Kraft sponsored another fun summer intern excursion, this time to Woodstock, IL to tour the Claussen pickle manufacturing plant! Who doesn't love pickles??
Claussen is a unique brand of pickled cucumbers because their cucumbers are never cooked. The company has been a part of the Oscar Mayer brand since 1970, and Oscar Mayer is a Kraft Brand.
At this facility, they produce all of the following Claussen products:
- Kosher Dills (whole, halves, spears, mini dills, and sandwich slices)
- Bread 'N Butter (chips and sandwich slices)
- Deli Style Hearty Garlic (sandwich slices and wholes)
- Hot & Spicy (spears and chips)
- Sauerkraut
- Pickle relish (from pickle byproducts i.e. misshapen, miscut, etc.)
These products are found in the refrigerated aisle and are not shelf stable, unlike other brands.
The interns geared up in their PPE (Proper Protective Equipment, no jewelry, and no pen caps) and headed into the plant to see all parts of pickle production, from the semi-automated processes, to the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP). Unfortunately, I couldn't take any photos or videos, but I can do my best to summarize what I saw and understood about the pickling process.
1. Raw material received: Cucumbers are received daily by the truckload (7, to be exact) from farms in the US (Florida, Illinois, Delaware++), and Mexico during the off-seasons. Garlic and other seasonings, as well as glass jars and labels are also supplied by other manufacturing companies.
2. Wash/Sort: Within 2 days of arrival, fresh cucumbers are washed with an automatic process and are sorted for defects (such as gauges, worms, seediness, translucence, etc.)
3a. Cutting: Cucumbers are transported to the next step with various belts and aqueducts to the cutting unit operation, where the cucumbers are cut with automated blades to their desired shape. There are multiple lines of production, each with a different style of cut in production (spear, half, sandwich slice, etc.)
3b. Garlic bottom Glass: Meanwhile, the glass jars from pallets stacked sky-high are moved along on a conveyor belt, prepared to have the bottom filled with the garlic and spice mix prior to being filled by the cut cucumbers.
4. Jarring: Cut cucumbers are automatically placed in the jar; the quantity of cucumbers in the jar depends on the cut. Then, the jars are filled by over 20 workers on a line to ensure standardization and that they are nicely packed.
5. Brining: A fountain of paracetic acid brine flows continuously into jars, filling them to the top as they pass through on a conveyor belt.
6. Cap & Label & Seal: Caps are automatically added to the jars and a metal detector controls the process to ensure that each jar is capped. There are several metal detectors during the process which are critical control points to detect contamination of the product from equipment parts. The label is glued onto the jar, as it spins around the labeler. Then the tamper evident seal is added as the finishing touch.
7. Secondary Packaging: The finished and sealed jars are then packaged into small cardboard pallets with a plastic wrap to be moved to the warehouse so that they can cure for 3 days minimum.
And there you have it-- this is how Claussen Pickled Cucumbers are made. After the tour, the HR Manager treated the interns to an official competitive category taste assessment. We sampled spears, halves, kosher dills, bread and butter chips, and hot & spicy pickles. Note: Spicy Lovers, try the Hot & Spicy pickles!! They use habanero oil, which is extremely effective!! The brands we compared were Mt. Olive, Claussen, Vlasic, and Nathan's. Mt. Olive and Vlasic both heat treat their pickles for to attain shelf stability, while Nathan's and Claussen do not. Here are some other notes that I had, with ranks:
#4 Mt. Olive - shelf stable (due to heat treatment), very yellow, contains polysorbate 80, yellow No. 5, very jelly center and not a good crunch
#2 Vlasic - shelf stable, salty, yellow No. 5, Polysorbate 80, super crunchy, nice flavor
#3 Nathan's - refrigerated, salty, not much flavor
I love pickles, and this was a dream come true-- I now have a fridge full of pickle jars.
I would like to thank Claussen and Kraft for arranging such a great tour!
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