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But I’m getting ahead of myself. The important thing about real baked beans is you have to plan ahead, because they have to soak overnight the day before. In theory there are some quick-cook methods out there that call for partially boiling the beans as a sort of speed soak, but to me that actually ends up being more work, because I have to monitor a boiling pot for an hour or two during the day instead of just dumping the beans in a pitcher and going to bed.

Either way though, first measure out 2 cups of navy beans, and give them a quick sort, picking out any rocks or broken beans. I just transfer them one handful at a time from the bowl into the pitcher, checking as I go.

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Here’s the junk I pulled out. It’s not a lot, but you will notice it does include a couple of little black rocks. Trust me, you do not want to bite into one of those, and they are likely to be found in even the highest-quality bean packages. Always pick over your beans even if it seems like a tedious task; your molars will thank you.

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Now we fill the pitcher with water. These beans are going to absorb a ton, so make sure you fill it almost to the top even if it looks like overkill for such a small pile of beans. Leave it on the counter (or in the fridge if that makes you more comfortable,) and have sweet dreams!

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Check it out, they’ve doubled in size!

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You’ll need about 1/2 pound of bacon for this, or 8 ounces, which is usually less than a full package. But since it’s morning now, you can just peel off a couple of strips and cook them up for breakfast while you chop up the rest. Remember to use gluten-free bacon — the one I use most often is Hormel Natural Choice, but there are plenty of fancy organic brands that are safe as well. Also, dice up an onion, and be sure to forget to take a photo of it just like I did.

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Using a slotted spoon, remove the beans from the pitcher and layer them with the bacon and onion in a crock pot. It’s not strictly necessary to layer them, but the bacon and onion are going to tend to float at first, so it helps to use the weight of the beans to keep them mixed down in there while it’s cooking. Make sure you don’t throw out that leftover bean water in the pitcher, because we’re going to use it in a minute.

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Now we’re going to make a fabulous sauce for our beans. If you want to be totally lazy, you can just buy a bottled GFCF barbecue sauce and use about 1 cup of that instead. But this homemade sauce is pretty easy to make, and believe me, the flavor’s worth it. Just mix together 1/2 cup Heinz ketchup, 1 Tablespoon Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce, and 3 Tablespoons of 100% pure maple syrup in a small saucepan. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Add 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper…

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2 teaspoons of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon McCormick ground mustard. Ground mustard is one of those spices that is often mixed with flour to help it pour better (instead of clumping like you see my flour-free spice doing here,) so watch your brands.

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Heat everything just until the sugar is fully dissolved, then pour your sauce directly into your crock pot and stir to get it all nice and coated.

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Now pour in enough bean liquid from your pitcher to completely cover the beans. Add fresh water if you don’t have enough, or just use fresh water entirely if you don’t like the idea of using something called “bean liquid.” Put the lid on, and cook it on HIGH for 10 hours.

If you’re going to be at work all day, you’ll want to put in an extra 2 inches of water, or if you’re going to be home, just check on it every few hours and add water as needed to keep the beans covered.

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You can take the lid off for the last hour or so of cooking to help the sauce thicken if needed. But be careful, the aroma might tempt you to start eating them straight out of the pot. You wouldn’t want to burn your mouth.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Baked Beans

2 cups dried navy beans
1/2 pound Hormel Natural Choice bacon
1 onion
1/2 cup Heinz ketchup
1 TBS Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire
3 TBS 100% maple syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp McCormick ground mustard

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First, take a 2-3 pound pork roast, and place it in your dutch oven (or a crock pot, if you must.) This particular cut of meat is called a Boston Butt, so excuse me while I snicker like an 8-year-old. You should always place slow-cooked meat fat side up, by the way. I like to put a sliced-up onion in there as well. It’s not really to eat, it just kind of adds flavor to the vapors as the meat cooks. I’m convinced it makes a difference, anyway, but you could skip it I guess.

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I used to have this whole dry spice rub procedure, but it always ended up making a kind of crust on the meat — which is great, if you’re slicing it, but we’re shredding this meat, and a stiff outer layer just gets in the way. Better to cook the meat plain, and put the spices in the sauce. So just give it a liberal splashing of Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce for now. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Now add 1/2 cup of water in the bottom, put the lid on and stick it in a 300 degree oven for 3-4 hours. (Or set your crock pot to HIGH for 3-4 hours if you’re doing it that way. But make sure that crock pot lid is on tight, or all your moisture will escape and your meat will be tough and chewy.)

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A few minutes before your meat’s ready to come out, prepare the sauce. Now, this is a traditional Kentucky barbecue sauce, which means it’s vinegar-based. If you’d rather just slather yours with a Southern style (i.e., thicker and sweeter) barbecue sauce, that’s your call. I’m a fence-sitter in the great barbecue sauce debate: I prefer Southern style for brisket, and Kentucky style for pulled pork.

Start with 1 cup of apple cider vinegar. Please ignore the really ugly label; this is the good stuff, I assure you. It tastes better than the processed kind, and it’s better for you too. But if you do get another brand, be sure that it’s not “apple cider flavored” vinegar, because that might contain gluten.

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Add in 1/2 cup of Heinz ketchup…

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1 Tablespoon of white sugar…

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And 2 Tablespoons of brown sugar.

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Then add 1/2 Tablespoon each of salt and white pepper. You could substitute black pepper, but the white pepper is more subtle.

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Will you look at that beauty? It’s still in the dutch oven in this shot because I couldn’t even get it onto a serving plate in one piece, that’s how tender it is. Falling apart!

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This is what’s become of my onion, by the way. On the one hand, no, you wouldn’t want to eat this slag formerly known as a vegetable. But on the other hand, that little pile used to be an entire giant onion. Where did the rest of it go? Flavoring the pork, that’s where!

