Gluten-Free Cooking - a thread for coeliacs and gluten-intolerants. Come and share your tips please!

[redridingwolf]

On another thread, people started sharing gluten-free cooking tips, so this is now a home for all gluten-free tips.

My 4yo DS1 has just been diagnosed coeliac, so I am about to get to grips with all this and will be very grateful for all tips :)

Breakfast treat: go American. Hash browns are easy to make and so are gluten free pancakes with gf sausages and bacon and maple syrup. And ok. Never met children who don't eat some of that. There used to be demands from sleepover mates which is lol if you knew my cooking.

For special teas chocolate eclairs using gf flour or pavlova and of course meringues. Anything that doesnt need to rise much is good eg welshcakes which have the other advantage that the dc can help make them and that's fun.

Genius makes decent toast.

all sounds good, love the sound of that ground almond choc cake. Will have a go at meringues, spendthrift - we have an Aga which is supposed to be great for making them, so I will have a try. Is it possible to make chocolate meringues (that is the way to get DS1 to eat things, put choc in them!)

Home made GF granola is nice to have in the store cupboard in a plastic box because most breakfast cereals are of course totally inappropriate for coeliacs.

I dont have a fixed mixture but something like the follwing works. I tend to use it as a topping for fruit such as sliced banana with lactofree milk (frozen berries from Sainsbury melted and a bit more maple syrup or honey on top are nice too). If you can tolerate oats or get proper GF oats you can use them to bulk this mix out and eat as a cereal on its own.

100g desicated coconut
100 flaked almond
100g sunflower seeds
100g of pumpkin seeds
50g of linseed (for roughage)

I put the mix in a bowl and mix with 25ml of olive oil (not extra virgin) and about 100ml of honey or maple syrup so the mixture forms clumps. Lay out on tray in a thin layer and toast for 10 minutes in the oven at 150 C or Gas mark 2, then take out stir/turn the mix over and put back inoven for another 5 - 10 mins. Allow to cool and box in an airtight plastic container.

Does anyone have any tips about cleaning kitchen stuff in preparation for GF diet? I have read that it is very hard to remove all traces of gluten from things. But I don't really want to buy a complete new set of saucepans etc. - some of them are pretty new and quite expensive. What did you do?

I just try and make sure everything's clean! Sorry - not very helpful but we've got a teeny tiny kitchen so definitely no room to have separate things. Everything gets washed and surfaces wiped down probably more than if I wasn't coeliac, but that's it really.

One of the best things I bought a while back was toasting bags - we've only got 1 toaster so once I discovered these life got much easier - you just wash the bags out each time. I'm also really careful to keep the grill washed and/or put foil on it if I'm grilling something of mine as it's also used for fishfingers and other gluten-y things!

We have different coloured trays for GF stuff and chopping boards. Also separate toaster (just a cheap one for GF stuff) and everything goes in dishwasher - my DS reacts really quickly and badly as yet l haven't glutened him by using old pans/trays !

That sounds good, thank you. We are probably going to go GF as a family, so I will just do a deep clean of the kitchen and get rid of gluten-y stuff, and then we should be okay for day-to-day.

notapizza - how does your DS react when glutened? I am not entirely sure how you know if they've had gluten by accident.

My DS has diahorrea (sp) running down his legs 2 hours after any gluten and lasts for a few days, tummy cramps and bloated. Its got worse the longer hes been off gluten

RedRidingWolf - my DS was diagnosed as coeliac at about the same age as yours. He's now 7 and I can really relate to your dual problem of what he can eat and what he will eat. For example he hates vegetables - will eat carrots at a push but acts as though you're poisoning him....and as for eating anything green..... the problem with coeliac kids is that there are some great-looking GF recipes around that I think look really yummy, but you've still got the problems of finicky eating that you have with most kids

But here are a few of the things he likes to eat and/or I've found are good.

