And thanks to everyone who posted about what they’d like to see in the future, I’m going to do my best to provide the most helpful recipes I can. Speaking of, have you ever made your own beans? I avoided it for so long, because it had such an old-school mystique about it, I thought it must be terribly hard. But it isn’t! What’s more, beans are very healthy, and homemade ones cost one-tenth what canned beans do.

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Look, it’s a bag of beans! Everything I’m about to describe goes for all types of beans, by the way, I just happen to be using black beans because they’re my favorite.

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The first thing you must do with real beans is soak them overnight. There are ways you can try to speed-cook them, but the beans don’t come out as well, and what’s more, soaked beans cause less flatulence. That’s better for everyone involved, don’t you think? I find a drink pitcher to be the most convenient way to soak them.

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Fill it most of the way with water and just stick it either on the counter, or in the fridge, before you go to bed. Being at room temperature will speed up the soaking, and help the oligosaccharides break down faster, which is what makes the beans easier to digest and ultimately leads to less gas. But they probably shouldn’t have more than about 12 hours soaking at room temperature. So if I’m going to be slow-cooking them in the crock pot all day, I soak them overnight at room temperature and deal with them in the morning. If I’m going to be cooking them in a normal pot on the stove, I soak them in the fridge, and leave them there all the way until the late afternoon when I’m ready to start cooking them.

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One way or the other, when you’re ready to start cooking your beans, pour your nasty water out (see how handy the pitcher lid is for this?) and cover them again with fresh water.

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Boil them for 2-3 hours on the stove, or 5-6 hours in the crock pot on low. If you have to leave them in there for longer, it’s not really a big deal, they’ll just be extra soft. Make sure you start with at least 3 times as much water as you have beans, because they’re going to absorb and swell a lot.

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The seasonings depend entirely on what kind of beans you’re making, and what kind of recipe you’re going to use them in. I was going for a Mexican flavor this night, so I put in 1 teaspoon each of chili powder and cumin. (After it was done, I kinda wished I’d put some dried cilantro in there too. Oh well, there’s always next time.) Now is when a lot of people like to put bacon or other pieces of pork in with the beans to flavor them. If you do this, make sure you get a gluten-free brand of bacon, and preferably one with no added nitrates or nitrites either, like Applegate Farms. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!]

When you store the leftovers — and you should definitely have some, because the whole point of cooking beans is to make a huge batch at once — keep them covered with some of the remaining liquid so they stay moist. They’ll freeze well this way too. When it’s time to reheat them, you can drain them like you would a regular can of beans, or…

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You can dump the whole thing back into a pan on medium-high heat, and shove them around a bit until they mash up and become refried beans. Who knew it was that easy?

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Here we have my concoction for the evening: sorta-refried black beans over Mexican rice, topped with corn and mango pico de gallo (you can find a discussion of pico de gallo in the comments section here, if you’re not familiar with it.) You could also put them in tacos, in a soup, as a side dish… one batch can be used for several very different meals throughout the week, saving you lots of time, money, and effort.

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Happy Eating!

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Of course ours isn’t truly Buttered Chicken, but Margarined Chicken just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I hope you can understand why I called this recipe decadent a second ago: the first step is to melt an entire stick of Fleischmann’s Unsalted (not Original) Margarine in a very large pan. Yes, an entire stick. Just remind yourself how glad you are that it’s not an entire stick of real butter going straight to your hips. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

As a side note, you could also use the traditional Indian butter known as ghee, which is what truly authentic Buttered Chicken recipes call for. While ghee is made with real dairy butter, the cooking process that makes it into ghee removes the casein. You have to balance how sensitive your kids are to dairy, and how much you trust the manufacturer to really process out every last molecule of casein. I have known families that use it with absolutely no ill effects, but we don’t bother with it.

Meanwhile, dice up two onions, and toss them in with the margarine over low heat so they can start getting nice and golden.

One of the defining features of Indian cuisine is the ridiculous number of spices (especially when you consider the fact that garam masala is a blend of spices in and of itself!) But if your family ends up loving this recipe as much as mine does, you can measure out a second little container of all these spices as you’re going along so you’ll already have one pre-made for the next time. We’re going to use 2 tsp garam masala, 2 tsp cilantro (also known as coriander,) 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cardamom, 1/2 tsp black pepper, and 1 tsp salt. Whew!

You’re also going to add in 1 teaspoon each of minced garlic and ginger. If you want to do the extra work and mince it fresh yourself, be my guest. Me, I’ve got laundry to do. Among other things.

