First, we’ll prepare the hollandaise sauce. The basic ingredients are butter and egg yolks, so it is not exactly a heart-healthy menu item. But boy, does it taste good. Here we will start with one whole stick (1/2 cup) of Fleischmann’s Unsalted Margarine (NOT the Original flavor, as that contains casein.) Your list of possible substitutes is going to be a bit truncated here, since it will need to be butter-flavored, but some other options include ghee, Earth Balance spread, and Spectrum butter-flavored shortening. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Gently melt it in the microwave, inside a measuring cup. We’re going to need that handle and pouring spout later.

Separate 4 eggs, and place the yolks in a metal bowl. To separate an egg, crack it over a bowl and pass the yolk back and forth between the two shell halves, and the white will just fall off. I throw the whites away, but I guess you could make an egg-white omelette with them, or maybe whip them into a meringue for that pie you just had sitting around.

Add 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice, and whisk the egg yolks very rapidly for a few minutes, long past when your arm starts hurting and you have to switch the other one. They say it’s done when the mixture has doubled in volume, but I’m not a good judge of that sort of thing, so I just do it until I can’t stand it anymore.

Now, this is why it needed to be in a metal mixing bowl. If you don’t have a metal bowl, you can use the top half of a double-boiler, or just a regular metal pot that will fit snugly inside the rim of another pot like we have here. But it’s easier to whisk in something that has a rounded bottom, especially when it’s turned sideways so you can whisk in an up-and-down motion instead of around in flat circles.

That bottom pot contains water, heated to just barely simmering. This way we will gently heat the sauce without allowing it to get above 212 degrees F (the boiling point of water,) and thus not end up with scrambled eggs. And yes, I know my pot isn’t actually on the burner anymore. I was turning the handle around this way and that, trying to get a good angle on the bowl-inside-a-pot for you to see. That, or maybe my super power is getting water to boil without any heat, and I’ve just blown my cover.

Keep whisking — yes, more! — while you gently stream in the melted margarine from the microwave. I only stopped whisking to try to take a quick picture, don’t be like me (unless you, too, have a website with lots of people wondering why you haven’t updated in over two dang weeks!)

Look, more whisking! When the sauce has thickened from the gentle heat and again doubled in volume, you’re done.

Well, almost. Add in a pinch of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper, unless you’d rather garnish the final product with the cayenne on top. There’s only so far I’ll bother going for presentation, and I’d rather not delay eating for even a moment once these babies are ready. Also, my kids are usually like, “OMG that’s got spices on it, it must be spicy!” and I’d rather not listen to it.

Cover the pot and stick it in a warm spot while you assemble everything else. This is not something you want to make ahead of time and store in the fridge for awhile, since it’s made with raw eggs. (Though before you go freaking out about the thought of eating raw eggs to begin with, remember that fried eggs with even slightly runny yolks are also technically raw.) If you’re really concerned, you could buy those pasteurized eggs they have at the store now.

Okay, so! The rest of the meal. Properly speaking, this should be on English muffins, and there are a few gluten-free brands out there. But they’re harder to come by, so I go for the simpler solution and just put them on O’Dough’s hamburger buns instead, which are appropriately dense. And of course Canadian bacon is a processed meat, so you have to make sure it’s GF as well. This Hormel product says it right on the back of the package, so that’s convenient.

Put several inches of water in a wide pan, bring it to a simmer, and ignore the rest of the photo. The chef who told me to do that thing you see me doing above is a complete liar. It has no quantifiable effect. The man is a charlatan and a scoundrel, and I have told him so to his face. He suggested pistols at dawn, or something, I can’t remember.

If you’re really deft, you can crack the eggs directly into the poaching pan. But I find it helpful to crack them into a little measuring cup first…

…and very gently slide them into the water, which should be just barely simmering by now.

Boy they do look ugly while they’re cooking, don’t they? But you see how the one on the right has a clearly defined central blob of egg white, with the thin skirt around it? That skirt bit is going to mostly fall away and cloud up your pan some more, the blob is the real part of the egg we want.

