Feel-good Meals The Hairy Bikers' Comfort Food

We've travelled the world and eaten everywhere from roadside bars to

restaurants with Michelin stars.

But there really is nothing like a bit of home cooking.

Coming into warm kitchen filled with the aroma of a tasty meal bubbling

away, it's one of life's great pleasures.

Lovingly prepared dishes with flavours that pack a punch.

It's the perfect way to put smiles on the faces

of your nearest and dearest.

We'll also reveal the fascinating stories behind iconic dishes...

Who makes the best spaghetti?

-You.

-Right answer.

..uncover why some recipes are so special that they're handed down

through generations of the same family.

Looks fantastic, mum. Thank you.

-And...

-Service!

..find out what chefs like to cook on their days off.

-That looks amazing!

-It's much easier and much quicker.

There's nothing quite as comforting as simple home cooking.

Today, dishes to feed body and soul.

With some of our favourite healthy and delicious recipes.

We're talking feel-good meals.

Do you know, Kingy, I'm feeling good, are you?

-Do you know, mate, so do I. But you know...

-Funnily enough...

Yeah, we're going to feel even better after this soup.

-What soup are we doing, Dave?

-We're doing a lentil and bacon soup.

It's a great dish for everybody but you know if you're a bit skint

and you're a student, good dish, this.

First off, we're going to sweat down some bacon,

and onion and a red pepper.

Now, obviously, if you want to do it vegetarian,

just leave the bacon out and use vegetable stock.

What's your favourite feel-good food, other than this brilliant soup?

-Fish.

-Yeah.

-Fish and seafood when it's fresh and, you know,

you can almost taste the sea in it.

It's food that puts more into you that it takes out of you.

-It's a bit like celery.

-What, celery makes you feel good?

Well, yes, because celery,

it actually burns up more calories than it gives you.

-Ah.

-So in fact if you ate celery all day...

-You'd eat yourself thin.

But curry as well because the spices that are in curry,

they've got medicinal properties.

Therefore it is feel-good food.

Right, the pepper goes into the bacon. But you know, Si,

I think soup must be way up there on the list of feel-good food.

I mean, when you're a kid, when you're feeling run down, you know,

it's your mum'll make you soup.

Or if you've got a cold, just have some soup.

Chicken soup, Jewish penicillin as they call it, it does you good,

it's warm, it easy to digest and, you know, soups like this,

they're different, but they're really tasty.

Sweet potato.

And, you know, whereas my mum would have used, you know,

a couple of King Edwards in this, we're using sweet potatoes.

It's a more complex carbohydrate, so it makes you feel fuller for longer.

-It's more satisfying.

-You know how I love them, though,

when you just literally put the whole thing in a wood fire,

leave them, they go really crisp and blackened on the outside

and then you open them up and it's just soft and fluffy and oh...

Yeah. Right, sweet potato goes in.

-Sweet potato.

-Sweet.

But like most good soups, there is a lot goes in it.

Lovely. I'm going to grate in a clove of garlic.

I remember in Austria, do you remember, one of their national

-dishes, it's a white garlic soup.

-That's so good.

-It's so good.

-I love it.

-Mm.

Pop in a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme.

We'll put the whole thing in because we're going to take it out before we serve.

And now the lentils.

These don't need soaking, just bung them straight in.

-Give it a stir.

-And what I love about red lentils,

they're slightly nutty, they're a natural thickener as well

and also they cook relatively quickly.

Yeah, you don't have to soak them. If you're using split peas,

you've really got to soak them the night before.

The stock, the engine room of the soup.

Be it vegetable, chicken or oxtail, you need good stock.

-And there we have it.

-It's just a waiting game now.

-It is.

-You don't have to be ill to enjoy soup.

I remember when I was a kid, I do love tomato soup,

and we used to have fried cheese sandwiches.

I'd cut it into four but one of the quarters,

I'd always put in the soup and it would sit there

and that was my treat at the end.

I used to make castles out of potatoes as well, you know,

potato walls and I used to put the peas on the top where the little

crenellations are, then I'd fill it with gravy.

Then what I would do is I'd have a moat around there

and I'd kind of put the doorway down and...

Now...

Dave...

..is going to continue to talk to himself

until the soup's actually cooked, which is about 20 minutes.

It's the smell of it really, takes me back, it really is...