Just in the last year, the GFCF community has been granted a huge gift in the form of this new coconut milk yogurt by So Delicious. Of course, various soy yogurts have been around forever, and you could still use one of those in this recipe if you prefer. But can I tell you? I do not prefer. I really, really hate the taste of soy-based anything. I can smell that stuff across the room, and it is not my cup of tea. Plus, soy is one of the top 8 major allergens, so it’s really nice to have an alternative, or at least one that you don’t have to ferment yourself in your own yogurt machine. Conveniently, we need exactly one container, but if you happen to be working with a larger tub of yogurt, it’s going to be roughly 2/3 cup.

Then add 2 Tablespoons of tomato paste, stir vigorously, and your sauce is ready. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Do double-check that your tomato paste brand is gluten-free. There should be nothing in that can but tomatoes.

Cut up 4 chicken breasts, and combine with the sauce so everything’s nice and coated. Yes, this is kind of a large recipe. On the one hand, you could easily cut it in half. But on the other hand, it reheats extremely well, so leftovers are a great choice too.

By now your onions should be looking good, so you can go ahead and turn up the heat a bit and stir the chicken mixture into the pan rapidly. You don’t want to cook the little pieces all the way through yet, just get the outsides seared — maybe 5-8 minutes, max.

Then pour in 1/2 cup of water…

And snuggle two bay leaves under the surface. Let them simmer in their fragrant little hot tub for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After your dish has been simmering for 30 minutes, it’s time to start your rice. (Do yourself a favor and buy a rice cooker, if you haven’t already. You can’t put a price on perfectly-cooked rice.) I usually prepare about 1 1/2 cups, but my plan is never to have leftover rice, just leftover buttered chicken. So if you’ve made peace with the texture of reheated rice — obviously I haven’t — you may want to make more so your leftovers are in equal amounts.

Stir in 1/3 cup of almond milk, and allow it to simmer for another 15-20 minutes, until the rice is done.

Don’t forget to fish those bay leaves out of the pot before you serve it though. The kids might think you’re trying to poison them if they find plants hidden in their meal.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Buttered Chicken

2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp cilantro (coriander)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2/3 cup coconut milk yogurt
2 Tbs tomato paste

1 stick (8 TBS) Fleischmann’s Unsalted margarine
2 onions
4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup water
2 bay leaves
1/3 cup almond milk

What was I saying? Oh yes: meat. A basic, well-seasoned piece of meat is such a rarity these days, people will think you’re some sort of brilliant gourmet for serving it, and marvel at your minimalist elegance. This here is about 2 pounds of beef brisket, with a dry rub of spices pressed into it. What spices you ask? Well, it’s brown sugar, paprika, chili powder, salt, and pepper. 2 Tablespoons each. What I like to do is mix all the spices on the surface of a large plate, and then just lay the meat down on the plate on all sides. I really should have gotten a picture of this, I know, but my hands were all covered in meat juice, and then one of the kids needed something, and somehow I got distracted and forgot.

Anyway, if you’ve got the time to let your meat sit with the spice rub for a few hours, great; if not, don’t sweat it. When you’re ready, place the brisket in a dutch oven or crock pot (but really, a dutch oven is better. I won’t quibble about the color, they have red and brown, too, if for some strange reason you don’t agree with me that my blue one is the most beautiful thing ever. The important thing is that enamel surface on the inside.) Make sure you lay the meat fat side up.

Pour in about 1 1/2 cups of Pacific Foods beef broth. [As always, my brands were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels.] If necessary, add some water to the pot until the liquid is at least an inch deep, and make sure to lift the edges of the meat a bit so it can flow underneath. Then just put the lid on and stick it in a 325 degree oven for 3-4 hours (or set your crock pot to high for that amount of time, if you insist on doing it that way.)

Man, I wish I could tell you how good my house smells right now. When it’s time for dinner, just drench the top of your meat in Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. There are other GFCF barbecue sauces available too, but as a Texan, I have to tell you: this stuff is the real deal. If it’s available in your area, this is the product you want.

See? That is some fine barbecue brisket right there. Serve this with smashed potato salad, and you’ll have a positively mouth-watering meal that no one will even suspect is GFCF.

Happy Eating!