• Waitrose Cambridge sausages are gluten free and taste just like 'normal' sausages. They're lovely and thick too, great is sausage casseroles
• He loves houmous and GF pitta bread (which you can buy from most supermarkets) for school lunch
• Spag Bol and chilli are great, also a good way to hide vegetables. I whizz up onions, carrots and celery in mine and he has no idea he's eating them.
• Sainsburys is really good for gluten free chicken nuggets, fish fingers and pizzas, for the days when you really can't be arsed to make your own.
• Eating out can be tricky. Frankie & Benny's is a no-no but Nandos is great. They have an ingredients book you can inspect to be on the safe side. Apparently Pizza Express will make their pizzas and pasta with GF pizza bases and pasta if you bring it in, although I haven't got round to trying this yet. Even MacDonalds can be OK as long as you don't have the bread - the burgers are 100% beef.
• 'Normal' oven chips are fine, as they're just potatoes and oil. The ones to steer clear of are the 'home fries' or 'southern fried' type as they have wheat flour coating.
• The last time we saw the dietician she told us that supermarket own brand versions of rice krispies, cornflakes, cocopops and frosties are gluten free. Apparently Kellogs add extra barley to make theirs tastier, but this is more costly and so own-brand versions don't. Since we discovered this DS has been through a whole box of Waitrose own brand coco pops.
• Encourage an appetite for risottos. Again it's a great way to hide veg and you can add things like bacon to it.
• frankfurters are gluten free
• Indian food is great (apart from naan bread - but poppadoms are fine). Chinese is more tricky, because of the soy sauce.
• I second the comments about Doves Farm GF flour, I use it all the time now, even when I'm not cooking for DS. The cake recipes on the back of the pack seem to work fine - my mum made a lovely birthday cake for DS's 5th birthday and several of the mums here told me it was the best cake they'd ever tasted - that was before I told them it was gluten free. Just remember you may need to add a bit more liquid than normal.
• Buckwheat flour is fine which was great when we went on hols to Brittany last year and DS could join us in the creperie eating savoury galettes while we had the crepes.
• It's usually easier to provide his own food in a lunch bag for children's parties as the sandwiches, cakes, sausage rolls and biscuits are a nightmare.
• Don't forget you can get loads on prescription free till he's 6 - bread, pasta, biscuits etc

That's about it, I'll add any more when I think of it. If you're on Facebook, the Coeliac UK page is a good one to 'like' - lots of good tips on there.

Going gluten free for family meals is definitely easier - with a roast dinner it's just a case of making the gravy with cornflour, for example, or using Bisto Best granules which are GF.

Get a cheapo toaster for GF toast and a separate chopping board, and just remember to swop knives when you butter his toast - or do his first before you do the others. But gluten isn't radioactive - here's no need to replicate everything as a good wash will clear the gluten away from pans etc.

Another tip - toaster bags are good when you go and stay somewhere else.

You need to find gf chocolate powder for gf choc meringues. Easier is to sandwich them together with gf choc sauce. Make Nigella's ganache if stuck.

Agas are brilliant and you should find slow cooking means you generally need fewer thickening agents. But if you do, eg for steps, try purred carrots.

Hth

Stews not steps! Carrots are not concrete !

fantastic tips, thank you all. wordsmith - lots of really useful stuff there, will go through it in detail. spendthrift I am now craving meringues sandwiched togethr with choc sauce!

notapizza that's horrible, your poor son. I hope he doesn't get accidentally glutened often. I have heard that sensitivity increased once you're gluten-free, so it remains to be seen what will happen with DS.

We have a date for his biopsy now - this Friday. Hope it all goes smoothly and he doesn't mind the experience. He's having a GA so won't know about the biopsy itself, but the whole thing will be strange to him.

Good luck for the biopsy! You'll find its worse for you than him. The worst bit is no food and drink after the night before. The best bit - as soon as it's done you can put him on a GF diet and the improvement will be immediate- within 1 week of a GF diet my DS had put on weight and was feeling better.

Just spotted all the typos in my previous post. Of course it's 16 when the free prescriptions are available until, not 6.

Plus I second the bit about slow cooking. I'd love an aga but I have a slow cooker and it's great.

Plus one big tip - I found Mumsnet great for advice and info when I was at the stage you're at now, so keep posting!

thanks wordsmith. biopsy was done today and went smoothly. doctor said ds's gut was 'classically coeliac' and dietician signed us up for prescriptions. she recommended that we try and introduce a wide range of naturally gluten-free grains into ds's diet - polenta, amarynth (sp?), quinoa, buckwheat etc.

so if anyone has any recipes for those, i'll be happy to hear them! :)

Great news that the biopsy is over and done with - now you can start cutting out gluten and fingers crossed you should see a difference really soon!

