Ask Your Gluten-Free Questions!
Dec 23 2009

What Flour Should We Use For Fried Foods?

The person who sent this question in used plain rice flour to fry something and apparently it didn’t work out too well. The batter kind of dissolved and fell apart. This is a common problem when using gluten-free flours in hot oil.

Gluten-free flour blends that contain both cornstarch and tapioca starch seems to hold up well for fried foods. The Domata Living Flour works well for several things like chicken fingers and fried fish. For Thanksgiving this year we used Jules Gluten Free Flour for fried onions and they were the best we’ve ever made with any type of flour.

The Jules flour blend works well in most every recipe we’ve tried it in so far. From quick breads to battered and fried items to pizza crust. It’s the only flour that performed like wheat flour for fried foods. None of the batter came off in the pan, which is a problem with every other gluten-free flour blend we’ve used.

Many people like making their own flours but some of us don’t care to measure all those flours and then store the left over bags. If you’re cooking for a household you can save quite a bit of money by buying different flours and mixing your own blend. If you’re cooking for one or two people, you’ll likely end up throwing flour out when it goes rancid before you get around to using it all.

Carol Fenster’s website, Savory Palate, has several gluten-free flour blend recipes. Anyone looking to mix their own flours up will do well to start with Carol’s great recipes for various flour blends. Carol’s #2 or #3 blend recipes would probably work best for fried foods.

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Dec 22 2009

How Can I Determine What is Gluten-free at a Buffet Holiday Dinner?

It would be great if there was an easy answer for this common question. Unfortunately, there is not only not an easy answer, there is really not a very good one either. In the almost four years that I’ve been gluten-free, the only buffet meals I’ve been able to enjoy much were gluten-free events. The exceptions were parties where I spoke to someone from the catering company to determine what was gluten-free beforehand.

Holiday dinners or potluck events in the South tend to be heavy on casseroles made with Campbell’s soup. Presently, Campbell’s does not consider any of the soups to be gluten-free, even though in the past they listed five of them as safe for people who can’t tolerate gluten. Most  desserts at buffet dinners or potlucks also tend to contain gluten, as would be the case in most areas.

At a buffet meal where you are the only gluten-free guests and no one knows about your dietary needs, you’ll be lucky to find safe meat and possibly some potatoes or rice. Don’t assume these things are safe but at least ask whoever brought them if they can tell you exactly what is in the dish. Keep in mind that in the case of mashed potatoes, the cook using butter from a contaminated container is a concern. When asking about rice, remember to ask if chicken (or another) stock was used to cook the rice. Stocks can contain gluten. Recently, College Inn recalled some stocks that had undeclared wheat in them.

Possible safe snacking options might include fresh veggies – just remember to ask about any dip being served with them. Also, plain fruit is OK but a yogurt fruit dip could contain gluten. You might assume a bowl of nuts would be safe, but only if you can verify the gluten-free status by checking the package. Don’t ask why some flavored nuts contain gluten as that is a question for the companies that make them that way. All pure unadulterated nuts are gluten-free.

Before going to a social event where there might not be much for you to eat, consider eating something beforehand. Additionally, you can pack your own emergency food kit. Easy items to take are small packs of nuts (Ingles and Trader Joe’s sell gluten-free versions of these), energy bars, candy, snack size cheeses and small bags of chips. As always, check all emergency food kit products for their gluten-free status before purchasing.

If you take a gluten-free dish to share, consider putting some of it in a separate container for yourself before others get the change to slip in a gluten serving utensil by mistake. Earlier this year, I attended a potluck where the only things I could eat were the items I brought and the chili the hosts made gluten-free specifically for me. There were about 50 people at the party and they all brought food or wine. The best part for me regarding the food, was that no one knew the cake I brought (thanks to Mark Fitchpatrick!) was gluten-free. The guests just scarfed it down and after they raved about it I quietly explained it was gluten-free. I would not want others to overhear me and make a point of avoiding the cake like the plague. Almost every guest I told about the cake looked at me like I had three heads. “That cake was gluten-free?” someone said, pointing to the scalded milk cake. They thought I was talking about something other than what they’d just devoured.

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Dec 21 2009

How Do We Learn More About Offering a Gluten-free Menu?

These days many restaurants are lining up to offer a gluten-free menu, but some of them don’t go about it the right way. The first thing I suggest a restaurant do is get in touch with a trusted gluten-free organization that certifies gluten-free menus and offers training for proper gluten-free service. The Gluten Intolerance Group of North America, or GIG for short, is such an organization. GIG runs a restaurant certification program called GFRAP, which stands for Gluten Free Restaurant Awareness Program.

Excerpt from GIG’s website:

The Gluten-Free Restaurant Awareness Program (GFRAP) facilitates the relationship between individuals with celiac disease and individually owned and operated restaurants that understand their dietary needs. Participating restaurants will be able to prepare GF meals in addition to their regular meals.

What many people trying to get started in the gluten-free market don’t understand is that knowing what menu items are gluten-free is just a small part of the equation when it comes to gluten-free restaurant service. Actually getting the meal to the table gluten-free is a whole different challenge, in addition to knowing exactly what ingredients in dishes are safe for people with gluten intolerance to consume. Though many people consider the ingredients and the safe food preparation to be the only things to figure out, how to treat the customers once you get them in the door is yet a whole other skill set.