Brisket

2 TBS brown sugar
2 TBS McCormick’s paprika
2 TBS McCormick’s chili powder
2 TBS salt
2 TBS pepper
1-2 lbs. beef brisket
1 1/2 cups Pacific Foods beef broth
1 cup Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce

Okay, confession time: as I am about to present it to you, this recipe is not actually kid-friendly. But, just leave out the spicier seasonings, and you will have something that should more rightly be called candied walnuts–and those are ridiculously kid-friendly, just as the new name implies. They’re just like… well, candy. But I’m still showing you the spices part of the recipe, because they are so amazingly tasty to the adult palette. Make half the batch for the kids and half for the grownups, if you want. I originally got this recipe from a friend this last Christmas, who told me his wife makes them every year. I am not one for standing on tradition, so I threw the “holiday” designation out the window and have made them 3 or 4 times since then. They are that good.

First, preheat the oven to 325, and put a pot of water on the stove. While that works itself up to boiling temperature, mix 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 1/2 Tablespoons of canola oil in a large bowl.

Stir well, until it looks like fluffy snow. Or at least what I imagine snow would look like, since I live in Texas and we don’t have that crazy Yankee stuff down here.

When the water has a good rolling boil going, pour in 1 pound of shelled walnuts and blanch them for one minute. Why not just say “boil” them? Well (it has been explained to me,) boiling implies cooking until something is done, whereas blanching implies only a brief boiling, often only meant to clean the food rather than cooking it. And you’ll soon see that’s what we’re doing here, as your water turns into a nasty mud of walnutty stuff.

Drain the walnuts. They should come out clean, but if you feel you must rinse them, make sure you only use very hot water, because we want them to stay nice and hot when we dump them into the bowl of sugar.

Mix them gently until all the nuts are nice and coated, and there are no large clumps of sugar left. Then let them sit there in the bowl for about ten minutes. As they cool, the sugar will sort of gelatinize in place.

While you’re waiting, you can get your bowl of spices ready. If you’re making this with some-but-not-all of the spices, you’ll just be a little faster than the rest of us. If you’re making this with no extra spices at all, well… go watch TV for a few minutes, I guess. Or pop your head out of the kitchen and make sure none of the kids are maiming each other, that’s always a good idea too.

I use McCormick spices whenever possible, because while not all of their spices are gluten-free, most are, and they have a company policy of always clearly labelling the jar if any wheat flours are included. (But that still means you should always double-check your jars!)

Clockwise from the top, that’s 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp white pepper, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, and 1/2 tsp chili powder. The cumin is the bulk of the content, obviously, so if you’re eliminating that one you might want to ease up a bit on whatever you do keep, since you’re going to end up with a pretty different balance of flavors.

Mix everything together thoroughly. Feel free to draw little patterns in your spices if you’ve got extra time. I won’t tell if you won’t.

Set your bowl of spices aside for now (or turn off the TV, or come back from threatening your children with indentured servitude,) and dump the sugary walnuts onto a foil-lined baking sheet. Man, I sure use the word “dump” a lot in my cooking. A relationship counselor would probably say that indicates something about my subconcious feelings towards it, and suggest I use less judgmental language.

Spread it all out into a single layer. This is important to keep the little buggers from sticking to each other.

You’re going to bake them in the 325-degree oven for a total of 30 minutes, but you’ve got to stir and flip them frequently so you don’t end up with a single carmelized sheet of nuts. I usually cook them for 10 minutes, stir; 10 minutes, stir; 5 minutes, stir; and then a final 5 minutes.

Looking good!

Now, don’t try this if you buy a thinner brand of foil that tears easily, or you will end up with a huge mess. But one way or another, move the nuts into the bowl of spices you prepared earlier.

You want to do this while the nuts are still hot, so the spices will bond to them better. Keep tossing them gently until they’re evenly coated and there’s no residual powder at the bottom of the bowl.

Then lay them out on a fresh piece of foil to cool completely. Even if you’re making these without the spices, you’re still going to want to use a clean sheet of foil, because the old one is going to be all crusty and sticky with sugar. When they’re cool, just store them in an airtight container and they’ll keep indefinitely–or until you discover someone’s gone and eaten them all.

Happy Eating!

Spiced Walnuts

1 lb. walnuts (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 TBS canola oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1/2 tsp chili powder

Mexican food is one of the safer cuisines to eat on this diet, since so much of it is corn-based. But nonetheless, it turned out that our favorite pre-diet Mexican restaurant not only served tortilla chips made with wheat flour and whey, but even their rice was unsafe. The GFCFBoy absolutely loves to eat refried beans and Mexican rice, so I knew I had to find a workable recipe right away.

First, dice up 1/2 an onion. You can add other veggies if your kids will tolerate them, like some frozen peas or carrot bits. Unfortunately our old restaurant didn’t do that, and my kid has always been fixated on the look of his foods, rather than whether he actually likes the ingredients or not. So I can put carrots and peas in other dishes, no problem–but not his beloved Mexican rice.