SIMON GROANS

But, you know, I was quite a sensitive child,

but what my mother used to do to really cheer me up was do me

deep-fried cod balls. I would sit down there with a slice of lemon and my cod balls,

I loved it. But there was lots of meat...

-It's done.

-Champion.

-That took next to no time, didn't it?

-It was good, wasn't it?

-Do you want to fish the herbs out?

-Yeah.

-And I'll get the device.

-You could of course pass the soup through a strainer...

-Why?

..or you could eat it lumpy.

I'm going to chop some parsley.

I'm having a nice day, I feel good today, Dave.

Well, by the end of this programme we're all going to feel fabulous.

-Oh, yeah.

-Because it's food that puts more in your body than it

takes out of you. It's not necessarily diet food,

it's just food that makes you go "yippee!"

-Pepper makes you feel good.

-It does.

-It's a nice texture, isn't it?

-It's a lovely texture.

Oh, I feel ten years younger already.

You know, the good thing about this soup, Si, there's that much goodness

in it, it's almost a main meal soup, isn't it?

You don't need anything else.

Soup that makes you go ooh.

And there we have it, our lentil and bacon soup.

Just the thing to brighten up a dreary day

# And make you feel good, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm! #

Every dish tells a story.

It may be about the ingredients that define it,

the memories it evokes or the people who created it.

This is the story of Omar Meziane's Olympic dish.

Hi, I'm Omar Meziane. I am the chef for the GB rowing team.

I look after the athletes on a daily basis.

I take care of their every catering need,

from breakfast all the way through to the evening.

Because of who we're cooking for today,

we want to buy as lean a meat as possible.

I need four 6oz steaks, the fillet.

Food and nutrition, especially for our Olympians,

it is absolutely vital to their performance.

We're just picking up the watercress, which is going to go with the beef.

We're going to turn it into a delicious sauce with some chilli.

I work very closely with our team nutritionist, ensuring that

everybody gets exactly what they need to be able to,

you know, make the boat go faster.

-Have a good day.

-Yes, you too. Take care of yourself.

Take care, bye-bye.

I think it's really important that we make the food fresh,

vibrant and each day is something exciting.

You know, not only am I looking after their nutrition,

it's also trying to make them happy and I believe that food is a very,

very powerful tool in doing so.

So Andy Triggs Hodge is one of our most senior rowers.

He's been to four Olympics, he's got three Olympic gold medals now.

He's a huge machine, he's got to be fuelled right.

When we're training hard, we're consuming about 7,000 calories a day.

That's a lot of food, it's about three times

the normal diet for a man.

So when you're eating that much it's important to make sure that

it's not just a chore to eat.

If it tastes good, we eat more, we eat better, we can eat healthier.

My name's Zoe de Toledo.

I'm the cox of the GB rowing team women's eight.

We just won a silver medal at the Rio Olympics.

That's a good change. You made it to front stops.

Thank you.

When Omar first joined as the chef for the GB rowing team,

we'd been having pretty basic food, not great nutrition.

A lot of people were bringing stuff in from home.

And actually he completely revolutionised that, you know,

not only did everyone want to eat there,

but he made the crew room somewhere really special,

he made it much more homely, he put out recipe books for us to read.

The team dynamic improved, everyone kind of wanted to be there.

People kind of hung around after training and chatted.

You can see how getting good-quality food that tastes good,

there's a good variety, can actually permeate into many other parts of

things we need to get right, which is mental preparation,

so our performance in Rio was down to a whole load of things but of

which food was very, very important.

So we're back at my house.

We're going to start preparing lunch for Zoe and Andy.

As you can see, we're in my rather bijou kitchen.

At GB rowing we've got this huge, state-of-the-art kitchen,

so it's slightly different today.

We're going to be cooking the delicious beef with watercress

and chilli sauce.

We've got a freekeh and pomegranate salad

and then a tomato and fig salad.

So first up, we're going to get the freekeh salad done.

We're going to mix pomegranate and mint, a little bit of parsley.

I love pomegranate. Ram-packed full of antioxidants,

which are going to keep these guys

really healthy throughout the season.

So that's basically it done now.

We're just going to add the freekeh to that.

Freekeh's this amazing ancient grain.

It's essentially green wheat that's been picked and then really lightly

smoked. Then simmer it for 20 minutes, absolutely delicious.