Cook them for exactly 3 1/2 minutes to achieve soft-set but still slightly flowing yolks, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon. Also, let’s blame the blurriness of this photo on the steam from the pan, rather than my palsied, uncoordinated hands.

Drizzle with hollandaise sauce, and dig in! You might want to serve this with some fruit or something, so you don’t feel guilty about all that extra sauce you know you’re going to put on.

Happy Eating!

Eggs Benedict

4 egg yolks
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 cup Fleischmann’s Unsalted margarine (NOT Original)
pinch of salt
pinch of cayenne pepper

6 eggs
1 pkg GF canadian bacon
3 GF english muffins (or GF hamburger buns)

Now for one of my many dirty little secrets: I love the kind of cranberry sauce that comes in a can. Always have. It is more like cranberry jello than cranberry sauce… which is awesome. But the new me couldn’t accept all the chemicals that typically go into that sort of thing. Strictly speaking, you can easily make the canned version just by making this jello recipe with bottled cranberry juice. But I’ve come up with this half-breed jellied cranberry sauce that I really like, so I’m going to show you how to make that here. I guess we’ll find out if I’m the only one who likes it! First, we have to make some traditional cranberry sauce, so start with a ten-ounce package of frozen cranberries, and dump 1 full cup of sugar on top.

Add 1 cup of water, and stir it all around. Another option is to use one cup of orange juice instead, which is a great flavor if you’re going the traditional route, but it does change the texture quite a bit if you go on to make my mock-can preparation, so you have to decide in advance which one you’re going to make.

Boil for about 10 minutes, until the skins of the cranberries begin to pop.

As it cools, it will thicken and goo-ify. Bet you won’t find that term in the Joy of Cooking glossary. Now, you can be a curmudgeonly coward and stop here, serving up a perfectly traditional but classy cranberry sauce. Or you can be a wild, modern trend-setter, and read on for something completely different.

First, make your sauce smooth in a blender or food processor.

There are probably still going to be some small bits, which I suppose you could try to strain out if you really wanted. Then, pour your puree into a large bowl.

Sprinkle one packet of Knox gelatin over the entire surface.

Pour in one cup of boiling water…

…and stir quickly to make sure all the gelatin dissolves.

Pour it into whatever container you want it to set in. These round tupperware containers are my homage to the metal can, of which I have precisely zero available in my kitchen.

Let it set in the fridge for several hours, and voila: jellied cranberry sauce! Fair warning, you may have to thwack pretty hard on the bottom of the container to get it to come out like this. But you could also leave it in the container — this stuff is still a bit spreadable, kind of like a very thick jam, which is the way I like it.

And while you’re planning your Thanksgiving table, don’t forget these great recipes:

Thanksgiving Turkey
Deviled Eggs
Sweet Potato and Apple Bake
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Corn Casserole
Pumpkin Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cranberry Sauce

10-ounce bag frozen cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water (or 1 cup orange juice)

Optional:
1 packet Knox gelatin
1 cup boiling water

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We start by hardboiling three eggs. (They should spend 15 minutes at a full rolling boil, if you don’t happen to keep egg timing tables in a readily accessible part of your brain.)

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Peel the eggs and slice them in half, then gently pop out the yolks. They’re not part of this recipe, so you can toss them, or mix in some mayo for a sandwich spread, or even sprinkle on a little salt and snack on them while you’re cooking. That’s what I always end up doing. I’m sure my arteries are so grateful to me.

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Meanwhile, cut the whites lengthwise again, then cross-cut into thirds. Or whatever, just get them bite-sized.

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Slice and dice about half a cucumber.

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And do the same with two roma tomatoes.

