How to make the best veggie burgers | Kitchen aide

My veggie burgers are so often underwhelming, or they simply fall apart. Where am I going wrong?Beth, Newark“Veggie burgers are often lacking in everything that’s good about food,” says Melissa Hemsley, author of Real Healthy, and for her, that means texture, flavour and satisfaction. “They also tend not to have those key flavour highs – the fat, the salt – that you’re after from a homemade version.”For Lukas Volger, author of Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, texture is by far the complaint he hears most often: “The patty is too moist, and glops out of the other side of the bun when you bite into it.” Veggie burgers often behave like this, Volger says, because vegetables contain water, so you’ll either need to cook the veg in advance or add something to the mix to soak it up, whether that’s breadcrumbs or grains

José Pizarro’s recipe for courgette and almond gazpacho

Gazpacho has been part of Spanish kitchens for centuries. Long before tomatoes arrived from the Americas, it was made with bread, garlic, olive oil and almonds, which have always been part of our food culture. It began as field food, crushed by hand in mortars and eaten by workers under the sun with nothing but stale bread and whatever else they had to hand alongside. No blenders, no chill time, just instinct and hunger. This version, with courgette and basil, goes back to that idea: take what’s around you and make something good out of it

‘Deeply wrong’: would you use a barbecue to cook a full English breakfast?

If so, you’ve got company – nearly one in six Britons have prepared bacon and eggs on an open flame. But not everyone is happy about the practiceName: Breakfast barbecues.Age: Our ancestors cooked with fire at least 780,000 years ago; they must have done it in the morning at some point.Appearance: A bit burnt, probably.What kind of breakfast can you cook on a barbecue? A full English breakfast

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for lemongrass chicken lettuce wraps

The perfect meal for a hot day, when you want something light and refreshing. You can assemble all the components for these lovely, fresh lettuce wraps while the chicken poaches in an aromatic broth, and either make up the cups yourself or put all the components down on the table for everyone to help themselves. This was a hit with my three-year-old daughter, and it even encouraged the one-year-old to try lettuce for the first time.Don’t throw away the aromatic broth: strain it and refrigerate for two days or freeze for up to six months. Use it in soups

Sophie Wyburd’s recipes for summer pesto pasta

When hot summer days roll around, midweek dinners that require minimal cooking really come into their own. I love making pesto on such evenings, and not just the classic basil-and-pine-nut situation. Jazzing things up with braised greens or a red pesto made from lots of jarred goods are just two directions in which I like to take things for a big hit of flavour. Both of today’s pestos freeze well, too.An almost no-cook sauce of smoked harissa whizzed up with jarred peppers, almonds and parmesan, tossed through rigatoni and topped with a dollop of lemony ricotta

‘It is not jus. It is not a glaze. It is gravy!’ Britain’s gift to the world finally gets the love it deserves

Chefs have gone head over heels for the brown stuff. Some drown their burgers in it; others serve it with brioche and black pudding; one even turns it into ice-cream. What’s going on?Pub roasts, grannies, Sunday lunch, Ah! Bisto!: gravy triggers nostalgic food memories for Britons like little else. But unlike complex French sauces, for example, gravy is brown and plain, not gastronomic alchemy. Its homely bedfellows – potatoes and pies – have had fancy makeovers, but gravy’s potential hasn’t been much exploited on the modern menu