Last week I was invited to participate on a group road trip to the parish of St Mary to visit Jamaica Producer’s Tropical Foods Division. They didn’t have to ask me twice, because I know how curious Thursday Food readers are about where food comes from and this interested me from a field to chip perspective. It is here, that the popular St Mary’s brand of chips are made as well as bammies. Kenia Mattis, marketing manager, and Camille Fender, sales and marketing coordinator, were our hosts. The drive down from Kingston was pleasant as we took in the lush green vegetation through the hills of St Andrew along the winding Junction road as it meandered into St Mary until we ended at the foot of the mountains and were greeted by beautiful roadside fields of bananas, pineapples and cassava.

Our group was welcomed by Florence Reid, operations manager. Florence is the brains behind the original formula of the St Mary’s Banana Chips. As a product developer she sources flavours, processes and tests ingredients then creates the end product. Through Reid’s large windows overlooking the factory, we could observe the workers taking part in operations producing the famous St Mary’s brand chips. First we noticed large brown crates filled with fresh-from-the-tree peeled green bananas. We learnt that bananas are hand peeled by approximately 60 women from local communities. Ladies apparently are better peelers than men, more precise and gentle. They peel at least 12 bananas every nine seconds producing about 200 crates per hour.

Next, it was time for the cooking process which Florence took us through. There are two types of cooking methods. The kettle cooking process that uses a continuous fryer for sugar-based products where there is a person at the receiving end of each batch to check and pick out impurities. You also have the automatic process where the kettle will notify when it’s ready to receive each batch of product. The product, in this case the banana, is batch fed, sliced, washed and sits on the belt for four minutes, drained of moisture and fried at a preset temperature for a fixed time. In the old method, a fork system was used when a person manually used a fork in a raking motion. With new technology, the automatic method imitates this action through a stirrer, which simulates this movement.

The oil used to fry banana chips is the same one used to cook the other chips namely plantain, cassava and sweet potato. Oil protocol is taken very seriously as the oil is RSPO certified sustainably grown palm oil from Malaysia. The oil is filtered and replenished for each batch of chips cooked. After the chips are fried, they are then flavoured in a follow up machine using the Fast Back System, which prevents chips from being broken while being seasoned. Seasonings used are sea salt, white pepper and onion spice. Other flavours for chips are BBQ and cheese and onion, which are imported. The chips are now ready to eat and transported to three other machines that pour a specific amount into bags, producing about 20 bags at a time or 120 cases an hour. All in all a typical output in the factory produces approximately 100 cases per hour making 10,000 packs or 2,000 cases a day to produce 200, 000 packs or a 1,000,000 packs a week.

After witnessing the chips being made we were able to munch on some of the varieties of chips: regular plantain, kettle-cooked sweet plantain, kettle-cooked cassava, regular, kettle cooked, cheese and onion and bbq banana chips. There weren’t any sweet potatoes that day for us to try, but I have tried them and they are delicious. These chips made from ingredients of our local soil are ideal served as an appetiser with assorted dips and drinks for your entertaining needs. They are great for packing in children’s lunch boxes, and ideal for a quick snack in-between meals. They are also lower in fat and calories than imported potato chips.

Our munchies satisfied, we walked over to the “World Famous House of Bammies” where miniature, ready-to-eat bammies are made. What was telling for me was the large cassava field behind the plant. Sweet cassava is used to produce bammies, not the bitter variety. I was excited to see how these were made, especially since I had sampled Debe Chen’s wonderful recipes such as bammy pizza and bammy Shepherd’s pie at the Food Awards which were featured in Thursday Food recently.

The cassava is peeled to a specific length and thickness and then fed into a grinder which has the capacity to facilitate 700 pounds per hour. During this process the cassava’s excess starchy water and sugars are squeezed out, while retaining nutrients, and the tubers come out at the end of this process resembling grated coconut and are pressed into cakes. Next, these “cakes” are carried over to a giant mesh with a receiving receptacle underneath, where ladies use their gloved hands to roll and press them through this sieve to remove the impurities which remain on top. The batch of cassava is then placed into a plastic bag and weighed. Following this, the ready cassava is placed into a drum where it is seasoned with salt which distributes evenly while it spins, and then it is let out onto a tray.

Pre-sized moulds are on top of preset heated stoves. The cassava is put into these moulds by the bakers, and flattened with a spatula and cooked on each side for five minutes. Bammies are now ready to be eaten. The finished product is placed in front of large fans to be cooled down, trimmed then packaged and dated. The bammies are then moved to a cold storage and will be transported. Two new bammy products will be on the market soon, cheese and jerk flavoured. While sampling the product, I spoke to one of the bakers, Erica Edwards of Rose End district in the parish. Erica stated that she works in the most fun part of the process. She has been employed to JP Tropical Foods for a year now. Erica explained that it is tasked work, therefore one had to be motivated as employees are paid by the case. They produce 61 cases a day on average.

Jamaica Producers also has a factory in the Dominican Republic. The staff over there are trained by the Jamaican staff and obliged to use the St Mary’s formulation. This was important to know in addressing concerns about why we see this local product marked as produce of the Dominican Republic. This was a visionary move on the part of JP to invest in another Caribbean island to protect the consistency and authenticity of the product, especially in times of bad weather such as drought and hurricanes given the fragility of the banana industry. Another observation our party made was that the company is heavily involved in the community via philanthropic endeavours and employment of workers from neighbouring districts.

While we were there young students of Jeffery Town Primary in the parish were taking a tour of the facilities accompanied by teachers and a few parents, their cute little faces filled with wonder and excitement. So, I hope today’s piece will leave you with a newfound respect for local products now that I have taken you behind the scenes. I know that when I dig into a pack of chips the next time, the beautiful green fields of St Mary will pop into my brain.

Thanks to Jamaica Producers Tropical Foods and The Marketing Consultants for inviting me on this educational trip.

Contact me at juicycheffoodmedia@gmail.com