A Well Stocked Pantry is a Celiac’s Best Friend
Posted by Ajasgaren in GF Product Review, GF Recipes, Guest WritersJan 30th, 2009 | 6 responses
When I was diagnosed about 4 years ago, the food choices weren’t very good. Most of the stuff was really expensive and tasted like either cardboard or packing peanuts. Thanks to government food labeling and much more awareness there’s a lot more selection now, but I still like to do my own cooking, that way you know what’s in there!!! (Story time: I was lied to by a waitress at PF Chang’s who HAS a GF menu and got REALLY sick. Trust no one, kids!!)
So to keep all of you from getting sabotaged by a waitress at PF Chang’s, here are my favorite things to keep in the kitchen:
My 3-cup Hello Kitty Rice cooker!! You don’t need anything fancy, or Hello Kitty, but it’s fun, easy, and you just throw the rice and water in there and forget about it. You can even put it in when you leave in the morning, set the timer and it’s ready when you come home!
At least 3 kinds of rice; white jasmine or sushi, brown basmati, and brown or wild sweet, just for variety, flavor etc. It’s a great base grain and stretches out meals. Brown rice is really tasty, too, so that helps.
Rice pasta. Enough said. The ones with added rice bran in the ingredients, like Tinkyada taste most like real pasta. Trader Joe’s is great, too. Can’t beat the price. Be careful with sauce ingredients, though! Read those labels!!
Canned beans, black, red, garbanzo, makes for a really easy meal. Throw some white beans on pasta with canned tomatoes, instant protein!
Goya Adobo Light seasoning. You can use it on everything, and it’s gluten free!! Still haven’t found a good sub for soy sauce, though.
The Cuisinart Convection Bread Maker actually has a Gluten Free bread setting. The only one out there with one. I’ve had it for about 3 years now, and it’s still going strong. Saved a lot of money with that machine!
Flour…lots of flour…I try and buy it at Asian markets like H-mart, it’s a lot cheaper than the health food stores. Usually I try and keep white and brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch and sweet rice flour in the house at all times. I’ll have garbanzo or something else if I have a recipe that calls for it, like that yummy brownie from BabyCakes NYC, but I can usually get by with those 5, alone or in some mixture.
I hope this helps people out a bit.
Cheers!
Lindsay
6 Responses to “A Well Stocked Pantry is a Celiac’s Best Friend”
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Thanks again Lindsay! A appreciate the kitchen/cooking topic… I don’t know anything in that area.
good base,
i use lachoy soy sauce and its alright, doesnt have the bite of some other ones but im ok with it
for flour, theres a book “1000 gluten free recipes” by fenster, and there is a good GF flour mix that is based off of sorghum and it comes out well, just have to find the sorghum (1.5 c sorghum, 1.5 c potato or corn starch, 1 cup tapioca flour). im not sure how it works if you just substitute it in (probably wouldnt work exactly right) but in the recipes in the book it works wonderfuly.
also “beth’s all purpose flour” from gluten free pantry works great as a direct substitution but its a little expensive (my moms great MM cookies never came out well with the other mixes we try and they came out taste wise perfect with this and the texture was fine, just flattened out more when cooking and got crumbly in a few days but o well)
-matt
Matt,
I’m the same way, I just use regular, whole bean soy sauce, not worrying about the wheat, since I use it in such small amounts. Pay a fortune for Kikkoman Organic. So tasty!!
The Pamela’s AP Mix you can buy both online and in the store is really good. I usually use Bette Hagman’s basic mix:
6 cups white rice flour
2 cups potato starch
1 cup tapioca starch
It tastes just like white AP flour and works 1-1 in regular recipes with a little guar gum.
I haven’t worked too much with sorghum flour, but have heard it’s great!
Thanks for the tips! I’ll check out that book, too!
-Lindsay
San-J Wheat Free Tamari is gluten-free and delicious. It comes in regular and reduced-sodium versions. It’s worth finding. If your grocery store doesn’t carry it, ask them to.
Yeah, La Choy is gluten-free and cheap but I won’t use it in recipes where the flavor comes through… the flavor is terrible. It is widely available though. Any health food store (Esp. Whole Foods) should carry San-J, which costs more but is much better. Make sure you get their wheat-free variety. I prefer the low-sodium as tamari is quite salty. You can also use Bragg’s liquid aminos although they give a very healthy-hippie flavor to the dish. Also, for going out for sushi, Kari Out (www.kariout.com) has individual packets of wheat and gluten-free soy sauce.
Hope this helps.
-Sea
Soy sauce: try Tamari Japanese soy sauce.
Another staple: Marigold Swiss Bouillon – vegetarian and gluten free. I am not sure if you can get in in the USA ( I live in England)