And it's full of fibre, which is obviously great for Andy and Zoe.

So the freekeh salad done and now we're going to crack on

with the tomato, fig and feta salad.

Really fresh, delicious and it'll work just perfectly with this meal.

We're going to start making our watercress chilli sauce to go

with the beef.

Watercress, obviously for these guys, incredibly good for them.

Packed full of iron and the sauce

is just going to help to flavour that meat.

It's going to be slightly spicy, slightly acidic, really incredible.

A big part of what I do is trying to sell the food to the athletes.

It's about trying to make it look beautiful as well as tasting great,

you know, it's that visual aspect.

It's almost trying to lull them into eating it, you know,

and enjoying these amazing fruits, vegetables and meats.

-Hi.

-How are you doing?

-Hey. Come in.

-Thank you.

I think food has this huge power.

Not only can it fuel us and aid our recovery.

Omar, this looks awesome.

I like to think that what we've done is kind of bring everyone together,

put a smile on everyone's face.

There's nothing better when a group of people sit round the table

and eat the same meal together.

So, what do you think?

-Really good.

-You've just got a great mix of stuff here, which,

it makes you want to come back for more. Yeah, it's really good.

Proper food, well delivered, it just means so much.

It helps in more ways than you could imagine.

# I like tabbouleh, he likes tabbouleh, we like tabbouleh,

# it makes us fierce and strong! #

This is a proper tabbouleh though, isn't it?

It is, but what's nice about it is that what we've done is we've

brought the carbs right down because this is all we've got,

30g of bulgur wheat, and you soak that,

and we're replacing the bulk of the tabbouleh

with celeriac and courgette.

But this is the star of the dish, the humble mackerel.

Mackerel's great. It's cheap, it's sustainable, it's healthy,

it's an oily fish. It kind of ticks every box.

But the good thing about this is we're going to thread them with

onion on a kebab, with going to marinate them

and it takes the humble mackerel to a new level.

Served with that healthy tabbouleh, it's filling,

it's tasty and it's got huge yum factor.

First, my marinade.

Put red wine vinegar

and olive oil in a bowl.

And I've got some fresh oregano and I want couple of tablespoons.

We used to do a lot of mackerel fishing, didn't we?

-Ah, I love it.

-It's great fun.

But we were barbarians, we used to just eat it raw.

Catch it, kill it, munch, munch, yum-yum.

And just chop this fine.

That's nice and fine, that goes in.

Now we need the zest of a lemon.

So what we have in here is two courgettes and a third of celeriac.

And I'm going to pulse it until it is fine breadcrumbs.

And lastly...

BLENDER WHIRS

Lastly...

BLENDER WHIRS

And lastly, some chilli flakes.

As many or as few as you want.

If you're in need of feel-good food,

I'm the doctor and this is the prescription.

This dish is a culinary vitamin tablet.

Now, take your mackerel carefully, place it first

flesh side down. Now, this doesn't need to marinate for a long time.

I would reckon about half an hour,

so give it about 15 minutes this side and then we'll turn it over.

A good tip when you're making kebabs, soak your skewers.

How cool's that? You just put them in an old water bottle.

I've just put finely chopped onion in some water.

Now all that does is it takes away that heat and acidity because we

want it to balance out with the celeriac and the courgette and

-the bulgur wheat.

-It's better, isn't it, onions, when you do it like that?

-Yeah.

-If you're using them in a salad it just takes

the raw edge off them. Right, time to turn the mackerel.

Now, this is where the mackerel origami starts.

Take a wedge of onion on the end, a bit like stoppers.

Take Mr Mackerel, poke it through, like so.

And then finish off,

a little onion stopper.

There you go, kebab number one.

I'm just going to finely dice this red pepper.

Now if you can, you want the finest dice you can manage.

And it's worth spending the time because the tabbouleh

is all about texture.

These are brilliant on a barbecue.

But you can do them on the grill or a griddle.

Finely chop two ripe tomatoes.

I'm going to paint my oil on my griddle

because when you paint it on with a brush, you use less oil, therefore...

-You feel good!

-# Feel good! #

No. No. No.

Now, these won't take long.

So what herbs have we got in here, Kingy?

So, we've got some mint and parsley and you want all of that in.

And we just start to lift all the ingredients together.

