Chapter 9

Cooking: Tips and Techniques

In This Chapter

Finding out how to make recipes gluten-free

Exploring gluten-free grains

Entering the wonderful world of gluten-free baking

W e have some unique cooking tips and techniques that can help in your gluten-free cooking adventures, and we cover them in this chapter. People approach cooking in different ways and this doesn’t really change if you’re doing it gluten-free. At one extreme you have the ‘born to cook’ types — you know them, the ones who can whip a few things out of the fridge, perform amazing feats with pirate knives and other deadly looking instruments, fry, simmer and pop in the oven while sipping champagne and discussing the relative merits of Russian caviar over Bulgarian, and produce a meal to die for.

At the other extreme you have those desperately in need of help, with only the vaguest notions about how food is prepared and which foods go together well. The end product, even if remotely edible, is only choked down as an alternative to starvation. (Well, okay, we all have to start somewhere.) Somewhere in between are the ‘stuck in a rut’ types who learned to cook a few basics early in life and now churn out the same tired old meals year after year. And then you have those lucky individuals, with no special training, who can throw a few random items into the wok or casserole dish and end up with a totally original, wildly different but absolutely scrumptious result.

Find out where you sit on the culinary spectrum. Calculate your score to the following statements as follows: Totally agree (2); Agree (1); Don’t know (0); Disagree (−1); Totally disagree (−2).

• Measuring is for patient people. ‘Dollop’, ‘slosh’ and ‘tad’ will do perfectly well.
• If a recipe calls for ¼ of a teaspoon, forget it.
• If a recipe has more than 10 ingredients, forget that too.
• Tomato sauce is an essential ingredient in all cooking.
• ‘Beat well’ means ‘slosh around with a fork’.

A score of 5 or more means that you’re a great cook. Keep up the good work, but go easy on the tomato sauce. A score of −5 to −10 suggests that you really know what you’re doing in the kitchen, which means that you’re a great cook too. If you scored between 4 and −4, with a lot of ‘Don’t know’ responses, we really don’t know either. You’re probably a great cook too.

Now if all this sounds a bit vague, it’s time we came clean and confessed that your two authors are not exactly true-blue cooks. Danna comes from the ‘dollop’ and ‘slosh’ school and Margaret swings unpredictably between total disaster and spectacular success. So why are we writing about cooking tips? Well, no finger pointing, but the editors made us do it. So we’ve called in the very best of helpers — a Real Cook who does know what she’s doing in the kitchen. Then we added our own tips and ideas, because while we’re not the ‘real thing’, anyone who copes with a gluten-free diet learns a lot along the way.

Creatively Gluten-Free: Improvising in the Kitchen

Give people a recipe and you feed them for a meal; teach them to make recipes gluten-free and you feed them for a lifetime.

So if you love recipes, you may be delighted to know that this book includes lots of recipes and that dozens of excellent gluten-free cookbooks are available to give you added inspiration and insights.

But we also think finding out how to improvise and cook anything gluten-free has a lot of value. Sometimes that means taking a recipe for something that normally has gluten in it and modifying it to be gluten-free. Other times, that means throwing caution to the wind and doing without a recipe altogether.

No single ingredient is more important in gluten-free cooking than creativity. You may not always have ingredients on hand to make the gluten-free dish you want to make. You may not have a recipe handy for a meal you have in mind. You may think you have no way to convert your old favourite standby into a gluten-free goodie. Don’t let any of those things stop you. Cooking gluten-free is actually easy if you improvise, learn a few basic principles, explore alternatives and stretch the boundaries of your creativity in the kitchen.

Adapting any dish to be gluten-free

Quick quiz: You’re standing in line at the checkout, mindlessly perusing the magazines offering valuable, up-to-date, star-struck gossip and sure-fire ways to lose all your belly fat in less than 10 minutes, when the cover of your favourite cooking magazine catches your eye. It’s a beautiful photo of (insert favourite food here), glistening with — agh! — gluten! You:

The right answer is, of course, C. You can modify nearly any dish to be gluten-free. Some dishes are easier than others — baked goods are the toughest, so we deal with those last. You can go one of two ways when you’re adapting a dish to be gluten-free: with a recipe or without.

