This is unusual way Queen Elizabeth eats her royal hamburgers

Not one for dining on "convenient meals", the Queen is partial to a burger, reveals her former chef of 15 years. But she doesn't eat them like the rest of us do.

Darren McGrady worked in the royal kitchen preparing food for the Queen, Princess Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry and he says while she avoided "fast food" as a rule, she couldn't go past a hamburger patty, but she always ate it sans bun.

According to The Sun, McGrady shared: "It always tickled me at Balmoral; we would make our own burgers. They would shoot deer, and we would do venison burgers.

"There'd be gorgeous cranberry … stuffed into them, but we never set buns out."

That's as far as Her Majesty's taste for takeaway style fare goes. McGrady says she deplores pizza - so much so that in his 15-year tenure at the Palace, not a single slice was served.

Photo / Getty Images

Instead, classic French cuisine dominated the royal dining table. And for dessert the former chef has previously revealed the Queen was a big fan of "chocolate biscuit cake".

Speaking to baking website Recipes Plus, he said: "Now the chocolate biscuit cake is the only cake that goes back again and again and again every day until it's all gone.

"She'll take a small slice every day until eventually there is only one tiny piece, but you have to send that up. She wants to finish the whole of that cake."

It has also previously been reported that the monarch can't go past a slice of Dundee cake - a traditional Scottish fruit cake.

According to The Telegraph: "Even if she's on a flight at tea time, out will come a cuppa, a Dundee cake and some scones and clotted cream."

While the aforementioned bunless patty is enjoyed by the Queen, it's not known to be her favourite meal - that's a secret she'll never share, says former royal correspondent Gordon Rayner.

After covering more than 20 royal tours, The Sun reports that Rayner was told by a staff member "If she said she had a favourite meal she would never get served anything else."

This article was first published by the NZ Herald and is republished here with permission.