Toss the veggies in a pan with some olive oil and 1 clove of minced garlic, and let everything sautee over low heat while you prepare the rice cooker. If you don’t have a rice cooker, you are really missing out, I’m telling you. This thing is the greatest kitchen appliance ever. We used it probably once a week even before we had to rely so much more on rice for our meals. If we had to start selling our personal possessions, this is the very last thing I’d get rid of. I’d be wearing a burlap sack and still happily cooking perfect rice with zero effort.

But if you insist on doing things the old-fashioned way, you can still use this recipe. It just won’t be as cool. Instead of cooking the rice in water, we’re going to boil it in the following concoction: first, 3 cups of Pacific Foods gluten-free beef broth (yes, I know the picture only shows two cups, I don’t have a measuring cup that will hold three cups all at once.)

1 tsp of McCormick chili powder (YES, I know that’s not the right measuring spoon, I use two scoops of the littler one because it fits inside my spice jar. I’m practicing my math skills while keeping my kitchen counters clean at the same time.)

1 1/2 tsp McCormick cumin…

And 6 Tablespoons of Contadina tomato sauce. Please note that the Contadina tomato sauce “with Italian Seasonings” is not gluten-free. But seriously, why would you want to put Italian seasonings in Mexican rice anyway? Ya weirdo. [As always, manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your brands.]

Once all that is mixed up in your rice cooker, and the onions are translucent, add 1 1/2 cups of uncooked rice to the pan.

Sautee the rice lightly, stirring frequently. You probably want to use a larger pan than I did, I always try to get away with the pan that fits better in the dishwasher, and it doesn’t always work out. The point of cooking the rice like this is to sort of seal each grain before you boil it, which will result in that nice non-sticky texture that Mexican rice is famous for.

See how the grains are turning translucent, but there are still some that are mostly white? If all the oil in the pan has been absorbed, you can add another Tablespoon or so. You don’t have to get every grain translucent, but the more the better.

Now scrape the whole pan into the liquid in the rice cooker, and give it all a good stir. If you were doing this without a rice cooker, at this point you’d put it all in whatever pot you were going to use, bring it to a boil, cover with the lid, etc.

But all I have to do is push this button down and walk away. It will pop back up at the precise moment the rice is done, and not a moment sooner or later. No burned rice on the bottom, no accidentally checking your pan too early and letting all the steam out.

Ta daa! Just like at the restaurant. Except gluten-free, cheaper, and available even in the middle of the night if you get some sort of weird craving for it. Which you just might, you never know.

Happy Eating!

Mexican Rice

1 1/2 cups uncooked rice
1/2 chopped onion
1 clove garlic
3 Tbsp oil
3 cups Pacific Foods beef broth
1 tsp McCormick chili powder
1 1/2 tsp McCormick cumin
6 TBS Contadina tomato sauce

This is my favorite chili recipe of all time. You can use ground beef if you really want, but give the turkey a try at least once. It tastes better, it’s healthier for you, and it’s cheaper. How much more could you ask from a humble meat?

First, dump 2 pounds of ground turkey into a big soup pot with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Check out those beautiful blue handles–that’s my Lodge dutch oven, and I’ve been in love with it since the day I got it. The inner surface is this sealed enamel stuff, and it cleans easier than any Teflon-coated pan I have. Plus, you can throw the whole thing in the oven, lid and all. Which means you’ll be seeing it again whenever I get around to posting my pot roast recipe.

While the turkey starts browning just a bit, dice an onion. I’ve seen some official definitions of “dice” that are pretty ridiculously tiny for the amateur chef to achieve, so perhaps you may choose to say I am merely “chopping” an onion. Whatever, just get it into the smallest pieces you can manage without cutting off a finger.

Add your onions to the pot, along with 3 cloves of minced garlic (or 1 1/2 tsp of the jarred kind) and 1 Tablespoon of chili powder. You can add more if you like it spicy, but don’t make that decision yet until you check out the next step.

This, my friends, is chipotles in adobo. It sounds fancy, but really it’s not–a chipotle pepper is actually just a jalapeno pepper that’s been roasted. The “adobo” part is where the real flavor comes from, and that’s what that red sauce is. Recipes vary, but it’s generally a mixture of tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, garlic, oregano, cumin, and black pepper. Think of it as a spicy Mexican barbecue sauce. Anyway, you buy this stuff in a little can in the ethnic foods aisle, but check your brands for gluten. I can’t even remember the name of the brand I get, because it contains whole peppers, which are kind of a pain to work with, so what I do is throw the entire contents of the can in a blender, and store it in a tupperware in the fridge–so that can is long gone. 1 Tablespoon of the blended sauce is equal to about one chili pepper. In this big recipe, 1/2 a Tablespoon will still leave it mild enough for the kids, or if you’re really worried you can just use the sauce without the peppers blended in. Don’t omit it entirely though, because that wonderful smokey flavor is really essential to the final product.

