1. Look What We Found is an unusual name. Why did you choose it?
It refers to the importance we attach to provenance. We have scoured the country to find the best small scale specialist food producers, the kind that are proud to sell their produce face to face at farmers markets. They have very high standards in the way they grow their crops, or rear and take care of their animals and they produce great food ingredients, which our chefs have turned into great dishes.
2. So what exactly is Look What We Found?
Look What We Found is:
Sourced for quality. Selected for taste. Serve in Minutes Delicious gourmet quality food for busy people
Sourced from small specialist food producers/Provenance proven Individual portion dishes
Prepared by a chef from ingredients chosen for their flavour
Ready for you to heat, garnish and serve with your favourite accompaniment and garnish
No added colours, flavours, preservatives, or GMOs
Minimal salt, if present at all
Look What We Found is a delicious, hearty range of almost-ready dishes for busy people. We have brought together the finest ingredients from small-scale specialist producers, inspired chefs and truly brilliant technology, so that you can enjoy and serve restaurant quality food in minutes.
3. How did you come to create Look What We Found? What was the idea behind it?
We believe that people want to have more assurance about what is in their food and where their food comes from and how it is grown or reared. This is one of the reasons for the growing popularity of farmers markets. The person who grows or rears the food is usually a knowledgeable and responsible specialist and is face to face with the shopper. Quite often the small specialist producer’s criteria are diametrically different from those who supply to supermarkets. Meat is an example. We believe that the way an animal is bred, reared and cared for is reflected in the quality and taste of the meat. Nowadays we often know very little about the meat we eat and many producers are breeding for volume, to keep the cost as low as possible, unlike LWWF’s small specialist producers who choose to carefully rear, often rare breeds, on the basis that they provide the best quality and the best tasting meat.
If we had the time many more of us would like to shop at farmers markets, select the very best local foods on the basis of quality and taste and plan and cook a meal around them. But in reality at the end of a hectic day we find ourselves eating out of tins and plastic ready meal containers, or relying on take-aways. We wanted to give busy people an alternative – really wholesome, satisfying food at a direct from the farm, field, hedgerow or stream quality that could be stored until needed and then served in minutes.
4. So how do you manage to offer great-tasting “slow food” in minutes, without compromising nutrient quality?
We use a method closely akin to the good old pressure cooker, a method of cooking that your mum or granny would be familiar with. One of our many points of difference from other food companies is that we use a use a kitchen method, preparing and cooking small batches of each recipe. The method we use works like this:
One of our chefs prepares the protein element of the meal (the meat, fowl, fish etc). Simultaneously, a chef prepares the sauce. He may add a vegetable, such as whole sweet onions, to add visual appeal.
All the ingredients, which are uncooked at this point, go into individual portion pouches. The pouch is sealed and put into a steam pressure cooker.
The physics of the pressure cooker enables us to generate a higher temperature cookery process, which reduces the time necessary to cook and results in tender food.
Because it is sealed in the pouches, the aromatics are retained, not lost in the steam. The cooking process ensures that the food is totally cleared of any bacteria, which makes the food safe for long periods.
5. So the pouch is totally essential to the offering?
Yes. It is one of the reasons why we can offer the best from field, farm or stream that you can keep in prime condition in the cupboard ready to heat and eat whenever you want it. You do not have to eat it in a couple of days as you do with fresh or chilled foods for example, so that helps prevent food waste, a good thing for the consumer and the environment.
To deliver these benefits, the pouch has to be pretty special. It is made of a laminate of polypropylene nylon and polyethylene. It is lightweight and economic in terms of the space it takes up in distribution and when empty it flattens down to take up minimal space.
The other nice thing about the pouch is that it gives us plenty of room to put lots of information about the meal, including details about the background of the artisan producer or farmer responsible for the main ingredients. It is his or her picture that we feature on the front of the pack.
6. Why did you choose this type of packaging?
Even though we support the artisan producer’s tradition of care and attention to detail, there’s nothing folksy about the way Look What We Found is presented. The packaging is ultra-stylish and bang up to date. Each single portion pouch has been designed to focus on the individual food heroes behind the main ingredients for each dish.
Look What We Found is “slow food” in the philosophical sense in that it uses meat, fowl, fish, or game chosen entirely for their taste. Usually these cuts, which might be belly pork, rabbit, or rib of beef, need to be cooked long and slow to tenderise and bring out all the flavour, but the steam cooking and pouch technology that we use for Look What We Found achieves the same results, retaining all the delicious aromatics and cuts the cooking time dramatically.
Most chilled foods have a two or three day shelf life, so you cannot keep them in stock just in case and that results either in a reliance on take-aways, tinned or frozen foods, or in wastage when you have stocked up on chilled food and then missed the use-by date. With Look What We Found, you will not be caught on the hop when friends come by unexpectedly and you can serve really good “posh nosh” to which you can add your own finishing touches from the store cupboard.
7. The advantages of a long shelf-life
Because of the brilliant packing and thermal processing technology that we use Look What We Found has a long shelf life. This has many advantages:
It enables small specialist shops and convenience stores, which provide a valuable community service but may not have a quick turnaround of products, to stock our range.
It is of great convenience benefit to the consumer, who can keep LWWF in the store cupboard until needed, thereby getting all the benefits of a takeaway without having to travel at all.
LWWF helps prevents food wastage, which is costly to the environment as well as the consumer. Most chilled foods have a two to three day shelf life and must be thrown away after the sell by date.
The pouch provides perfect protection for the nutrients, flavour and food quality of Look What We Found dishes and because it is so lightweight (small footprint) it is super-efficient way to safely store and distribute the food.
