Easy Gluten-Free Meal Ideas

It can be challenging to create safe meals for those on a gluten-free diet, especially for those new to this lifestyle. Many gluten-free cookbooks focus on simulating traditional wheat-based foods and require special ingredients such as rice flour or potato starch flour. Here are some ideas that use ingredients available at your favorite grocer.

Safe Shopping
Someone who is allergic to wheat gluten is called a celiac (cee-lee-ack). Celiacs must avoid all products made with wheat flour. Gluten is in many commercial products. When grocery shopping for a celiac, avoid the following ingredients, which contain gluten:

· Wheat gluten, wheat germ, wheat flour
· Malt
· Barley
· Bran
· Rye
· Modified food starch

During your shopping trips, you will have to check the ingredients labels every time to make sure the product is safe. Companies change their recipes all the time; a product that was gluten-free six months ago may now contain gluten.

A Basic Meal
A meat-starch-vegetable meal is a basic combination that most of the time is already gluten-free. Meat and vegetables are naturally gluten-free. For starches, you’ll need to stick to corn, potatoes, and rice. Different sauces will help liven up these meals. Barbeque sauce is versatile, but most of the bottled varieties contain modified food starch. Maull’s original and Famous Dave’s Rich & Sassy are the two kinds we use. Teriyaki sauce can also be tricky; it contains soy sauce, which usually contains wheat. We’ve never had any problems with La Choy Teriyaki Sauce. Check out the condiments aisle and see what’s available.