Don't forget to get a prescription for bread, pasta etc sorted from the docs. My DS likes the bread, it's much better than the stuff you get in supermarkets (apart from the really expensive Genius and Warburtons stuff) although it comes in boxes of 8 to make sure you clear some space in your freezer!

Re your GF grains - I did buy some quinoa but never used it but polenta is good - you can just fry it up and use it like waffles or toast, almost - put poached eggs on in or use it alongside sausages and baked beans. (By the way Heinz and Branston beans are both GF)

Buckwheat can be used to make savoury pancakes.

Also there are a couple of good iphone apps - Gluten Free gives you a list of foods (not brands) and whether they're GF or not, and GF card is a statement about being GF and what you can and can't eat, translated into many languages so you can show restaurants abroad.

Good luck!

Thanks Wordsmith. DH and I think we have already seen a difference in Alfie in just 3 days - more energy and a more level mood.

I will look at those iphone apps - I need to work out how to download apps anyway so this would be a good reason

Just writing a one-page thing about DS and gluten-free for his pre-school. If I post it, would anyone have time to critique it? Want to make sure I cover the important things.

Yes! I saw a difference in my DS almost overnight and within a week he'd put on a pound. It's amazing the difference a GF diet makes.

Re your proposed letter, there should be something on the coeliac UK website for schools and childminders. Hang on, will have a look. Here we are: www.coeliac.org.uk/gluten-free-diet-lifestyle/family-and-friends/school-time. The parent pack includes a template letter for schools, so if you've signed up to join Coeliac UK (which I recommend you do for the first year at least) you should be able to get all this.

You'll find most pre-schools are clued-up on coeliac disease but I would send him in with his own bread and biscuits to be sure. One thing you will need to be aware of is the implications of playing with dough, which seems to form the basis of most pre-school activities IIRC. But again, they should have a policy or plan for this.

Implications of playing with dough? Wordsmith? I did see on the Coeliac UK website a mention that dough contains gluten - but I (probably wrongly) thought the problem might be younger children eating it. DS doesn't eat it - but I suppose the issue might be residue on hands?

That link is very useful, thank you. I'm trying to write something a bit personal. It's a really small preschool, and he'll be going on to school in the same place, so it's worth getting everyone on side.

DS came home from preschool at lunchtime really upset because it's Pancake Day and everyone else had a pancake at snack time, and he just had a small (not very tasty) gluten free biscuit :(

Not nice - my ds doesnt get upset any more when the other kids have something he cant have - hes realised that it makes hi tummy hurt.

Our school make GF playdough, I provide the GF flour and they make it as normal so everyone can play with it.

Just a word of warning to check everything - cheap cream cheese (such as Smart Price, Value, Basics types) contain wheat and gluten as some kind of filler. Not a product you would necessarily think to check...

Thank you parttime - I am using Philadelphia which I think is okay, but I hadn't realised not all cream cheeses are. I will make sure to check.

Good idea about GF playdough, notapizza, I will talk to the preschool about that.

Hello everyone, hope you don't mind me dropping in for a bit. Hopefully I won't be around long. I'm doing a fortnight's GF trial to see if helps my 2 y.o.'s eczema. We took him off gluten once before and his eczema flared up once he started eating it again, but he was also coming down with a cold so that might have been the cause, rather than the gluten.

He's a fussy eater too and doesn't like potatoes , fish, cheese, eggs, most veg, spicy food, things too 'mixed up' or anything he's not been given before. I'm intolerant to dairy and DS has a suspected nut allergy (we're waiting for blood test results). It's hard to know what to cook but there have been some good ideas here.

I read a good tip recently for fussy eaters which is to get them to try one bite of something you want them to eat every day for 7-10 days. It's supposed to be the first bite of breakfast but I'm not organised enough so I do it as the first bite of dinner.

Thankfully DS is willing to try a new food if I ask him - I tell him he doesn't have to actually eat it as long as he puts it in his mouth and tastes it. I've tried it with two foods so far and by the end he was crying because I wouldn't let him have it, instead of crying because I wanted him to try it.

Angel - really good tip about the one-bite thing. I have been trying a version of that with DS with some success, but will be more organised about it now. Widening his repertoire would be a very good thing. Sounds like you have a complicated situation, hope that your 2yo responds to the no-gluten thing.