The ultimate veggie cheese burger

This is a cheats guide to a proper tasty burger. It’s not a total cheat as you do have to do a little prep, but I’ve used a shop-bought burger to save quite a bit of time. I think we’re all looking for easy solutions right now and if you can make tasty food, without too much effort then that’s a big win.

I promised the kids that I’d make burgers for lunch this week, which meant beef for my son Zak and veggie for the rest of us. The best ‘meat-style’ burger I’ve found is the Sainsbury’s Plant Pioneers Ultimate, which is a thicker soya-based pattie that’s really nice and succulent. Of course you could always make you own from vegetables/beans/rice - that’s a recipe I need to work on!

In our family, the secret to a good burger is the following ingredients (stacked in this order):

• Brioche bun, cut in half and warmed in a 50ºc oven for 5 minutes while the cheese melts.

• Tomato chutney, my recipe here

• Plant Pioneers Ultimate Burger or other veggie or beef burger

• Melted cheese, place a slice/s (gouda or cheddar) over over the almost cooked burger in the frying pan, add 1 tbsp of water and put the lid on. The cheese will melt over perfectly in 2-3 minutes.

• Fried red onions, browned/slightly crispy

• Pickled gerkin or cucumber slices

• Gem lettuce leaves, one or two leaves on top of the pattie

• Dijon mustard and or mayo, a scrape of both on the top bun

I like to serve with homemade chips - Maris Piper or sweet potato and spicy mayo - mix Sriracha hot sauce with ordinary mayo using a ratio of about 1:4 - depends how hot you like it!

Tomato & red onion chutney

As we’re all spending a lot more time at home right now, I thought it would be useful to share a recipe that will help you liven up your lunches. I don’t know about you, but I feel like the kitchen has turned into a revolving door canteen providing endless meals for everyone, so at the moment I want to keep things as simple (and tasty) as possible. Simple - to cut back on time spent meal prepping and tasty - well obvs, but especially at the moment because food is the highlight of everyone’s day right now!

I’m hoping this chutney might bring a spark of joy to your life, by injecting flavour into your lunch or dinner! We’ve added it to our burgers and halloumi wraps this week (see below), but it also works really well with cheese (and ham?) toasties, hot dogs, quiche, sausages or any kind of cheese. Alternatively you could mix a little chutney with mayonnaise and add to a sandwich or try mixing a spoon into a salad dressing.

This recipe takes about 10 minutes to prep and the rest is cooking time, so it’s pretty simple to throw together.

Ingredients

• 1 large red onion, halved and sliced thinly

• 8 vine tomatoes, chopped into small cubes

• 60g soft brown sugar

• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar

• ½ tsp sea salt

Method

• Heat ½ tbsp olive oil in a medium sized pan and add the onions. Fry for 15 minutes and then add the tomatoes, sugar and red wine vinegar.

• Heat until bubbling and then reduce to a simmer for 40 minutes until you have a jammy texture.

• Add the salt and stir well. Mash any larger pieces of tomato with a fork.

• Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 weeks.