By the time someone knows they have to follow the gluten-free diet, they are likely to have been to a ton of different doctors and are shocked to find out that many of those doctors don’t know much about celiac disease. If someone’s doctor can’t help them beyond giving them a diagnosis for celiac, how is someone at a restaurant supposed to know exactly how to prepare and serve safe gluten-free meals? Many people with celiac don’t think there is such a thing as safe gluten-free dining even though there absolutely is. It just takes a lot of hard work to learn how to do it. Some people don’t have the time for that, or don’t think it’s worth the effort so they just avoid eating out as much as possible.

Once a restaurant has completed the GFRAP requirements, they might consider hiring a gluten-free consultant in their area to help them get -  and most importantly keep - a gluten-free customer base. Since some restaurants with gluten-free menus don’t actually implement them correctly, just having the menu doesn’t guarantee success with the gluten-free community in your area. One restaurant in our area declared they had gluten-free pizza when really they only had a gluten-free crust. The manager of the place had no idea that gluten could be in sauce, pizza toppings or anything else. The restaurant has since recitified the situation, according to the manager.  

Doing a Google search should help you figure out if there is a gluten-free consultant in your area. If you find one, it’s still best to work with GIG first, to get the extensive training that their program offers, and the organization’s very important seal of approval. The latter goes a long way to create the trust you need your gluten-free customers to place in your establishment.

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Dec 18 2009

Where Can I Purchase Betty Crocker Gluten-free Mixes?

If you have not found these mixes in your area yet, they can be purchased at Amazon.com, but only by the case.  Just this week, glutenfree.com announced that they will be offering these mixes so that everyone can order them online, if they can’t find them in their local stores. The Betty Crocker gluten-free mixes hit the scene in the summer of 2009 in most major U.S. cities. Months later, we’re still hearing complaints that some people still can’t find the mixes in their local stores.

In most major cities, these mixes are sold at Wal-Mart, some Super Target stores and local grocery stores. In the Southeast those stores include Ingles, Kroger and Publix. There are four mixes total – chocolate chip cookie, vanilla cake, chocolate cake and brownies. The mixes are really easy to use and quite tasty. For a list of recipes to use with these mixes, check out the General Mills gluten-free recipe page.

At our house, we like to make pan bars with the cookie mix. The cake mixes are both quite good and the vanilla cake mix makes the perfect pineapple upside-down cake. We add extra butter when making the brownies but adding a little unsweetened applesauce also makes them a little more moist. The more moist the brownies are, the longer the shelf life seems to be.

To see the list of all General Mills gluten-free products, check out their new website, Live Gluten Freely, which is dedicated to their gluten-free products and recipes. This is the first website of its type, among mainstream food companies. General Mills owns the following product lines, which all offer some gluten-free items.

  • BETTY CROCKER® DESSERT MIXES
  • BETTY CROCKER® FRUIT FLAVORED SNACKS
  • CHEX® CEREAL
  • LÄRABAR®
  • PROGRESSO® SOUP
  • YOPLAIT® YOGURT

Without question, General Mills is the forerunner of the big 5 food companies in the U.S., when it comes to catering to the gluten-free market. While some companies are dragging their feet when it comes to labeling their products that are in fact, gluten-free – General Mills is working diligently to find ways to make the most of the opportunity to cater to the exploding gluten-free market. Due to the overwhelming positive consumer response to the new Betty Crocker mixes, one can only wonder what  General Mills is working on for us next!

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Dec 17 2009

Are All Nuts Gluten-free?

Nuts in their pure form are gluten-free. Peanuts, almonds, pecans, macadamia nuts, walnuts, pine nuts, pistachios, cashews, Brazil nuts and all other natural nuts are gluten-free. Sesame seeds and sunflower seeds are also gluten-free. The thing you have to watch out for with nuts is  packaged nuts that have flavors added. Many of those are gluten-free but several brands make nuts with wheat added into the seasonings that have been added to the nuts.

Blue Diamond and Planters both make many flavored nuts that are gluten-free. Read the label to determine the gluten-free status of any nuts. Typically, any nuts that contain gluten do so in the form of wheat, not barley or rye. Nuts are one food category that has fairly easy to read labels, making it simple to determine the gluten-free status of the products. Candied nuts are also an area of concern when it comes to gluten. Some brands are gluten-free and others are not. Naturally Fresh Salad Toppings nut products are all gluten-free, according to the Atlanta based manufacturer.

Candied nuts in restaurants contain gluten more often than not. For whatever reason, the Chefs at many places add flour to the coating mixture for candied or spiced nuts. Often times I’ve ordered salads that come with candied nuts, only to be advised that I can’t have the nuts due to them containing gluten. It’s extremely easy to make both candied and spiced nuts without any flour whatsoever – gluten or otherwise. Here are a few tasty recipes from Recipe Zaar, in case you want to make some for the holidays.

Nuts are something you have to read the labels of, just like every other item that is not labeled gluten-free. The main thing to remember is that plain, unadulterated nuts are gluten-free and all others need to be checked for their gluten-free status. Any time I’m ordering a dish with nuts when dining out, I double check with the  server, asking them to double check with the Chef that the nuts are indeed safe for me to have. For some reason, nuts are one of those things that are often overlooked when dining out, in regards to gluten. When looking for safe foods to enjoy at holiday parties, remember not to assume the nuts on the table are gluten-free.

Have a question about the gluten-free diet that we haven’t covered yet?  You can now submit your questions here! (Note: All medical questions should be directed to your physician)

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