Veggie Burger and Sweet Potato Fries

Please note: You need a food processor to follow this recipe

Home-made veggie burgers can be a bit of a divisive subject - there are so many great pre-made versions available that the effort involved in making your own can seem unnecessary. However, they're so dead easy to knock up and hold endless room for adaptation and reinvention. Everyone's got their own 'perfect' veggie burger, and here's mine!

Additional tips: a renowned issue with veggie burgers is the difficulty getting them to hold together. This is partly just the nature of the beast and something you'll just have to put up with, but there are a couple of things you can do to improve matters.

- Make sure your pan is really hot before you add your burger, so that the side seals immediately rather than just going soggy and falling apart

- When flipping, use the biggest spatula/slice thing that you can find in your kitchen

- Try and flip them in one swift movement, like a burger ninja!

Makes around 8 burgers - enough sweet potato chips for two (the rest of the burger mix will keep in the fridge or, if already formed into patties, will even freeze!)

What you need

3 slices of bread, whizzed into breadcrumbs
1 400g tin of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 400g tin of cannelini beans (or any other white beans!), drained and rinsed.
2 fresh green chillies, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
6 spring onions, chopped
a handful of fresh coriander
1 red pepper, de-seeded and roughly chopped
an egg
2 smallish sweet potatoes (1 each - use more if you're doing the full 8 burgers)

What to do

First prepare your chips: peel the sweet potatoes and slice them into thin chips. Lay them out on an oven tray - in a single layer so they go crisp - and drizzle with oil. Put them in at 180 degrees on the middle shelf for 30 minutes.

While they're in there crisping up, make your burgers. It's pretty much as simple as slapping it all in a food processor: in go the breadcrumbs, both tins of beans, the chillies, the garlic, the spring onions, the coriander, the red pepper and the egg. Season well with salt and pepper and pulse until roughly blended.

Form into patties and roll in flour. Chill in the fridge for 10 minutes. Your chips should only have been in for about 5 to 10 minutes at this point, so you've still got time to fry your burgers.

When they've had time to chill, heat up a little bit of vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the patties for a couple of minutes each side.

Serve in a bun with lettuce, tomato and a slice of cheese, with your chips on the side.