gluten and dairy free = tasteless

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Aibu in expecting the above to taste as nice as ordinary food bearing in mind its often more expensive.Is anyone up to a name and shame/praise thread for food that actually tastes good?

You need to shop around to find products that naturally have no gluten in them as a lot of off the shelf stuff with gluten removed will have a very different texture.
Making bread and cakes frm scratch is the way to go, most cakes I make now for parties are gluten, dairy and soya free and no one on a normal diet has ever said anything other than 'can I have another slice?'

Don't buy them then. I think youre looking for something that just doesn't exist.

I have an excellent repertoire of delicious GF & DF foods - by necessity of having 2 kids that NEED it

steep learning curve, yes, lots of trial and error, can't rely on bog standard recipes without adapting them.

Totally agree that lot of shop bought is vile though - but then I would say the same about a £1 lasagne or shepherds pie, compared to home made too! and lots of people are happy to eat those.

Mrs Crimble's macaroons are pretty nice, as are the Bakewell slices...
The chocolate brownies are yummy too but they're not dairy free.

I like the macaroons too Thumb witch and they seem to be everywhere.I will try the Bakewells.Good point Phantom.However a lot of gluten free products are expensive and tasteless(and some are positively unpleasant).£1 pies are very cheap and you wouldn,t expect a great tasting product.On the bottom - I just want a list of products/recipes that are tasty and reliable.Its interesting how various families chose to eat with intolerances.You are right in saying just don't buy them though.

There is a fantastic dairy free food list on Mnet under Child thread.
You have to search for it but its there and mnetters put a lot of effort into compiling it. I found it by accident and it was life changing for my DGD as her mum was really struggling. Hope that is helpful.

I do a lot of dairy free cooking. I prefer to use proper dairy free recipes rather than adaptations.

I have normal soba noodles which are made from buckwheat (which naturally doesn't contain gluten).Chinese supermarkets are good stockists of rice and mung bean noodlesand things like coconut milk(good substitute for cream) incidentally

That price is for 6 packets so not too bad. I live in the sticks so it's easier to get Amazon to deliver them (the warehouse is about 5 miles away). I will look for cheaper ones, but these are so good I have them on monthly delivery.

Is it really?.I thought it was the price for 1 packet!.
I pay nearly £3 for one( I also live in the sticks).I've never thought of shopping for food on Amazon.Thank you,that's a really useful thing to know.

I understand what you are saying. They really are extortionately priced. I bake pretty much everything from scratch for my dh, we just can't afford the prepackaged stuff.
we might just have been lucky with what we have tried, and we also aren't dairy free.

Delia has a recipe for a Black Forest Gateau roll that is gluten free (uses fresh cream though, so you might want to source a non dairy alternative)

She boils up black cherry jam and sieves it and uses it to stick the roll together, and to stick chocolate curls to the top of it. It is yum.

There's not a lot of chocolate in it so a not-v-nice substitute wouldn't ruin it.

I've been vegan (no animal products) for 12 years and I guarantee if it isn't tasty, I don't eat it! I hate tasteless food.

I am not wheat-free, but I try to avoid starchy carbs as my work requires me to stay slim, and I still manage it. Also my best friend is gluten intolerant and I often make him bread type products without gluten. A gluten-free loaf can be expensive but a bag of rice flour from which I have made several, only cost me £1.
I bake really nice cakes as well. Do some googling and you'll find some great ideas. You can PM me if you like, I am a pretty good cook -just tell me what sort of things you like to cook/eat xx

A child's mum from DS's class very kindly made all of the kids dairy and gluten free biscuits at the end of term.
DS was making a bit of a fuss when he was eating it and i thought he was just being a pain. He made me try it.... i'm not at all fussy about food, but this was honestly the most disgusting thing i've every put in my mouth! I have no idea if the recipe had gone wrong or if it was off or just how it was supposed to taste.

I felt so sorry for the poor mum. I hope none of the kids said anything about them

So my experience of dairy/gluten free isn't good at all. However, if you're looking for gluten free deliciousness.... these are incredible and sooo easy!

www.marthastewart.com/318109/flourless-peanut-chocolate-cookies

for info - Stork marg in blocks is dairy free and great for cakes (but not the tubs)

Tbh if you only eat shit food from a packet no wonder it tastes vile.

Try cracking open a recipe book and some vegetables.

Have a look at some Paleo blogs for recipes - instead of relying on 'fake' foods they are all about using natural ingredients, but certainly not tasteless. Try:

nomnompaleo.com/recipeindex
www.theclothesmakethegirl.com/category/recipes/

Where have I said I only eat food in packets Cairngorms?I had actually forgotten I'd posted in Aibu.Thank you for reminding me.On the bottom that sound lovely.I can eat dark chocolate so maybe that would work.I don't know where to source a whipped cream substitute though.I've found soya cream but only as a single cream substitute.
Thank you Cooke the cookies sound lovely.Trinitybleu thats useful to know.Does anyone know whether Pure is OK to cook with?Festered I might well pm you if I get stuck.We tend to eat a lot of Asian food,fish and tomato based sauces.

I was misdiagnosed as a baby so for about ten years my whole family were gluten free, as Mum refused to cook two meals (the others did have bread, to be fair). It wasn't a problem for us as we've never really done ready meals, and also back then there were no "Free From" items -you could get a prescription for bread/biscuits (varying degrees of niceness) and that was about it.

Some good suggestions re eating other types of food (Asian etc) but to be honest we always ate "English" food (by which I mean a whole amalgam of foods including curries, Italian dishes etc!) with the carbs being potatoes or rice. For cakes we used cornflour (maize) and no one noticed the difference - I certainly didn't when I came off the diet.

I'm not clear if you are talking about ready meals or GF pasta/bread - I know there have been improvements in the taste of the basic stuff from when I was a child, thought I'm not sure how far these have gone.

Products do seem to be very expensive - I don't know if the cost of production justifies that or if the producers think they have a captive customer base and so pad the profits. If the latter, definitely worth complaining!

I haven't been very useful on the dairy free front (if at all - sorry, just writing from childhood memories) but there are lots of substitutes which work very well. By dairy do you mean all dairy, or specifically cow products?

Not sure if that is much help I'm afraid, but definitely possible to have delicious food on this diet.

I have a dairy free friend and a gluten free friend. Cooking for them is easy, except puddings. Puddings I find harder.

But main courses - rice, potatoes, polenta, lentils, beans are all good. Fish and meat except not shop bought burgers or sausages. Veg if GF! So basically easy.

I don't know where to source a whipped cream substitute though.I've found soya cream but only as a single cream substitute

Can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight. Carefully open it, there will be a solidified bit at the top. Scoop that out and whip with a bit of icing sugar. Yum.

Nigella's Clementine cake is amazing, really moist and tasty: www.nigella.com/recipes/view/clementine-cake-2559 I use any old little oranges and it still tastes great.

These chocolate cakes are really nice too: www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2104322/Sacher-cupcakes.html

Someone at work is vegan and they swear by some cake company that sell through the Wholefoods chain, can't remember what it's called though, something something bakery. But it's expensive.

I can second the recommendation for the Cake Angels book above. The brownies are absolutely amazing.

Pure is ok but Vitalite is also dairy free and better! OH did an experiment with them all for DD's birthday cakes and Stork always came up best for the cake and buttercream.

Don't know of a whipped cream substitute, but I'd think a custard Alpro dessert spread on the roulade would be yummy!

I had a visitor who assured me that gluten and milk-free bread and cakes were delicious so I made lots. I can only suppose she was so used to them that she'd forgotten what proper ones tasted like. They were all vile.