Starting with a recipe

If you’re following a recipe for something that’s not gluten-free and you want to convert it, start by reviewing the list of ingredients the recipe calls for. Make a note of those that usually have gluten in them. Then, using the substitutions we suggest in this chapter or some of your own, substitute gluten-free ingredients as you need to.

For the most part, when you make substitutions, measurements convert equally — with the exception of flours, which we discuss in the section ‘Substituting gluten-free flours’ later in this chapter.

Don’t have the right substitutions? Improvise. For instance, if a recipe calls for coating something in flour before sautéeing and you don’t have any gluten-free flours, maybe you have a gluten-free mix that would work. If necessary, bread mix, pancake mix, even muffin mix, can work as a substitute for a flour coating.

Cooking without a recipe

If you’re not using a recipe, creativity once again prevails. Say you want to make chicken nuggets. You certainly don’t need a recipe for that; just slice some chicken and work out what you want to coat it in before frying or baking. Put some of your favourite gluten-free potato chips or corn flakes in a plastic bag and crunch them up. Now you have a coating! (You’ll need to dip your chicken pieces into some beaten egg first or the coating will end up on the bottom of the frying pan.)

At the risk of labouring a point, you have to be creative. The substitution ideas in this chapter are just that — ideas. Coming up with substitutions that work for your convenience, preference and budget is up to you.

Avoiding cross-contamination when cooking

Sometimes you can unwittingly contaminate your food by the way you cook it. Cooking gluten-containing foods at the same time as gluten-free ones is okay, but just be aware that cross-contamination during the cooking process is a very real consideration. You may have to plan how you will manage the cooking so that you have different pots and pans for your two versions. Here are some things to watch out for:

• Cooking utensils: Use separate utensils while you’re cooking and keep track of which one is which.
• Double-duty cooking surfaces: If you’re cooking gluten-containing and gluten-free foods on the same griller or baking tray, you should cook the gluten-free version first. If that just doesn’t work, you can use the same cooking surface for both versions, but be sure to find a clean spot for your gluten-free foods.
• Frying oil: When you fry crumbed or battered products in oil, some of the crumbs or batter can stay on the surface of the oil when you’ve finished frying. But gluten is NOT soluble in oil. So if you fry gluten-containing foods in oil, always scoop out any visible bits of batter or crumbs, fry the gluten-free foods first, or use completely separate pans and fresh oil for the gluten-free foods.

Avoiding contamination is important, but don’t go to the other extreme and become paranoid about it either. If you let that happen, you’ll probably never be able to relax and enjoy a meal in case you’ve accidentally devoured a gluten crumb.

Using standby substitutions

To convert a recipe that usually contains gluten into one that’s gluten-free, you need to make some simple substitutions. For the most part, with the exception of flours you use when making baked goods, the substitutions are simple — just swap one for the other. We cover flours for baked goods separately, later in this chapter.

Here are some simple substitutions:

• Beer: Some foods, especially deep-fried foods, may call for beer in the recipe. You can use either gluten-free beer or try cider instead.
• Binders: A binder is just something that holds foodstuffs together. Because gluten provides elasticity and stretch to baked goods, adding binders to foods that don’t have gluten-containing flours in them is a good idea. Binders include xanthan gum, guar gum, psyllium, gelatine powder or eggs.
• Breadcrumbs: No-brainer here. Anyone who’s ever eaten a piece of gluten-free bread (especially without toasting it) knows that breadcrumbs aren’t hard to come by. You can buy gluten-free breadcrumbs from the supermarket, specialty stores or online, but if you can’t or don’t want to get those, consider using any gluten-free bread: Put the bread in a plastic bag and crumble it to the size you want. You can even toast or bake the crumbs if you want added crunch or need dry breadcrumbs instead of fresh ones. Crushed cereals work well in place of breadcrumbs, too.
• Buns: Consider using a lettuce wrap, corn tortilla or, of course, gluten-free bread. Some good gluten-free buns are available at leading supermarkets, health food shops or online.
• Coatings: If a recipe calls for some type of coating, you have several options. You can despair and not make the dish (Ha! Kidding!) or consider using any of the gluten-free flours we list later in this chapter, as well as any versatile gluten-free mix you have lying around, such as a mix for bread, muffins or pancakes. Maize flour, buckwheat or chickpea (besan) flour with seasonings mixed in adds an interesting texture, and crushed potato chips or corn flakes (gluten-free, of course) are an all-time favourite.
• ‘Cream of’ soups: Use chicken broth and sour cream (half-and-half). Remember to add the food the soup is a cream of — mushroom, celery, potato and so on — to complete the soup.
• Croutons: Homemade croutons are actually very easy to make. Most recipes for croutons suggest you use stale bread, but we don’t suggest you do that for gluten-free bread, because you’d probably end up with crouton crumbs instead. Cut fresh gluten-free bread into the size cubes you want and deep-fry them. After you drain and cool them, roll them in parmesan cheese, spices, or any other flavouring you like, or just serve plain.
• Fillers: Filler is a highly technical culinary term for something that fills stuff in. Yum. Generally not something you hope to see on a label, fillers aren’t always a bad thing; they may be in meatloaf, for example, where the recipe often calls for breadcrumbs, crackers and other filler-type materials to add, well, filling. Gluten-free bread or breadcrumbs are obvious substitutions here, but also consider leftover rice, potato flakes, cooked quinoa or even an unsweetened cereal that you’ve crushed.
• Flour tortillas: The obvious substitution here is corn tortillas. Some new gluten-free wraps/tannour breads are on the market now. Other wrap substitutions include rice paper (found in Asian markets and featured in a few recipes in this book) or lettuce.
• Pastry: One of the easiest ways to make a pastry base is to crush your favourite cereal, add some butter (and sugar, if the cereal isn’t sweet enough), mix it well and then press the mixture into the bottom of a pie pan. Some good gluten-free crackers and plain biscuits work well the same way. Try 125 grams of melted butter to 4 cups of cereal or crushed biscuits, but the amount of butter needed will vary depending on the dryness of your crumbs or cereal. You may want to slowly add more butter until the crumbs are beginning to stick together, but don’t add too much or you’ll end up with a greasy, oily base. You’ll find good pastry recipes in many gluten-free cookbooks. Some pastry bases are supposed to be cooked before adding the pie filling and others aren’t. This doesn’t change when you are making a gluten-free pie. Also check out some of the gluten-free piecrust mixes available at health food shops, or the frozen pastry sheets.
• Soy sauce: Most soy sauce has wheat in it (and the label clearly indicates wheat), but you can find brands that are wheat-free and those that, even though they may contain a wheat ingredient, are gluten-free. (By the way, tamari — a thicker, Japanese soy sauce — isn’t always wheat-free, so check the label.) It’s much easier to find a gluten-free tamari than soy sauce. You may also want to get adventurous and try an Asian sauce like fish sauce (careful — it’s really fishy!) or gluten-free oyster sauce.
• Teriyaki: Because most soy sauce has wheat in it, most teriyaki (which is made from soy sauce) does, too. A few brands of wheat-free teriyaki sauces are available.
• Thickeners: Many recipes call for flour as a thickener, but alternatives are available. For sweet things, try using a dry pudding mix or gelatine. Arrowroot, agar, tapioca starch and maize cornflour are also excellent thickeners. And keep in mind that muffin or cake mix you have lying around. Not only do mixes thicken the recipe, but the sweet flavour is also a pleasant surprise. You can find more information on using gluten-free thickeners in the section ‘Thickening with gluten-free starches and flours’, later in this chapter.

Cooking with Wheat Alternatives

Most gluten-free cooking is pretty straightforward. You just substitute gluten-free ingredients for the gluten-containing ones and, for the most part, you’re set. The process is a little different for baked goods, as we explain later in this chapter. But most gluten-free cooking isn’t that different from ‘regular’ cooking, especially if you follow the theme of this chapter and let your creative side take over.

Incorporating alternative gluten-free grains

Not only are the gluten-free grains and grain alternatives that we talk about in Chapter 4 ultra-nutritious, but they also add unique flavours and textures to foods. For the most part, cooking them is just like cooking other grains, as you can see in Part III of this book and in cookbooks. But you need to know a few things to perfect the art of using alternative gluten-free grains.

When cooking gluten-free grains as whole grains (as opposed to using them as a flour in baked goods), you find these alternative grains cook like most whole grains — just toss them in boiling water, reduce the heat so the water simmers and you’re set. The grain-to-water proportion and cooking times are really the only things that vary. Table 9-1 has some approximations of amounts of liquids and cooking times, and the instructions on the product packaging are usually reliable.