Now, don't forget, what we've done is we've only used actually 30g

of bulgur wheat in this and it's a really, really nice alternative.

-What's the dressing?

-Well, the dressing's really, really simple.

It's lemon juice...

..some olive oil,

some fine salt...

..one teaspoon of ground cumin, one pinch of cinnamon.

I'm going to put the pepper straight into the tabbouleh.

Now, you want quite a lot of pepper in this.

These look superb, if I say so myself.

It's so cheap and it's such healthy, tasty food.

I mean, look at the colours in that.

-It's magic.

-That is so nice.

Then again with a fork, just lift it.

-Perfect.

-Thank you.

Look at that.

That's doing more than just satisfy your appetite and your eyes,

it's really good food that'll make you feel great.

It's healthy, loads of veggies, big flavours, loads of spice,

perfect combo.

-Oh, that's perfectly cooked.

-Yeah, it is, isn't it?

Oh!

There's a creaminess to mackerel when it's cooked like that.

The marinade is absolutely beautiful. What's this like?

I love that dressing you've done.

This is a lovely, fishy feast.

Britain has an army of creative chefs, who day after day

send out sensational dishes to customers in their restaurants.

They work long hours toiling over their stoves.

But at home, what's their idea of comfort food?

My name is Andy. I'm the chef and proprietor

of Home restaurant in Belfast.

The sort of food I specialise in Home restaurant is predominantly

healthy eating food. The way we develop the menu is totally

different from what most chefs do. We write a vegetarian menu,

and then we put meat and fish alongside with it.

The food I produce, hopefully when people are eating it,

they're going, I can't believe this is good for me.

Don't get me wrong, I still love a greasy burger now and again,

but most of all Home is renowned for people coming in

and having healthy food.

I grew up in a family where food was a big part of our lives.

My grandmother and my mother were exceptional cooks.

I always hung round the kitchen.

I was interested in what they were doing.

I was interested in all the procedures

and also most of all the end product.

I grew up in Belfast during the so-called Trouble times.

I left in 1990 and then came back again.

A lot of chefs have left Belfast and travelled.

They're all coming back and they're all bringing all that knowledge,

and they've realised we're a little island with great seafood,

and all the organic farmers now have really upped their game,

so right now, I think Belfast has to be

one of the foodie capitals of Europe.

If you work in a restaurant, generally you're doing insane hours,

so you're maybe doing between 60 or 70 hours a week.

Here we spend more time with like Tim or Drew here,

than you would do with your girlfriend or your wife,

and sometimes you do row like a married couple.

Would you say, Tim?

-Yes, 100%.

-Oh, yes.

They always say, if you ever get in trouble you would always phone

your sous-chef before you'd phone your wife.

And I firmly believe that, you know?

If I ever get arrested, I'm phoning Tim.

I have three daughters, Megan, Sophie and Ruby.

I've got a daughter at 15, 14,

a 13-month-old and I have also got a girlfriend, Caroline.

I'm surrounded by four ladies, which keep me in line, keep me busy,

keep me on my toes.

What I'm cooking today is baked sweet potatoes with

black bean chilli, some crushed avocado and a bit of sour cream.

The great thing about sweet potatoes is they're a slow release carb.

The great thing with the black beans is they're absolutely packed

with protein and fibre.

There's lots of things you can eat out there

that are good for you

but they're hard to get two teenage girls to eat.

They are as honest as the day is long, so if it isn't tasty,

they'll be the first to let you know.

So we have the smoked jalapeno peppers, which you soak in water,

don't drown them, just leave in there.

Take them out, take the seeds out and the stalks out and then just

blend them and you get this lovely little smoky paste.

Also as well, if you can't get your hands on these,

you can just buy any smoked Mexican paste.

A couple of teaspoons in there.

And also I'm going to add some tomato puree.

Medium heat, let the natural sugars come out.

We have our beans soaked overnight,

let those cook out for a couple of hours.

Always season beans at the end, because it makes them

very, very tough, the skins on them, if you don't.

Your average meal here, I mean I try to do the exact opposite of

what I do at the restaurant. I try to make it uncomplicated,

but really focus on the technique and flavour.

There you go, folks. Oh.

I chuck everything down the table here and everybody can have as much

or little as they want, and also if we're cooking something healthy,

we also put a little bit of badness down there like soured cream,

grated cheese, and everybody mucks in.