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Now, the critical question: what dressing to use? Generally speaking, we’re going for an Italian flavor here. (Notice how the salad is a lovely red, white, and green? That’s no accident, my friend.) There are a lot of GFCF Italian dressings out there, but then again, there are a lot that aren’t. Personally, I’m in love with Brianna’s New American dressing, which is basically a thick balsamic vinaigrette. It’s darn tasty, whatever national heritage it wants to claim. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Drizzle with impunity, toss lightly, and dig in! Another option is to substitute tofu for the egg whites, if you happen to be vegan, or just like the taste of tofu. I don’t fall into either category, but I promise I won’t judge. Well, not very harshly, at any rate.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Cucumber Tomato Salad

3 hardboiled eggs
1/2 cucumber
2 roma tomatoes
3-4 Tbs Brianna’s New American dressing

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We start with 3 cups of water in a small pot.

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Next, add 1/4 cup red wine vinegar. Please note this is not quite the same as balsamic vinegar, though you could probably use the latter if you prefer. Both are made with grapes, but balsamic vinegar is made immediately with fresh grapes, while red wine vinegar calls for the grapes to be fermented into wine first, and only then turned into vinegar. The flavor of both varies wildly across brands, so the question of which type you use is probably less important than choosing a quality brand. As always, make sure it is a pure vinegar, and does not contain the word “malt” anywhere on it, as this will indicate the presence of gluten.

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Add 1/4 cup of honey…

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1/4 teaspoon of black pepper…

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…and 1 teaspoon of salt.

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Now add 1/4 teaspoon each of minced garlic and ginger. A real chef would prep their own, of course. My goodness I’m lazy.

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Bring the mixture to a boil, and allow it to simmer for 15-20 minutes, until it’s been reduced to about 1/2 cup. (That’s about one-seventh of what it started out as, if you’re trying to eyeball it.)

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Pour the remaining liquid into a small jar or bottle, and you’re set for any soy sauce recipes that might come your way! This mixture will keep in the fridge almost indefinitely, especially if you close the lid while the sauce is still hot and let the cooling air form a vacuum, just like in real canning. You can strain the garlic and ginger solids back out if you really want to, but I don’t bother. Makes it more rustic and authentic, I think.

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Happy Eating!

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Soy Sauce Substitute

3 cups water
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp minced ginger
1/4 tsp minced garlic

On the one hand, I would say this is not a cookbook for beginners. This is the one you’ll want to have around when you’re ready to really show off your mad skillz. Say, when all this hard work you’re doing finally pays off, and your formerly-autistic, recently-engaged child wants you to bake them a GFCF Champagne-Cointreau Chiffon wedding cake. (I’ve got that page bookmarked, myself.) But on the other hand, the whole first half of the book is an incredibly detailed breakdown of how to get started on the diet, including a whopping 34-page shopping guide. So I sure could have used it back in the early days, too. C’est la vie.

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The thing is, being a European, Chef Braux gives all the ingredients by weight. Fortunately, I speak French-measurements (as opposed to actual French, which I definitely do not speak,) and have translated for you here. Start with 2 cans of Thai Kitchen coconut milk. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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I do actually own a little kitchen scale, for occasions such as this. All the recipes in this cookbook are in American ounces, but if you’re going to bother getting a scale, it’s important to choose one that can convert to metric (grams) as well. The truth is, weight is often a better way to do things, especially when baking. First off, you can fit up to 50% more or less flour into a “cup,” depending on how much you pack it down; what’s more, different flours have different densities, so if you substitute one GF flour for another you’ll end up with a completely different result — unless you use the same number of ounces, rather than the same size. But for things like sugar… meh. The recipe called for 12 ounces…

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…which ended up being exactly 2 cups of sugar. Go figure.

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Next, we’re going to mix in some shredded coconut. The more familiar bags of wet coconut that you find in the baking aisle should be gluten-free, but they’re also packed with preservatives. I prefer this stuff, but whatever floats your boat.

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Important lesson here: the recipe called for 4 ounces of coconut, or 1/3 the weight of the sugar. But because coconut is so much lighter, this ended up being a little over 1 cup of shredded coconut, or more than half as much quantity as the sugar. You definitely can’t switch back and forth between weight and size on an even ratio.