Table 9-1 Cooking Alternative Grains

Quinoa, millet, amaranth, buckwheat and the other alternative grains are great additions to soups, stuffing and other foods. Here are some places you can use alternative grains, whether you precook them or simply toss them in with the other ingredients:

• Snacks: Using a little oil in a pan, you can pop amaranth grains on the stove like popcorn and eat them seasoned or plain.
• Soups: Use buckwheat, quinoa or millet in soups instead of rice or noodles. No need to cook the grains first; just add them to the soup as you’re cooking it. Remember, they absorb the liquid and double in volume.
• Stuffing: Use cooked quinoa, millet or buckwheat instead of breadcrumbs or croutons in stuffing. Season the stuffing to your taste and then stuff vegetables, poultry or pork tenderloins.

Thickening with gluten-free starches and flours

People usually use starch-based thickeners such as maize cornflour, arrowroot and tapioca to thicken their sauces and gravies. Some starch thickeners give food a transparent, glistening sheen, which looks great for pie fillings and in glazes, but the thickeners don’t always look quite right in gravy or sauce, so knowing which ones to use is important.

To thicken with gluten-free starches, follow these steps:

1. Mix the starch with an equal amount of cold liquid until it forms a paste.
2. Whisk the paste into the liquid you’re trying to thicken.
3. Cook for at least 30 seconds to get rid of the starchy flavour.

But be careful you don’t overcook the starch — liquids that you thicken with these starches may get thin again if you cook them too long or at too high a temperature.

Some of these flours have the advantage of working well with foods that are acidic. Acidic foods include canned or glazed fruits, citrus, tomatoes and vinegar. Bananas, figs, avocadoes and potatoes are examples of foods that aren’t acidic (they’re alkaline).

Take a look at your options for thickeners:

• Arrowroot: If you’re looking for that shiny clear gloss for dessert sauces or glazes, arrowroot is a good bet. Use arrowroot if you’re thickening an acidic liquid but not if you’re using dairy products (it makes them slimy). Arrowroot has the most neutral taste of all the starch thickeners, so if you’re worried that a thickener may change or mask the flavour of your dish, use arrowroot. You can freeze the sauces you make with arrowroot.
• Maize cornflour: This is the best choice for thickening dairy-based sauces, but don’t use it for acidic foods. Maize cornflour doesn’t give you the shiny, clear effect of tapioca or arrowroot so it’s good for casseroles and sauces. Don’t use it if you’re freezing the sauce, or the sauce will get spongy.
• Potato starch: Usually used to thicken soups and gravies, potato starch doesn’t work well in liquids that you boil. Unlike maize cornflour and some other grain-based foods, potato starch is a permitted ingredient for Passover.
• Tapioca flour: Tapioca flour or starch gives a glossy sheen and can tolerate prolonged cooking and freezing. It can be used to thicken sauces, soups and gravies.

You can use any of the alternative grains to thicken sauces, gravies, stews, puddings — anything! Depending on what you’re making, you can use whole grains or flours as a thickener. You probably want to use a flour instead of whole grains to thicken something like gravy, but whole grains add lots of nutrition and work well to thicken soups and stews.

When you’re using these flours or starches as thickeners, substitution amounts are a little different. Instead of 1 tablespoon of plain flour, use

• Agar agar: ½ tablespoon
• Arrowroot: ½ tablespoon
• Gelatine powder: ½ tablespoon
• Maize cornflour: ½ tablespoon
• Rice flour (brown or white): 1 tablespoon

Trying Your Hand at Gluten-Free Baking

We won’t sugar coat the situation: Baking is the trickiest type of gluten-free cooking you can try. But it’s getting easier. Years ago, gluten-free baking produced brick-like breads and cakes that crumbled when you exposed them to air, or dipped dreadfully in the middle. Margaret’s family called them ‘dippy cakes’.

Gluten is what makes baked goods stretchy, elastic and doughy. It also forms a support structure to hold the gases that expand and to help the bread rise and become fluffy. Without gluten, baked foods tend to either crumble excessively or be dense enough to double as a lethal weapon. Using xanthan gum and combining gluten-free flours are the keys to creating gluten-free baked goods that are just as good as the real deal.

