From Michelin stars to creating crisp flavours

Tucked away in his kitchen, development chef Patrick Clifford is once again cooking up new flavours of crisps.

"I don't eat that many chips. A lot, but not as many as you might think," he says.

The 55-year-old once worked across top Michelin-starred restaurants - but can also lay claim to the creation of flavours, such as sticky teriyaki and masala chicken, for crisp giant Walkers.

But how do new crisp flavours come to fruition, and what makes a new snack stand out from an already saturated market?

Clifford, who works for American multinational PepsiCo - which owns the Walkers brand - in Leicester, said the process of creating a crisp flavour began long before the first potato was peeled.

In fact, he said it could take from four to 12 weeks to come up with a new flavour for the crowded crisp industry.

"For me, it's quite fascinating because people just mindlessly pick up a bag and just eat away, and they think 'wow, you know, this is a nice flavour'.

"But, they don't really understand the depth and breadth that we've got to get to that stage.

"There's a massive R&D [research and development] team, there's a massive marketing team.

"There's a lot that goes on that people aren't quite familiar with," Clifford said.

Clifford, who is originally from Birmingham, started work at the Royal Navy, before working in Michelin Star restaurants such as The Connaught in London, where he held the role of chef de partie.

He also worked as a sous chef at one Michelin star restaurant Gravetye Manor in Sussex, and held unpaid roles at other Michelin Star restaurants around the world including Paul Bocuse in Paris, and Masa's in San Francisco.

Clifford left the restaurant industry in 1998, and for the past 10 years he has worked in a kitchen largely alone, developing crisp flavours.

In order to concoct his favourite crisp creation - sweet chilli and lime seaweed curls - he had to go and forage seaweed in the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland.

He said it was his favourite invention, as he was part of the "complete journey" which took him from sea foraging to consumer testing, and gave him the opportunity to promote produce from the UK.

Clifford told the BBC the most "important thing" when creating a new flavour of crisps was that it should have "some kind of intrigue".

"When you're tasting a lot of recipes, there should be multiple different flavours that you can't quite pick out," he said.

Once his finished recipe is approved, Clifford sends it to the crisp manufacturer's research and development team, which work with him to recreate it in crisp form.

He said: "Typically we'd create multiple different versions of the dish and then say, 'what in that dish is fundamental?'

"What can we take from that recipe that we have to put in?

"And then, it's just a case of thinking about what ingredients our suppliers have to use, then we combine the two, and then we get it on a chip.

"It's as easy as that."

Ultimately, Clifford says it is the marketing department that then decides whether his flavours stand a chance of success with customers, and not all of his creations hit the mark.

That included a festive-inspired flavour, which Clifford said "was fun" but never reached the market.

"Effectively it was a Christmas tree - the smell of pine, an open fire, a little turkey underneath," he said.

"Sadly that one didn't get through."

When asked whether he thought he could create a crisp that could join the ranks of renowned flavours such as salt and vinegar and cheese and onion, he said it was a "tough one", but added: "I'm optimistic."

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