Okay, enough with the chipotle pepper lesson. Mix it all up and let the meat brown, stirring occasionally.

When the meat is cooked, drain a can of Bush’s red kidney beans and dump it in the pot. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels.]

Add a can of crushed tomatoes. My generic brand is probably not available in your area, but really, all a can of tomatoes ought to have in it is tomatoes, water, and maybe a little salt. Don’t even waste time with brands that put extra crap in their cans, whether it’s ultimately gluten-free or not. It’s a can of vegetables, for pete’s sake, it doesn’t need anything else.

Also add in two cups of GF chicken broth. This is another ingredient you have to hunt down a suitable brand for, and in my experience you usually have to spring for the organic brands before you get one that’s safe. As a side note, another thing you have to watch out for is that packaged chicken breasts will often be injected with broth (the package will say something like “Up to 10% solution.”) Take the time to verify with the manufacturers that the broth they’re injecting is gluten-free, or pay more for organic, it’s your call.

Now, give the chili a good stir and let it simmer for about 20-30 minutes. In the meantime, it’s time to make the corn cakes! The number of ingredients can seem daunting, but if you lay it all out in front of you it’s not so bad.

This is 3/4 cup rice flour, 1 cup of cornmeal, and 2 TBS brown sugar.

Then 1 tsp of salt, and 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum. I resisted buying xanthan gum for a long time when I started gluten-free cooking, because the name was just too weird, and I didn’t even know what it looked like, and I just didn’t want to deal with something so foreign, you know? But eventually I figured out it’s just another white powder in a Bob’s Red Mill bag, and hey, I already have like 3 or 4 of those in my kitchen already, so what the heck. And it really does make a difference in these recipes. It adds that fluffiness and stretchiness back in, the things that used to be taken care of by gluten in your old life.

Then 3 tsp of gluten-free baking powder, and you’re done with the dry ingredients.

Then the wet ingredients: 2 eggs, 4 TBS Fleischmann’s margarine, and 1 cup of almond milk. Don’t put that milk away just yet; we’re going to need it again in a second.

Melt the magarine in the microwave, and whisk in the eggs.

Then add the almond milk…

And work that bicep. My great-grandmother must have been super buff, whisking stuff like this every single day.

Now you want to add just a teensy bit more almond milk, to get the batter to the right consistency. It’s usually about 2-3 Tablespoons.

It will still be thick, like all gluten-free mixes, but you want it so the batter stretches, rather than tearing into chunks.

Ladle it into your preheated pan (oiled with Canola cooking spray or dabs of margarine,) and give it several minutes before flipping. You won’t see any bubbles surfacing like there would be with a normal pancake batter, you just have to test the underside every once in awhile and see if it’s easy to slip the spatula under yet or not.

Because the batter is so thick, sometimes an air bubble will get trapped underneath and you’ll end up with strange designs on your corn cakes. This one looks like a key to me, or maybe a guitar, I can’t decide. I’m still waiting for the day I hit the jackpot and get one that kind of looks like the Virgin Mary, and then I can sell it on eBay for a ton of money and hire someone to make all my corn cakes for me.

Right about the time you’ve cooked all your corn cakes, the chili should be ready to serve. You could, of course, serve the cakes alongside the chili, or even forego the whole cake shape in the first place and make them muffins or something instead.

But what I like to do is serve it underneath the chili. You get a bit of corn cake in every bite, and it’s a fun surprise, like fruit at the bottom of your yogurt. Except we can’t have yogurt anymore–all the more reason to adapt the food-hiding-within-food presentation to new and exciting dishes, am I right? Plus, it’s a corn cake, which makes this final product remarkably close to Frito Pie. Truth be told, when I’m running short on time I actually serve it over Fritos to begin with.

Happy Eating!

Turkey Chili with Corn Cakes

2 lbs. ground turkey
1 med. onion
3 cloves garlic
1 TBS chili powder
1 TBS chipotles in adobo
1 can Bush’s kidney beans
1 can crushed tomatoes
2 cups GF chicken broth

1 cup corn meal
3/4 cup rice flour
2 TBS brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3 tsp GF baking powder
2 eggs
4 TBS margarine
1 cup plus about 2-3 TBS almond milk