Behind the Scenes: Crafting Singapore Airlines' In-Flight Meals

Every omelette served on board Singapore Airlines' Economy Class is cooked on this rotating table. We're producing here 6,000-7,000 omelettes per day minimum. In catering facilities like this one, chefs prepare all the main dishes for nearly 20 million passengers a year. 24-7, 365 days a year. It's non-stop all the time. That's Anthony. He's in charge of the entire catering operation, and his food shopping budget is $500 million a year. So it's quite a substantial amount of product. His kitchen cranks out 168,000 lobster tails every month and over 1 million pounds of rice a year. But even the most expensive meals don't always taste the same in the sky. Historically, flavors could change depending on the conditions inside a plane, a phenomenon aircraft manufacturers and airlines have spent decades trying to fix. Just do one last taste. So catering facilities like this one are left with a logistical nightmare. How to make 50,000 yummy meals a day in a massive time crunch. With military clockwork. Because just like us, these meals can't miss their flight. If the plane is ready, you need to be ready. So how do Singapore Airlines serve up so much food in time for takeoff? This is Singapore Airlines' biggest catering facility, located within Chengi Airport. It's run by the airline's catering partner, Sats. And while Sats does make food for 45 other carriers, Singapore Airlines is by far its biggest customer. SIA, to be frank, is a very demanding customer. Anthony works with Sats to develop hundreds of new menus every year. And creating one dish can take 9 to 12 months. There's different menus flying in different directions different cuisine types, Japanese, Chinese, Singaporean, obviously Western meals. The airline runs menus from 77 different departure cities. So if you're leaving Singapore, you'll be offered chicken and rice or a hawker soup. If you're leaving New York City, you'll get a smoked trout salad. And of course, the food changes based on where you're sitting on the plane. In first-class suites, passengers have the most options, from caviar and lobster thermidor to beef tenderloin. In premium economy, flyers have just a couple choices, like this nasi kerabu, because the airline cooks it in bigger batches. No matter the cabin, chefs try to include a protein, vegetable, starch and a sauce in each dish. Before anyone can get to cooking, they need to suit up. They wash their hands thoroughly and step into this air shower. To remove hair, dust and anything which may provide an opportunity inside the facility for contamination. Sat's team of over 1,000 workers handles a lot of food. Easily, one day we can have about 800 to 1,000 menus running. They usually start cooking meals 24 to 36 hours before a scheduled flight. And it's all broken down into stations. It's like a restaurant. You have a salad section, you have a dessert section, you have a hot kitchen. Business is just on a much larger scale. In the premium kitchen, they're grilling meat, like this filet mignon, for the first and business class. Essentially what we're doing is we're cooking the meal about 30, 40 percent. If they cook the meat all the way through now, it would be really overcooked by the time it got onto the plane. So chefs depend on flight attendants who finish cooking it in the air. They just apply residual heat of about 150, 160 degrees in our aircraft ovens. Over in the hot kitchen, cooks handle, well, all the hot food for first, economy and business class. Vegetables, pasta, noodles, rice, noodles, hot meals, soups and sauces. This is some heavy-duty batch cooking. Chefs boil noodles in giant vats. Tomato sauce gets its own tank and is pumped out into these cooling trays from the bottom. And as with the meat, chefs aren't cooking everything all the way. So a lot of these are what we call 50, 60 percent finished. Even vegetables. It's a little bit like a pasta. We want it to be al dente. So you can see there it has a little bit of firmness, a little bit of bite. So if we break that, we still get some snap. So as it cools, the meals will continue or the food will continue to cook until it reaches the core temperature that we need to achieve for food safety. Every tray along the way gets a tracking label. That way, if there's any issue with food sickness on a flight, the airline can trace it back to the exact batch. We also want to maintain the integrity and the color of the leaf green. So we cook it in the hottest possible water, 100 degrees. We cook it for the shortest amount of time as possible. Once the food comes off the heat, it immediately heads down this conveyor belt to the blast chiller. That stops the cooking process in its tracks. Some things, though, are totally cooked through, like these omelets on this rotating table. The eggs come pre-cracked in the liquid mixture. A pump squirts the perfect amount into each pan. Chefs stationed around the table cook, flip, fold, and stack every omelet. We're producing here 6,000, 7,000 omelets per day, minimum. So omelets is mostly for the economy kitchen. Once all the elements are cooked, most of the way through, they head to this room. So this is what we