Gluten Free Cooking, Is This For You?
Gluten free cooking has become a big deal these days, with all the suspicions of how gluten can be contributing to everything from Autism to Fibromyalgia. But, how do you know that all your meals can be gluten free and still taste great? Well, if you’ve never tried healthy cooking without gluten, then you will probably find that you can make some fabulous meals without any of the offending gluten in them.
Check Ingredients
When you are working on gluten free cooking, it can feel pretty frustrating to find the right products to put in your food, but here’s a way to simplify. Consider ingredients that don’t have gluten before you start shopping for packaged goods that are specifically gluten free. For instance, if it’s raw, it probably doesn’t have gluten.
This means that most meats you buy don’t have gluten in them, and the same can be said of fresh vegetables and that includes potatoes. You should also know that products such as eggs and cheese don’t have gluten, so you’re really mostly limited with your bread or carbohydrate consumption. When you’re working toward gluten free cooking, you can rest easy knowing that you can make nearly a complete meal that doesn’t have any gluten in it at all. You can also make a side dish of wild rice, corn, millet, quinoa or oats to get your carbohydrates without including gluten in your cooking.
So, this means that you mainly have to check for gluten in breads and cereals, as well as anything you might make which has flour as a base. So, no, you can’t bread your chicken with flour, because most often the gluten is still in it, but you can have a healthy, gluten free meal on most nights and never feel as if you’re being deprived.
Make a Meal
Once you’ve done your shopping for gluten free foods, you will want to choose meals which can work for you. It’s important to know that most pastas have gluten in them due to the flour used to make them, so try to stay away from pastas and certain boxed foods, or consider shopping at an organic or health food stores for these items, because you’ll likely get a larger selection.
When you’re choosing gluten free cooking as a lifestyle, you’ll probably find that cooking this way can quickly become a habit and, although it might not be easy at first, you will begin to get the hang of it. Consider stir fries where you use wild rice and incorporate potatoes with meals that you want to add carbohydrates to.
Remember, the key to feeling as if you’re not being deprived with gluten free cooking is to offer a variety, so it’s a good idea to make meals that have lots of vegetables in them and incorporate beans when you can for a hearty alternative to breads.
Gluten free cooking might be optional, or this lifestyle may be essential, but you should know that it’s not hard to cook this way and you might even be surprised to find that after a while, you’re not really missing that much, so go ahead and give gluten free cooking a try. The healthy flare and delicious flavors might surprise you.
Related posts:
