Vegetables

For each one: how to use it, the best version, how to prepare it, what it does, and where it goes wrong.

Bean sprouts

Cheap, raw and mostly water. The only thing to think about is hygiene.

How to use it: Raw over a salad, or stirred into a hot dish at the last moment. Blanch them if you are unsure where they came from.

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Three days old and many times stronger than the grown vegetable. The only vegetable you grow on your own worktop.

How to use it: Raw, a handful, through a salad or over a plate that is already finished. They belong with the meal, not in the pan.

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The vegetable where preparation makes the biggest difference. Raw, you get less than half of it.

How to use it: With a meal that has fat in it, because the pigment only dissolves in fat. Cooked as a vegetable, or grated through a salad with a dressing.

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One of the vegetables highest in nitrate, and the base under nearly every soup that tastes of anything.

How to use it: Raw as a stick, or as the base of a soup or stew with onion and carrot. The leaves are not waste and carry the most flavour.

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Almost nothing but water and fibre. That is not a criticism: it is exactly why it fills a plate without filling up your day.

How to use it: Grilled, roasted, through a soup, or raw in thin ribbons through a salad. It takes on the taste of whatever you put with it.

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Water you chew. Hydration is part of this page, and this is the cheapest form of it.

How to use it: Raw, with anything. In water with mint, through a salad, as a slice against a plate that is too hot.

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The legume you eat as a vegetable. Fibre and volume, and one of the few vegetables that barely suffers from being frozen.

How to use it: With a hot meal, or cold through a salad with a dressing. Straight from the freezer is fine.

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One of the leafy greens richest in nitrate, and nitrate is what opens your blood vessels.

How to use it: Raw, over the plate after cooking. Through a salad, over pasta, over a pizza as it leaves the oven.

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The lettuce with a firm heart and more taste than a butterhead. A bowl of leaves you build a meal around.

How to use it: Raw as the base of a salad, or the hearts halved over the grill. The stiff rib holds a dressing where soft lettuce collapses.

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