call casserole assembly for economy meals and also business class and some first class meals. This is where they pack all the food into the foil containers you might have seen in flight. Normally, from the time they take the meal components from the fridge, within 35, 45 minutes, they have to have put the meal into the tray. Anthony gives chefs photos to show them how each dish is supposed to look. Flight attendants get a similar picture to follow for plating. Because we have around 6,500, 7,000 cabin crew, and there's only one of me, I can't be every day at the training college during the cabin crew, so we do this for consistency. One by one, workers pile on starches, sauces, meats, and vegetables. Here's that pasta we saw cooking earlier. They each get a foil topper and then are carted into a holding fridge. That's where basically the packing team goes, a little bit like a supermarket where you pick and mix. Chefs assemble the desserts in a different room. Today, they're making floating islands, a dessert with a meringue suspended in creme anglaise. All these dishes look great on the ground, but there's one big problem. Food can taste different in the air. On some planes, your taste buds are about 30% less sensitive to sweet and salty foods. That's because of the pressure, dryness, and engine sound. In the older 777s and A320s, the cabin is pressurized up to 8,000 feet, so it feels like you're eating lunch on Machu Picchu. And humidity on board can sit as low as 12%, less than some deserts. When you have a dry mouth and a worsened sense of smell, foods can be twice as bland. So historically, that meant airlines loaded on salt for you to even taste the food, sometimes leaving passengers feeling bloated. But in new planes, manufacturers are making conditions on board easier on your body. In the A350s, A380s, and 787 Singapore Airlines flies, cabins are pressurized up to 6,000 feet. So instead of Machu Picchu, it feels like you're eating dinner in Denver. And because new planes are made of more carbon fiber, it's possible to increase humidity to about 24%. When you have more moisture in the cabin space, your sinuses and your body is not dehydrating as quickly, and your taste and your palate is not as, you know, influenced. So flyers can taste a lot more these days, making it easier on chefs like Antony. There's no additional salt pepper, no additional salts. Antony can use this room to simulate a pressurized cabin and test how food will taste in the sky. And to address that bloating issue, he uses ingredients like... Turmeric reduces swelling in your body, inflammation, right? So you're feeling a lot more comfortable. Ginger is also for sleep and rest and relaxation. Which leaves just one more hurdle — reheating the food. Flight attendants only have small ovens to work with on board. So how do chefs make sure their food still tastes good? Well, cooking halfway and moving quickly helps. And they avoid dishes that don't travel well. We try not to do things that are deep fried, for example, chicken wings. It doesn't stay crispy, and none of us really like to bite into soft French fries. They also stay away from thin fish, like sea bass. A fish which is a bit thicker, a cod, a salmon, they stand up much better to, you know, in-flight experience. After all the meals are assembled, the food finally meets up with the carts you see on board. So we have here the tray assembly area. Elevators bring clean trays, cutleries, and dishes upstairs. Yeah, it's like a, you know, it's a deluxe ride, you know, for your cutlery. Chefs work on an assembly line, picking and placing... All the napkins, all the porcelain, the linenware, the knives, forks, everything right through to the salt and pepper shakers and the butter portions. This is a dinner service for business class. And then they'll put the appetizer. So the appetizer is always preset on a supper service. They'll put a lid on it, they'll put the dressing on the side, and then it will get packed into the carts. It's the same process for economy class, just the tableware, like the food, isn't quite as fancy. That cart is packed with all the meals inside. It has a label tag, it says what flight number it is, what destination, what meal service it should be. This helps cabin crew know what's inside the carts without having to open them. If you open it up, that document there will correspond with what meal goes inside. So here we have porcelain, here we have the glassware, and then that will correspond then with the meal types that come in from the meal packing side. Those carts take a ride on another elevator and will be loaded onto flights usually within an hour before takeoff. Every team along the process has to move extremely fast because all the food has to be cooked, assembled, and eaten in flight within 72 hours. So we never want to exceed 72 hours in terms of food processing. If the team goes over that time limit by just an hour, they exceed food safety requirements and can't serve those meals anymore. This meal will be on a plane tonight. Tonight, OK? So this production probably occurred yesterday. It all moves so fast because at the end of the day, they've got a flight to catch. You can't miss the plane.