever.
Now let's move on to a less obvious machine.
Sure.
The labeler.
Darn it.
Paper labels are added to jars at a rate of 600 per minute.
Labeled jars shuffle to a case where they're placed onto trays 12 at a time.
Trays are shrink-wrapped, then loaded into trucks for distribution.
But before we get the salsa out the door, can we please clear one thing up?
Okay.
Is a tomato a fruit or vegetable?
Tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable, because they have seeds.
What?
Yeah.
Mind blown.
Thanks, Colt.
