GFCF recipes.

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Hi All-

I have volunteered to prepare a gluten free cassein free meal for a family at church. We do not follow this diet, so I was wondering if any of you have any simple meal ideas-----Any posts will be greatly appreciated.

Well I dont have any ideas....aside from rice noodles..but my Mom has a friend who has Celiac and she says gluten is hidden in a lot of things you wouldnt think of, like pre packaged pepper.

You can do a stir-fry with rice.

If they eat meat, choose any meat with veggies. For flavoring you can use Braggs Liquid Aminos, which is gluten-free soy sauce.

If they are vegetarian you can use tofu.

Don't use regular soy sauce, that isn't gluten-free.

You could cook up a porridge with quinoa or millet.

There are lots of GF/CF recipes on the net as well. Stir-fry is the easiest thing to cook so I mentioned that.

If you use basic unprocessed foods it's a lot easier to do. There is gluten in just about everything that is processed unless it says gluten free. Vinegar is usually manufactured with wheat. Lots of the things on labels that you wouldn't think have gluten do, like "modified food starch." If you're also trying to cook without cassein then the list shrinks even further as the few things that don't have gluten have some kind of lactate, casein, caseinate, whey (which usually has residual casein in it but can be purchased with out it). Soy sauce is made with wheat, but gluten free soy sauce is available sometimes. Braggs amino acids are a good substitute if they can have soy. Most spice mixes have some kind of food starch to keep them from caking that has gluten in it.

One of my kids favorite meals is fried rice. Make the rice ahead of time and let it cool off. Use real rice not Uncle Bens which is processed in a weird way and doesn't work for asian dishes. I make some scrambled eggs and add some gf soy sauce or braggs to them along with salt and pepper. I put them aside in a large bowl then fry up some fresh ginger and garlic to which I add the meat chopped into small pieces. Any meat will do, but avoid hams and processed ones as they generally have nitrates, gluten and casein added in some form. As that's frying I chop up whatever veggies I'm using. Frozen mixed veggies or stir fry veggies are a good choice. Onion can be good if they eat them. Once the meat is cooked I start adding the rice and frying it up with a little more soy sauce and salt. I also add some red pepper, not powdered...actually that's even better if you fry it up in oil but that will make you cough. As that cooks I put it into the big bowl with the eggs and mix it all up. I keep taking out what's cooked and adding the rice in until it's all cooked. I mix it in the bowl and maybe even move some of it back to the pan for a little more frying.

I make this in massive quantities because my kids love it and will eat the left overs.

Obviously it will depend on how many you are cooking for, and how much money you have, but apart from that the choices are almost endless!

The most important thing is to avoid packaged/pre-processed foods, [ ... as everybody else is saying ... :lol ... just cross-posted with another person saying this ... ] , as gluten and casein tend to be everywhere in those, ( including soy sauce as others have said; a good gluten-free soy sauce is "tamari" ), eg. hydrolysed vegetable protein is gluten for instance and crops up a lot; gluten is also routinely used as the "base" for many spice and flavourings, eg. in crisps/corn chips etc ( and often not mentioned in the ingredients ).

If you want to serve a fairly traditional protein, carbohydrate and veg/salad meal use rice, or corn, or potatoes, with any kind of meat, or fish, or egg, or beans/lentils or nuts, ( Avoid pre-marinaded or grill-ready meats and fish because they often have gluten in the seasoning ), and any kind of fresh, frozen, or tinned vegetables, ( again watch out for additives, esp. hydrolysed veg protein, which is gluten, and modified starch which will be contaminated with gluten, unless it specifically says it is corn starch ).

To thicken sauces use corn or rice flour, or that seaweed stuff, forgotten what it's called, and use olive oil or duck fat or coconut or seed oils for fats rather than butter.

eg.

Brown/half brown rice served with red kidney beans cooked slowly in a tomato and garlic and olive oil and herb sauce until lovely and soft.

Egg fried rice with bits of meat, fish, vegetables.

Tuna mayonnaise with baked potatoes and salad.

Crisp taco corn shells with ground beef and kidney beans cooked in oil and spices with garnish of finely chopped green salad and tomato, salsa, and avocado mush/guacomala ( but no grated cheese or sour cream; use spiced/salted toasted sesame seeds and a cream made of tofu instead if you want to replace those things a bit ).

Duck or lamb or pork or steak with finely sliced courgettes ( "squash" in the USA? ) cooked fast/briefly in a herby garlicky tomato sauce, and rice if you wish.

Smoked salmon with scrambled egg and chives/dill or parsley. Salmon steaks/filets with broccoli and potatoes or rice.

Roast chicken with spicy red lentil sauce and rice

Duck breast ( "magret" ) with chestnut puree ( boil chestnuts till very soft in apple juice, then mash with a bit of rendered duck fat and/or olive oil, salt and pepper and a tad of honey to taste ) and a green salad.

... ... ... fish curry; ham and pea soup; moroccan tajines, ( meats gently stewed with dried fruit, or carrot and onions, and tomato, lemon, etc ) served on rice rather than couscous; big hot-pots of rich green cabbage, ham/bacon, ( beware bacon cured with wheat dextrose ), potato, carrot, swede, olive oil, etc; smoked dry ham and melon pieces; prawns with garlicky or lemony mayonnaise ( check the mayo ingredients or make your own ); mussels and chips/french fries and mayo; ... steak and salad ... huge summer salads like egg and potato and gherkin and herbs in a mayo/tofu/sesame seed puree dressing ...

There's too much choice, so many wonderful meals with no gluten or casein in ... I could go on for ever making suggestions.

Good luck with the cooking ... and bon appetit!

.

i once made a gluten free chocolate banana cake for my birthday party ( i dont usually follow gluten free but one of my guests had celiac disease)

it came out delicious!! !! !! !! better than any cake ive ever had!! !! !

Thanks everyone for taking the time to post! Sounds yummy!

Be careful with the mayonaise as vinegar is a normal component in it and is commonly made with wheat. Tamari as well can be made with gluten containing products. If it says gluten free then it is, if it doesn't and it has vinegar or that veg. protein stuff, then it probably has gluten. That may not apply outside of the USA where food is often made with higher quality ingredients (and comes with relatively higher price tags).

In Canada, you have to buy stuff in the Health Food Section where the GFCF stuff is or go to a Health Food Store and it is quite expensive.

I'd def. go with a rice dish like a pilaf or biryani or something. We don't follow the diet either, but I didn't know that about pepper! How odd!

You can cook Rock Cornish hens stuffed with chopped apples. Follow any basic recipe for cooking Rock Cornish hens filled with stuffing. The only difference is that instead of absorbing moisture, like traditional bread stuffing, apples will release moisture and steam the inside of the birds. Don't worry about using apples; their sweet taste actually matches the roasted birds pretty well. For a browned rotisserie look and extra flavor, rub the outside of the birds with olive oil.

Just be careful what the hens have been soaked in. In the US they often have lactose containing preservative solution in frozen meat, and sometimes even gluten containing staraches. Fresh meat is usually safe but I rarely see fresh hens.

A nice pot roast or stew would work too. Meat, veggies, appropriate seasoning (bay leaf, simple herbs/no mixes, salt, pepper...) I love parsnips, turnips, potatoes, carrots, cellery etc in my stews. Tapioca makes a good thickener, but so would potato starch or potatoes that are good for mushing, tomatoes and so on. I think that seaweed stuff is Agare or something. It's on the tip of my tounge.