The beauty of the beef-free burger

As the temperature drops, it’s only natural to be drawn to hearty and heavy meat-based soups and stews to warm the cockles. But one take-away joint is not only serving up winter food options that have soul-satisfying comfort, but that are also are easy on your conscience and your wallet.

Lord of the Fries - which has made a name for itself producing vegetarian and vegan burgers that taste as good, if not better than their meaty rivals - has partnered with the Australian arm of Meat Free Mondays to encourage Aussies to go meat free one day a week. Meat Free Mondays aims to raise awareness of the numerous personal health and environmental benefits of reducing Australia’s meat consumption.

To kick off their support for the movement, Lord Of The Fries is making your burger craving even easier to satisfy this June with a 2-for-1 deal on all burgers and hot dogs every Monday for the month. So bring in a meat-eating friend (or otherwise) and chow down.

If you’re keen to make your own version of the LOTF burger, co-founder Mark Koronczyk shares his lip-smacking recipe below.

• Pack a punch of flavour with Jalapenos – I love these on burgers (and pizzas too!)
• Use buns straight from your local baker if possible, we get our buns from a small bakery made exclusively for us. They are lightly toasted and vegan.
• Gotta have pickles and they have to be kosher dill pickles - the Kosher ones we use in the shop are da bomb!
• Soy patty. I really prefer a soy patty in my burger to one made from veggies. Gotta have the right thickness, texture and be brown in colour.
• Slap on some cheese. I’m vegan and like vegan American-style cheese so we use Tofutti American slices in the shop if you order vegan, otherwise we use a small, local cheese manufacturer.
• At Lord of the Fries we like to spice things up by injecting flavours from around the world in sauce form, such as a Spicy Mango Chutney Yogurt sauce.

To find out more about Meet Free Mondays visit foodwise.com.au,