My dad's cooking is very good most of the time.

-Yeah.

-90%, it's amazing.

I think he feels about a vegetarian dinner, it's all beans,

really sort of protein it up.

I kind of just forget we're eating a vegetarian dinner.

It doesn't really come into my mind.

One kitchen to another, this is definitely home.

This one here is definitely home.

-Nothing makes you feel good like a sweet treat.

-Aye.

Fruit's good - you don't have to be ill to eat fruit!

You're no good with fruit, though, are you?

I am with these.

This is going to be pears poached in white wine

with a chocolate hazelnut lattice.

And chocolate is proven, medically, chemically,

to make you feel good!

You need some firm pears and you need to be gentle.

Peel them with care.

Try to leave the stalk on for that touch of chic.

Core the bottom of your pear, like so.

Squeeze some lemon juice into water,

which will stop the pears going brown.

Now for the first time on a Hairy Bikers Show,

the beast that is the pressure cooker will make its debut.

Ta-da.

Now, modern pressure cookers are safe,

and I mean we're going to poach the pears in six minutes.

How quick is that? I can make a risotto in four.

I can make a lamb curry in ten.

All of this makes me feel really good.

Because when I want to feel good, I want it quick.

Right, so what I want to do is dissolve my sugar and stuff

before I start to pressure-cook. So I take some water.

It's about half a litre.

Beautiful. Some caster sugar.

And a nice hefty glass of dry white wine.

Next step, the vanilla pod.

So just slash the pod, like so...

..and just open it up, and pop it in.

You can imagine a pressure-cooked vanilla pod.

It is going to penetrate through the pears!

When the pears are done, we pop them in,

then we get the beast up to pressure.

HE IMITATES AN EXPLOSIION AND BUBBLING WATER

Nice work.

Now, if we were to poach these down in a pan,

we're looking at about half an hour, because they are firm.

Right, get the airlock, get it aligned.

Do your noises, do your noises, I love it when you do your noises.

DAVE WHOOSHES

It's clicked in, it's locked in.

And we want this to come up to high pressure,

so when this pops up and you can see two rings,

we turn it down on a simmer

and that's when we start the six-minute count

which gives us just time to melt the chocolate.

Dark chocolate. We're going to melt it down in the little bain marie,

and then...

..to make our little latticework, we're going to put it on this,

which is a piece of silicone.

There we go, see? Up it popped.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So we'll turn it down now and in six minutes we will have poached pears.

I was remembering my mother's pressure cooker.

It was this thing that would hiss away like a steam engine on the cooker, you know?

-Yeah.

-She used to pressure-cook cabbage.

It wasn't good, like. Everything went in the pressure cooker.

-I think we're there, Kingy.

-Yes?

Yes. Yeah, man. Smells fantastic.

Mm. The thing with a pressure cooker,

you don't know what's going on inside, do you?

I'm confident there are six perfectly poached pears, or

there could be a pile of baby food

at the bottom of the pressure cooker.

Let's have a look, shall we?

Now, we want to stop the cooking process, so to depressurise...

..we put the pressure cooker under some cold water.

Release the rest of the pressure.

Carefully open it.

Beautiful. Just perfect.

Now, these have to cool before we eat them,

which gives us time for Si to make his chocolate hazel McThingyjobs.

Hey, man, the smell of those is fantastic.

Yeah, well, the thing about the pressure cooker is,

all of the flavour stays in whatever you're cooking.

That's superb.

I've got, obviously, this syrup

which we can use afterwards just to keep them moist.

Oh, hey.

And as it cools down I might keep bathing them in the syrup.

There you go.

Mr King, the floor is yours.

What are you thinking?

A spoonful, just nice and gentle, take your time.

Make sure you join it up.

Pop those in the fridge.

Yeah, leave them to cool.

Perfect.

He's a proud specimen.

Just in the middle, like that.

Just a bit of syrup.

Just got some amaretti biscuits here.

Just crumble these.

-There's some shards.

-Ah, brill!

Nice shards of the nutty chocolate.

Yeah, superb.

-Yeah.

-Yes.

And there we have it - the Hairy Bikers'

very, very feeling good poached pears in six minutes

and Simon King's chocolate shard.

Everyone has their favourite family dishes.

Delicious meals that remind us of home.