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Anyway, dump your coconut into your bowl, and add 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

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Also mix in 2 teaspoons of Adam’s Extract vanilla. Vanilla is one of those sneaky things that can often contain gluten, but Adam’s Extract is gluten-free in both liquid and powder form.

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Scramble six eggs and blend them thoroughly into your custard batter, making sure there are no random yellow streaks left floating around in there.

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Now, a proper gourmet chef would use ramekins to cook their individual servings of custard. But if I have taught you anything, it is that I am not a gourmet chef, and most of the time I’m not even proper. So instead I am using these silicone baking cups, which happen to be heart-shaped for added cuteness. They’re great for muffins and jello too, by the way.

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Set them inside a large baking dish with sides, and fill each cup with batter.

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Then carefully pour water into the baking dish, until it comes halfway up the sides of the custard cups. This will ensure an even temperature around your delicate little desserts. Pop them in a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, until the tops feel somewhat firm and the center is no longer jiggly. The larger your baking cups, the longer it will take to cook.

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While that’s cooking, we’re going to make a delicious fruit sauce to go on top, which I’m told is a coulis in French. The recipe suggested raspberries, but I didn’t have any, so strawberries it shall be. Thaw about 1/2 cup of whatever fruit you want for one minute in the microwave (or use fresh fruit, and use the extra minute to feel smug about it.)

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Then add 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Watch your ingredients carefully here! Sugar doesn’t actually come in “powder” form, instead they take cane juice and add it to an existing powder base. Usually it’s corn starch, but it can often include regular flour as well, so double check. The best ones will use tapioca starch instead.

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Add 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice to the mixture…

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And blend away! It’s hard to do such a small quantity in a regular blender, but a food processor or immersion blender will get the job done.

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When your coconut custards come out of the oven, refrigerate them until you’re ready to serve, at least an hour or two. Drizzle some of your strawberry coulis on top, and revel in your gourmet skills. Heck, I might even buy myself a tall white hat.

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Bon Appetit!

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Coconut Custard with Strawberry Sauce

2 cans Thai Kitchen coconut milk
2 cups sugar
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 eggs

1/2 cup strawberries
1/4 cup GF powdered sugar
1/4 tsp lemon juice

Well that sort of grandma mystique is a really silly barrier to modern cooking. If it was good enough for your Nana, it’s good enough for us! She’d be proud to see you feeding your children with the same kind of simple love that she gave to you.

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And that word “simple” is key: egg salad is beyond simple, the way all the best recipes are. First, boil 8 eggs for 15 minutes at a rolling boil. (That means you don’t start the timer until the bubbles are fast and furious, not when that first tiny bubble emissary first drifts up from the bottom of the pot.) I don’t have a picture of my pot here because the truth is I boiled my eggs days ago. They were on the cusp of going bad so I went ahead and cooked them to give them a new lease on life. Just make sure you write a big H on the shell so you know which ones you did.

Peel the cooked eggs and dice them up with an egg slicer. This ingenious little tool is something that no kitchen should ever be without. Just slide the wires through in one direction, then lift and rotate the egg a quarter turn so you can go the other direction. You can do mushrooms with it too!

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Add 3 Tablespoons of Hellman’s mayonnaise to your bowl of egg bits. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] I don’t know why, but it always tickles my funny bone to remember that mayonnaise is mostly made with egg whites, so this is really eggs mixed with more eggs here. I know, I have a strange sense of humor.

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Also add 1 Tablespoon of French’s yellow mustard. Go all gourmet with a gluten-free brown mustard if you’d prefer, but I think Nana might disapprove.

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What’s going to happen as you mix everything together is the yolks of the eggs will disintegrate and become part of the sauce, while the whites stay nice and firm. Using a fork will help speed the process along.