Mixing it up with mixes

Swallowing your pride is a lot better than swallowing a dry lump doing its best to impersonate a biscuit, don’t you think? Sure, cooking from scratch is terrific and these days, especially with the help of the Real Cookbook Authors, the success rate is high (certainly higher than it was when we started on our self-taught-gluten-free-baking-from-scratch adventures).

But consider using some of the incredible gluten-free mixes now available for pancakes, biscuits, cakes, breads, pizza bases, pastry, muffins and just about anything else you can think of. Some of the mixes are so good these days that they rival even the best homemade gluten-containing foods. They’re simple to make (get the kids to help!) and fill the house with that Real-Cook-lives-here smell of freshly baked treats.

Most of the mixes simply require an egg or egg substitute, water or milk and oil. Many of the companies are aware of multiple food intolerances and offer dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free and other allergen-free products. You can keep it simple or jazz it up, adding your favourite ingredients and accommodating other allergies and intolerances. Refer to Chapter 7 for a list of the mixes you may want to have on hand.

The most common complaint about mixes is that they’re expensive — and they are. Save them for those times when life is really frantic, as a special treat.

Introducing xanthan gum: The star of the dough

Boasting unique properties that enhance the consistency of foods, xanthan gum is a key ingredient in successful gluten-free baking. Basically, it holds particles of foods together and it’s the component in salad dressings, gravies, sauces and ice creams that gives those foods a creamy, rich, smooth texture. Xanthan gum works well in gluten-free foods, providing the stretch and elasticity that gluten usually offers.

Here’s a guide to how much xanthan gum to use for each cup of gluten-free flour:

• Biscuits: ¼ teaspoon
• Breads: 1 heaped teaspoon
• Cakes: ½ teaspoon
• Muffins: ¾ teaspoons
• Pizza: 2 teaspoons

Be warned — xanthan gum is not cheap. Some people use guar gum instead, usually because it’s cheaper. But be aware that guar gum is high in fibre content and can have a laxative effect.

When you’re making gluten-free dough, use non-stick loaf pans, baking sheets and pie dishes, or be prepared to use a lot of baking paper or aluminium foil. Gluten-free dough is especially sticky.

Substituting gluten-free flours

Several gluten-free flours work well for baking. But they don’t always work in a one-to-one trade. In other words, you can’t just replace one cup of all-purpose or wheat flour with one cup of potato starch — at least not for the best results.

You should play around with these substitutions to find the flavours and consistencies you like best, but this list gives you a starting point for using gluten-free flours.

Each substitution is instead of 1 cup of plain flour (for those of you who aren’t familiar with the highly technical culinary term scant, it simply means loosely packed or barely):

• Amaranth flour: 1 scant cup
• Arrowroot flour: 1 scant cup
• Buckwheat flour: ⅞ cup
• Chickpea flour: ¾ cup
• Maize cornflour: ¾ cup
• Polenta: ¾ cup
• Potato flour: ½ cup
• Potato starch: ¾ cup
• Quinoa flour: 1 cup
• Rice flour (white or brown): 1 scant cup
• Sorghum: 1 scant cup
• Soy flour: ¾ cup
• Sweet rice flour (glutinous or sticky rice flour; mochiko): ⅞ cup
• Tapioca flour or starch: 1 cup

Making your own gluten-free flour mixtures

One of the things the Real Cookbook Authors discovered in the not-so-distant past is that if you mix a variety of flours together, they produce baked goods that have a better consistency and taste. Different combinations of gluten-free flour mixtures abound and you can experiment to find your favourite.

If you’re doing a lot of baking, we suggest making up a large quantity of gluten-free flour mixture, mixing it well and storing it in airtight containers in a dark, dry place. That way you have it on hand when you want to bake. Either sift it when making up the mix or as you use it in baking. You can also buy packets of excellent baking mix made up of several different kinds of gluten-free flours.

A quick perusal of most gluten-free cookbooks or a visit to gluten-free recipe sites on the internet can give you dozens of variations on these flour mixtures, but this section gives you the three most popular basic mixes. They can be used as a one-to-one substitution for plain flour.