These are our inheritance dishes,

handed down through generations of the same family.

Hi, guys. Hi.

I'm Eleanor Snowsill, and I live in Cardiff.

I'm a Welsh rugby international.

I have 34 caps for Wales to date.

I've played in two World Cups and about six Six Nations competitions.

And I've been in the international set-up for quite a while,

so there's always a big emphasis on nutrition

to make sure that you remain fit, because the last thing you want

is coming into a big tournament like Six Nations

with a cold or something.

That's good, Sian, that was a good throw.

I have had a difficult past with food.

When I was younger I was extremely fussy.

I think I pretty much lived off peanut butter sandwiches,

Twiglets and raisins.

So mum being a chef, I think that was a huge struggle for her,

because she'd always cook some really nice meals

and I'd have absolutely no interest in it,

and I'd be there with my peanut butter sandwich.

-Hi, Mum.

-Hi.

-Making pancakes, are you?

-Ah, you smelled them, didn't you?

I did. From upstairs, yeah.

Eleanor was a VERY fussy eater,

but one thing she always ate was pancakes, actually.

Mum's pancakes are pretty epic.

As soon as you walked in the door the smell would hit you.

They are best warm,

so me and my brother used to queue up and wait for them

to come off the griddle and literally grab them.

We'd sort of fight over the warm ones.

My passion for food has come from my family, really,

my mother and my grandparents.

Both my parents are from farming families in West Wales,

and there was lots of baking, always lots of baking,

because on a farm they had to feed lots of people,

but when we had special visitors, my grandmother always made pancakes,

and we always had pancakes when there was birthdays.

So it was a special treat, but her recipe is quite unique

and this is the recipe we still use today.

-They look OK, don't they?

-I'm going to go for a darker one.

-OK.

For me, my mum is probably one of the strongest people I know.

She faces any challenge head-on and I have a lot of admiration for the

sort of determination and the strength that she shows.

They are nice.

And I think I do try to emulate that in everything that I do.

So I'm going to my training session later on and, like I always do, I'm

going to be making some flat eggs for some of the girls.

I always used to have difficulty getting Eleanor to help me cook in the kitchen,

so it's quite ironic now that she loves to cook

and appreciates good home cooking.

Becoming a bit more elite with my sport changed things for me.

I started to get less fussy,

I started to like more, try more things,

and I found it was quite a struggle to eat healthy

whilst you're training

and whilst you're on the go and really busy.

The flat eggs is something I invented

after I went on a sevens rugby trip to Dubai, and there was this chef

there, cooking omelettes in a frying pan.

He just had all these different ingredients,

you told him what you wanted,

he chucked them in and made the omelette really quickly.

I thought, that's SUCH a good idea.

No-one back at home is sort of making omelettes

as a takeaway option.

But I just tried it, I just sort of poured the egg mixture out,

put all the ingredients down the middle as if you're making a wrap,

and I just fold both sides over

so it ends up like a sort of an egg burrito kind of thing.

Girls order food from me for after training,

so they'd always order either a salad or a flat egg off me,

and they love it.

Pass them down.

Who's going to get the big one?

The chicken pasta flat egg is probably one of the favourites.

It is ideal because there's no carbs in it and it's very high-protein,

so it does keep you full for quite a long time.

Did you enjoy your flat eggs, girls?

-That was lovely.

-Thanks. Thank you.

I think it's really nice that we've both got this pancake recipe

and I'm hoping that potentially the flat egg recipe

could be something that could be added to the family cookbook and

passed down for future generations.

There's nothing better than a burger.

-Oh.

-Burger and chips.

But you know, they're not really good for you.

In short, they're not!

But we're making a burger that is.

It's kind of light, it's tasty, it's nutritious, but it's still a burger,

and Kingy is making chips using one teaspoon of oil,

just for that time when you want to look after yourself.

So first thing is take a leek, or two,

and we're going to sweat these leeks down.

You know that the best spuds for chips are ones that have more potato than water.

The Maris Piper is good, Yukon Gold's good.

The King Eddies are good, as well.

And the Desiree potato, that's nice.

Good chippers, that's what they used to say, didn't they?

"Eeh, they're good chippers."

We're just making guilt-free chips. It's wonderful.

We're going to toss them with some salt, pepper,

smoked paprika and one teaspoon of oil,

and then we're going to pop them into the oven.