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Toast up some gluten-free bread, slap on a few pieces of lettuce, and you’re done! I got lazy over the summer and started buying prebaked loaves of GF bread a lot, though I’m trying to get back into doing more baking at home to save money. But if you’re curious, this is Food For Life millet bread. It has earned the approval of even non-GF eaters, though it’s important to note that it must be toasted before it can clear the bar. Of course it’s all just a delivery vehicle for this classic, comforting, perfectly grandmotherly egg salad, so you might not even notice the bread anyway.

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Happy Eating!

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Egg Salad

8 eggs, hardboiled
3 TBS Hellman’s mayonnaise
1 TBS French’s yellow mustard

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Start with one container of coconut yogurt (that’s 2/3 cup if you like to make your own.) I’m doing this in a mixing cup with my immersion blender, but you could just as easily do it in a regular blender.

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Add one Tablespoon of lemon juice.

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Now add half of a small avocado. You know how to cut open an avocado, right? Just  slide the knife all the way around in a circle, then pry the two halves apart. Whack the knife into the pit (it makes a very satisfying thok sound,) and pull it out. You can use the other half for a sandwich, salad, or any number of things (including doubling this recipe,) or you can press the exposed side into plastic wrap or foil to seal the air out, and it will keep in the fridge for a few days until you decide.

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Score the avocado in both directions all the way down to the peel, but not through it. Then flip the whole thing inside out, and all your avocado pieces will fall right off, perfectly neat and formed.

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Which is not strictly necessary in this case, since we’re going to blend it all up anyway, but it’s nice to know, if you’re ever trying to fan out some pretty avocado slices on a fancy plate somewhere.

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Finally, add one Tablespoon of water. This will still leave it moderately thick; feel free to adjust the amount of water up or down to get the consistency you’d prefer.

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This, for example, is the perfect consistency for dipping carrot sticks, which is my personal favorite use for this tangy delight. But you may have noticed that my quantity mysteriously doubled here. You may also recall that I mentioned this sauce could be used, among other things, for casseroles. That, my friends, is what we in the business refer to as foreshadowing. Stay tuned.

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Happy Eating!

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Avocado Cream Sauce

2/3 cup coconut yogurt
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 of a small avocado
1 TBS water

You can make your own! Seriously. It’s way easy, and costs about 1/3 as much.

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This isn’t a recipe so much as it is a process, which is to say, having the right kitchen equipment is key, including a yogurt maker. But before we get to that point, you’ll need a double-boiler. (If you’ve never heard of one, that’s a special kind of pot that is actually two pots, one nestled inside the other. You put water in the bottom pot, and this allows you to warm things in the top pot extremely evenly and carefully without scorching. It’s generally used for melting chocolate and other delicate things like that.)

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Anyway, pour in two cans of coconut milk, turn on the heat, and watch the temperature with a thermometer until it gets to exactly 180 degrees. Don’t forget to stir occasionally so you’re getting an accurate reading.

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Meanwhile, get out your yogurt starter. This is the polite name given to the living bacterial critters that make yogurt what it is, also known as probiotics. But be careful! Anything that is officially sold as “yogurt starter” almost certainly has dairy in it. If your kid already takes a good probiotic supplement (and they probably should be,) you can just open up one of those capsules and use it. Or if they don’t, and you’re not sure where to start, Culturelle is a good brand that is gluten- and dairy-free, and comes in individual packets you can use for each batch of yogurt.

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Just as the temperature is right at 180, pull the top pot off of the double-boiler. You just want to graze that upper limit; any higher and it might start boiling, which we don’t want. The only reason we’re heating it up at all is not to cook it, but to sterilize it. Making yogurt involves creating an ideal environment for bacteria to grow, so we have to make sure that there are absolutely no bad bacteria hanging out anywhere near our coconut milk before we start.

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Now it’s sterile, which is great, but it’s still so hot it would kill our good bacteria too if we put them in there, which is not so great. So we have to let it cool down again, to 110 degrees, which happens to be the perfect temperature for making little buggies happy. (The same goes for when we’re baking bread with live yeast, you may recall.) You could just set the pot aside and be very patient, or you could be like me and dip the pot in a large bowl of water to cool it down faster.

