Grill'd Bunless Burgers

At Grill'd, there's a bunless option. It sounds like bad value 'cause you're paying the same price and not getting the bun. However, it turns out the bunless option is just as filling as with the bread (especially if you also want chips), since the bun is not a filling component of the meal anyway.

This is the bacon and cheese burger. The great thing about having the sauce on the side instead of inside a sandwich is that you can have as much or as little as you want (and it's a LOT of sauce, but having worked in a fast food restaurant myself I know they actually put that amount in the burgers!! This is especially a concern with a high fat sauce like aioli).

The zucchini chips sound like a good alternative to potato, but with the batter they put on the zucchini, they are actually almost as high in kilojoules as their potato counterparts and don't even taste as good (waaaay to salty, and kind of slimy tasting if the batter falls off).

In conclusion, even though restaurant bun-free burgers are better than I expected, the ones I made at home were just as good. I have mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup etc at home that need to be used up too!

Bread free hamburger

I wanted to make a low carb version of one of my favourite meals: The hamburger. This is one of my attempts, accompanied by oven baked potatoes (which I unfortunately left in the oven for too long without oil, which meant overly dry though slightly crispy potatoes and a ruined baking pan). The egg and burger pattie were both cooked in the microwave. You could say I was trying to make this low in fat, but really my aim was to reduce the calories by as much as possible (since fat as the highest density of calories).

This is a high fat version I created for my dad and brother while I stayed in Bateman's Bay. The bacon is streaky and has been fried to a crisp on the stove, as has the egg and pattie. The whole thing is covered in wholesome seedy mustard.

Somehow everything tastes better when fried in cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. Maybe I should compromise and have this instead of wasting my time with eating low fat things 3/4 of the time and chocolate 1/4 of time.

Burger rice stack

After perusing many recipes of "stacks," I wished to create my own version that was low fat and did not involve bread. This resulted. The only problem that resulted was that it crumbled apart the moment I commenced eating it...

For those of you who wanted to know how I moulded the rice: I simply pressed the rice that was cooked according to instructions into a small bowl. After a few minutes (or seconds), I upended the bowl onto the plate like you would with a freshly baked cake.