The burgers we're making are turkey burgers.

You can get turkey mince everywhere, but the burgers, they've got leeks,

courgettes, lemon zest,

there's plenty of flavour and plenty of veggies.

So really you can have burgers and have some of your five a day.

-Perfect.

-Oh, I'm feeling so virtuous today.

Now, the key to good chipping is to make sure

that all the chips are relatively the same size...

..so they cook at the same time.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

Just let those sweat gently.

So a teaspoon of oil, and this is just sunflower oil.

So we just toss the chips in the oil...

..then sprinkle with paprika...

..salt and black pepper.

I just need to spread them out pretty evenly,

then we're going to put them in a preheated oven at 220 degrees

for about 20 minutes, turning them halfway through.

Right, I'm popping these into the oven.

I think these are done.

A lovely colour.

These need to be cooled down before we mix them into our burger.

I've got courgette, which I'm going to grate.

Put the courgette in, and now I want the zest of a lemon.

-I'm looking forward to this, Si.

-Yes, so am I, mate, so am I.

Turkey mince is very lean.

It's good for you. Pop that in.

We can do this recipe, minced chicken thighs are good.

This makes eight small burgers, but I'm going for quarter-pounders.

These are big Biker burgers that make you smile.

Get in.

Very, very low in calories, low in fat, but very, very high in taste.

When I was a kid I was only allowed burgers once a week

and it used to be before tea-time on Saturday, when Doctor Who was on.

I was a bit of a soft squidgy one with Doctor Who,

because I didn't like the monsters.

"I am a Dalek!"

SI WAILS: "Oh, where's my burger?"

Now, a burger should be a round shape.

And the good thing is you can have big ones,

because they're good for you!

Ooh, that's quite hot. Now, I'm forming these burgers with

wet hands, because there's no binders,

there's no filler in them. It just makes it much easier.

Well done, mate.

That's worked out perfect, actually.

Look at those. As I live and breathe, it's a burger.

I love the way you've got the stripes.

-Beautiful.

-I have to say, Kingy, they are perfect,

and they are holding together really well.

They are, actually. The mixture is sloppy,

but actually, as soon as it hits the heat,

they just come together really nicely.

And if you do these for your kids, it's a brilliant way for getting

vegetables into them, if they are a bit kind of veg-shy.

You know, "What's for tea?" "Burgers."

"Oh, yes? Mm!"

Let's toss the chips.

Ah.

Oh, lush, they are looking good, aren't they?

These aren't that far off, Si. Put them in, ten minutes.

-Perfect, mate.

-Home-made oven chips.

-Oh. You're flipping good at that, aren't you?

-Hey, hey!

Shall I get the chips out?

-Go on mate, go on.

-Great.

Look at that. As I live and breathe, chips!

But they're kind of spicy chips as well.

-Lovely, aren't they?

-Oh, aye. Oh, ahh!

Mm! Guilt-free feasting.

Chips. Who'd have thought it?

And burgers are quite personal and I think we can be quite inventive with

the trimmings for this. Brioche buns.

Avocado would be nice. Relish, tomato, onions.

-Oh, no.

-I'm not sure about cheese.

Have you noticed there is a huge upsurge

in the appreciation of the avocado?

All the sourdough toast and stuff.

Add avocado in a healthy chocolate mousse. That works brilliantly.

I ge...I get that, because texturally, that would be amazing.

Avocado ice cream's quite nice.

But avocado is great.

It's good for you, too.

I'm just going to put some lemon juice on the avocado.

A bit of flavour, but it also stops it going brown.

I'm going to go for it with this one. Have everything on mine.

I think I'll start off with a bed of relish on it.

Has to be red onion, in my eyes.

Now, that looks like the fattest, juiciest, biggest one,

so I'll have that one.

Mm!

Avocado.

Tomato.

A pinch of salt.

We could put mayonnaise on, but, you know,

these are guilt-free burgers, so use a bit of creme fraiche.

Pretend mayonnaise.

And a little bit of Popeye stuff.

Nice.

Ho-ho-ho!

Looks good, and feels good.

And do you know what? It's going to do you good.

And do you know what? They're very good-looking chips.

They are really good. Mm.

-You know what, Kingy?

-What, mate?

Let's BURGER off and eat this.

Excellent.