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Once you’re back down to 110 degrees, scoop a small amount out of the pot and mix it with your probiotics. Make sure all the powder dissolves thoroughly.

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Then mix the dissolved concoction back into the pot.

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Pour the whole thing into your yogurt maker’s inner container…

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Then close up the outer container around it and let it hang out on your counter for 24 hours. Some instructions might tell you that you only need a few hours, but in my experience that just doesn’t give the bacteria enough time to flourish unless you’re using multiple doses of probiotics. Ideally, when you open that container up, it should be noticeably thicker than it started, and that’s how you’ll know the probiotics have really multiplied. If it’s still completely runny, you may need to use a double-dose of your probiotic, or you may have accidentally killed it at some point, perhaps by adding the bacteria in while the milk was still too hot, or by using a questionable brand of probiotics that was mostly dead to begin with.

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But even the heartiest of probiotic colonies probably aren’t going to result in the kind of yogurt thickness you’re used to buying at the store. To achieve this, you have to strain the yogurt, also known as dripping it. Your yogurt maker should come with a bag of cheesecloth (so named because it’s what you use to make cheese!) Set the bag inside a large bowl, pour the yogurt in, and then lift the bag and hang it by the strings, allowing the clear liquid to drip out.

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I usually tie mine to the microwave door handle. If we were making yogurt out of milk, that liquid would be what’s known as whey, but as it is, it’s just coconut water.

How long you let it drip depends on how thick you want it; at some point enough liquid will come out that you’ll move beyond yogurt into the consistency of cream cheese, which may even be something you want to try to make sometime. I’ve never been able to get it anywhere near a truly firm, grate-able cheese consistency, but I suppose it might be possible if you let it sit long enough. Some people also prefer to drip it in the refrigerator rather than out at room temperature, but my refrigerator doesn’t have nearly enough space for that.

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Ultimately, you’ll have to turn the bag inside out and do a fair bit of scraping to get the yogurt into a storage container. Make sure you make a big mess while you’re doing that. It’s what I would do.

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And I figure, if I’m going to all this work just to have yogurt in the house again, I deserve to be downright decadent in enjoying it. That right there is a banana, topped with coconut yogurt, drizzled with honey. I could eat that for breakfast every single day, y’all.

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Happy Eating!

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Homemade Coconut Yogurt

2 cans coconut milk
1 packet/dose of GFCF probiotics, or more as necessary
banana (or other fruit as desired)
honey (not optional!)

Both!

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First, the runny peanut butter kind. I promise I won’t think less of you if this is the kind you prefer. Well, I promise I’ll try. Start with 1/4 cup of peanut butter. There are a very small number of peanut butters that do contain gluten, believe it or not. Ideally you should just choose one where you can recognize (and pronounce) every ingredient listed, but if you don’t have a fancy organic one available to you, Jif is one national brand that’s GF. [As always, the products I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Mix in 1/2 cup of coconut milk. If you’re looking for something to do with the rest of the can, you could make Tandoori Chicken, or a partial batch of Mango Rice.

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Whisk them together until the peanut butter is totally blended. Then add 2 Tablespoons of Thai Kitchen fish sauce, and 3 Tablespoons of rice vinegar. (Do be sure that you’re using real rice vinegar and not some fake “flavored” vinegar, because it might be fermented from barley – malt is the key word you want to always avoid.)

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Mix in 2 teaspoons of minced ginger, and 1 teaspoon (2 cloves) of minced garlic.

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Finally, add in 4 Tablespoons of brown sugar. You would think this makes it sweet enough for me… but it doesn’t.

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You can keep this in the refrigerator for a good week if you store it in a nice airtight container. But enough of this nonsense! On to the better — er, I mean other version of peanut sauce.

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Alright, I confess. I don’t bother to replicate this elusive sauce from scratch, I cheat and use a bottled base. Actually, “I don’t bother” is misleading, because I have tried many times and failed. I just can’t get that awesome flavor of restaurant-style peanut sauce on my own. If you can’t find this Premier Japan sauce at your local health food store, it is available online as well.