Plain gluten-free flour mixture

You can use several other types of gluten-free flour mixtures, each with unique tastes and cooking properties. Here’s how to mix it:

• 2 parts white rice flour
• ⅔ part potato starch flour
• ⅓ part tapioca flour

Besan flour mixture

One of the more popular flour mixtures today has besan flour, which adds protein and texture. Here’s a besan flour mixture:

• 1 part besan flour
• 1 part brown rice flour (or 1 part white rice flour)
• 1 part maize cornflour
• 1 part tapioca starch
• ¾ part sweet rice flour

Lola Workman’s low reactive flour blend

Lola Workman, who regularly writes for The Australian Coeliac magazine, has developed several flour mixes, which can be found in her recipe books and on her website (www.wheatfreeworld.com.au). This one incorporates amaranth flour, which is highly nutritious:

• 2 parts potato starch
• 2 parts fine rice flour
• 1 part amaranth flour
• 1 part tapioca starch

Baking bread the gluten-free way

Those who’ve experimented with gluten-free breads know that at times the word bread is a euphemism for brick and the word edible is an overstatement. But never fear; help is here — whether you’re a diehard baker or a newbie in the kitchen, you can enjoy that unbeatable aroma of your very own freshly baked, delicious bread.

Although some gluten-free breads do taste great these days, they still taste a little different from wheat-based breads. And why does that surprise people? That’s like making an apple pie but using cherries instead of apples and being surprised that it doesn’t have an apple flavour. Of course gluten-free bread doesn’t taste exactly like wheat bread — it doesn’t have wheat in it!

Gluten-free breads tend to look a little different, too. In spite of great strides to make them fluffier and airier, they’re still a little denser and turn out best if you make them in smaller loaves. They also don’t rise as much, so the tops are sometimes flat or even concave.

You can find a number of good gluten-free bread mixes on the market. Try them out until you find your favourite.

Home-baked gluten-free bread may taste delicious on baking day, but after that you need to toast it. Toasting gives it a better consistency and makes it less likely to crumble. Gluten-free bread is great for toasted sandwiches because the butter and grilling process gives it a crispy texture and seals the bread so it doesn’t crumble. Here are a few more general bread-making tips:

• All the ingredients that you use, except water, should be at room temperature.
• The water that you mix the yeast with must be lukewarm. Too hot and you kill the yeast. Too cold and you don’t activate it.
• Adding extra protein in the form of eggs, egg substitutes, dry milk solids, or cottage or ricotta cheese is important for helping the yeast work.
• Vinegar, usually cider vinegar, helps the yeast work and helps the flavour of the bread emerge. Sometimes recipes call for lemon juice or a dough enhancer instead. These ingredients also act as preservatives.
• You should use small loaf tins for gluten-free bread. The heaviest quality bread tins are better.
• Gluten-free bread tends to need to cook a little longer, so cover your loaf with foil for the last 15 minutes or so, to keep it from burning.
• Wait until the bread has cooled to room temperature to slice it. (Don’t look, but our fingers were crossed as we wrote that. Who can resist the flavour and texture of a slice — or three — of hot bread? Certainly it’s better for the loaf if you allow it to cool, but if you’re virtuous enough to bake your own bread, it’s okay to sneak a slice while it’s still warm.)

Given the choice of doing something by hand or using an efficient, easy-to-clean-made-for-the-job-tried-and-true tool to do it, we’ll go for the tool. If you want to use a bread machine for your gluten-free breads, keep a few things in mind:

• Look for one of the bread machines on the market that specifically says you can use it for gluten-free bread and, better still, for a machine endorsed by Coeliac Australia. You can make some really successful breads using the recipes in the instruction booklet.
• Gluten-free bread needs only one kneading and one rising cycle. If you have a setting that allows you to do only one kneading and one rising, choose it.
• If you haven’t bought a bread machine yet, buy one with strong paddles, a strong motor and a strong fan.
• Take your bread out as soon as it is finished, even if the bread machine has a ‘keep warm’ facility. Gluten-free bread will soon go soggy if it is left in the pan.
• Add ingredients in the order the bread machine manufacturer recommends. It does make a difference!
• A few minutes after the bread machine has started, use a rubber spatula to scrape the dough off the sides of the pan back into the dough and stir a little to make sure all ingredients are mixing in well.

If you’re a glutton for punishment and choose to mix your dough by hand, but you’re using a recipe for a bread machine, double the amount of yeast and use a little more liquid (a couple of tablespoons).