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Start with 1 cup of the hoisin sauce, and mix in 1 Tablespoon of creamy peanut butter.

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Also add in 2-3 teaspoons of water to thin it out just a bit. And that’s it!

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Of course it helps if you have some spring rolls on hand to dip into your batch of delicious peanut sauce. If you don’t know how to make spring rolls… stay tuned.

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Happy Eating!

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Peanut Sauce #1

1/4 cup GF peanut butter
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 Tbs Thai Kitchen fish sauce
3 Tbs rice vinegar
2 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
4 Tbs brown sugar

Peanut Sauce #2

1 cup Premier Japan hoisin sauce
1 Tbs GF peanut butter
2-3 tsp water

Granted, plain white potatoes are not really that nutritious in the grand scheme of things, but they can be an excellent vehicle for a wide variety of toppings. Like a lot of meals, they aren’t traditionally GFCF, what with all the butter and cheese and sour cream, but who wants to be traditional anyhow? A little creativity goes a long way.

But before we can revel in our topping choices, we have to get our potato into a baked state of mind. First, jab it liberally on all sides with a fork. (If you don’t, you will have yourself an exploding potato instead.)

Then wrap it loosely in a paper towel, and microwave it for 4 and a half minutes. Now, this is important: take it out of the microwave and let it sit for another 5 minutes. It will continue to cook as it rests, so that by the end the middle will be perfectly cooked without the outside being overdone.

If you are making several potatoes instead of just one or two, you may want to do it the slow but simultaneous way, which is to put all of them in a 350 degree oven for one hour. Of course you don’t want to put a paper towel in the oven, but the fork-jabbing step is still quite necessary, believe me.

Now, on to the toppings! Today I decided I was going to go with kind of a modified version of a BLT, because I had some leftover bacon in the refrigerator. “Leftover” is a bit disingenuous, actually, since it’s always part of my plan when I make bacon to cook a few extra slices so I’ll have some ready to use in a salad or whatever later in the week. See here for a description of how I make bacon in the oven with zero effort and very little mess. Unfortunately, this wasn’t destined to be a true BLT, because I didn’t have any lettuce, and I wasn’t convinced the texture would be that good on the potato anyway.

But I did include what I consider to be a vital part of a BLT, and that’s chipotle mayo! The chiles in Sriracha (also sometimes known as Rooster Sauce) are not truly chipotles, but they get the point across. You could mix in real chipotles in adobo, or even dried chipotle spice or chili powder, whatever you have on hand. The proportions are a little fuzzy; start with 1 teaspoon of spicy stuff in 2-3 Tablespoons of mayonnaise, and go from there. Not all mayonnaises are gluten-free, but Hellman’s actually prints it right on the label for us, isn’t that nice of them? [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] And, if you mix it up in one of these tiny single-serving disposable tupperware things, then you can just pop a lid on whatever you don’t use and save it for a sandwich or GF tortilla wrap later in the week. Efficiency is your friend!

And here we have my completed Bacon-Tomato-Chipotle-Mayo potato. (Read that out loud once or twice, it’s fun.) I was really wishing for some fresh green onions to go with it as well, but my empty refrigerator mocked me in this regard. But what’s important to understand is that anything, absolutely anything, can go on a baked potato. Meats, beans, veggies, GFCF dressings, guacamole… If you’re not up for baking gluten-free hamburger buns, for example, you could just fill a baked potato with ground beef and hamburger fixings. Or rather than always buying the expensive gluten-free pastas, you could fill one with chicken and spaghetti sauce. Why, just a few days ago I even made one with Thanksgiving leftovers:

That’s turkey, cranberry sauce, and some extra deviled egg filling I still had hanging around after I’d already filled all my egg halves to overflowing.  This was one of my favorite baked potato combinations I’ve ever eaten, and believe me, I’ve made a lot.

Happy Eating!