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Scrape at the chunks of meat with two forks until it’s all nice and shredded.

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Then pour in your sauce. Depending on how large your roast is, you may not need all of it. I start with about 2/3 of the mixture and then add more as necessary. You want everything coated, but without a large puddle at the bottom of the bowl.

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It’s time to warm up our gluten-free buns! Our store started carrying this Kinnikinnick brand, and it immediately became our new favorite. I have served these to people who didn’t know they were gluten-free, and they honestly had no idea. Like most other prepared gluten-free breads, you just store them in the freezer and then microwave however many you need when it’s time to eat.

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I think this picture speaks for itself. If you’ll excuse me, I have some chowing down to do.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Pulled Pork Sandwiches

2-3 lb. pork roast
1 onion
2-3 TBS Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup water

1 cup Bragg apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup Heinz ketchup
1 TBS white sugar
2 TBS brown sugar
1/2 TBS salt
1/2 TBS white pepper
Kinnikinnick hamburger buns

Simple is best, y’all. Simple is best. Add about a Tablespoon of Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce to a pound of lean ground beef. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Divide into equal balls, and smoosh them right in the pan. If you believe it’s sacrilege to cook burgers on the stove instead of on a grill, I cordially invite you to come stand on my back porch in the 90% humidity, when it’s still 95 degrees even after the sun’s gone down, and count the number of mosquitos that bite you before you come around to my way of thinking.

Are there recipes for making your own GF hamburger buns out there? Sure. And maybe someday I’ll work up the energy to experiment with them. But I figure I do so much cooking and baking as it is, I allow myself to splurge on some of the basics that do have commercially-premade versions available. I’ve honestly found that the amount of money I save by no longer buying dairy products far outweighs the extra cost of a few GF hamburger buns. Cheese is expensive! Anyway, Gillian’s is our favorite brand. Whole Foods carries them, in a little freezer case next to the bakery. The texture is more like a biscuit than a typical hamburger bun, but for what it’s worth it’s a darn good biscuit. These are also especially useful if only some members of the household are eating GFCF, or if you’re trying to host non-GFCF guests at a cookout, because you can just heat up one at a time as you need. Just remember, if you toast your buns, never do it in the same pan or grill that you toasted the gluten buns on!

The burgers ought to be done after about 7 minutes per side over medium heat, but to be honest I never really pay that close attention. I just busy myself with pulling out all the fixings, slicing the tomato, warming up the buns and cutting them in half… and round about the time I’m finished the burgers are too. Do pay attention to your brands, as there are unsafe versions of all of these condiments. If you’re one of those heathens who puts mayonnaise on burgers, go for Hellman’s. It’s not pictured here because I’ve raised my children right, you see.

And if you just can’t have a burger without cheese, you can always go for rice cheese slices. I wouldn’t, but you (and the GFCF Husband) certainly could.

Happy Eating!

Hamburgers

1 lb. lean ground beef
1 TBS Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce
1 pkg. Gillian’s GF French rolls
Heinz ketchup
French’s mustard
Hellman’s mayonnaise
Vlasic pickles
tomato
lettuce
onion

I know, everyone’s got a meatloaf recipe, but this one’s tried-and-true. And more importantly, it has a few subtle alterations that make it GFCF.

Start with 1/4 cup crushed Rice Chex cereal. [As always, manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your ingredient lists.]

Crack in one egg.

And add 1/4 cup of… well, liquid. I’m using water here, because I was out of everything else I might normally use. Seriously, everything. Of course I didn’t realize that until I was at this point in cooking, but I had hungry kids and had to make do. I suppose I could hide my shame from you and re-photograph the meatloaf recipe on a night when I didn’t screw it up, but then you might get some notion that things always work smoothly around here. One of the biggest barriers to starting this diet is thinking that everyone else out there is some Baking SuperMom with a spotless 1950s apron, and you are the only one who can’t hack it, but that’s just not true. Anyone can do it, even those of us who can’t remember to go to the grocery store on a timely basis. 

But normally, I get super-sneaky at this point and use pureed vegetables for my liquid. The kids don’t even know they’re eating them. The store has these perfect GFCF veggie purees in little single-serving jars, all ready to go… stocked in the baby aisle. That’s right–I put baby food in my recipes. Check your brands to be sure, but the majority of them contain nothing but the pureed vegetable and water. Butternut squash or sweet potatoes are the easiest to sneak in, but you can even try for something more hardcore like peas if your kids won’t notice the slight color change. Maybe it’s a disciplinary cop-out, but it is so much easier than fighting with them about how many bites of vegetables they’re going to eat tonight.

I also add a Tablespoon of dried minced onion. This stuff is effectively a spice; it doesn’t count as a vegetable at all. See, says right on the label: THIS PRODUCT HAS NO SIGNIFICANT NUTRITIONAL VALUE. That always cracks me up, I have no idea why.

1/2 teaspoon of basil…

1/2 teaspoon of salt…

And 1/4 teaspoon of pepper to round out the spices.

Then two Tablespoons of Heinz ketchup. Technically, ketchup is a pureed fruit, so you could fairly call this a “fruit and vegetable meatloaf,” if you wanted. But then your kids might suspect you were duping them. Better to call it “Meatloaf with No Vegetables In It, No Sirree.”

I love food that retains the shape of its container. I don’t know how old I was before I figured out that cranberry sauce isn’t naturally shaped like a can. Anyway, this is 1 pound of ground beef, shaped like a little plastic-wrapped tube.

Mix well.

And smoosh it into your meatloaf pan. Make sure you spray it with canola oil first, or you’ll be hard at work scrubbing it clean later. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

The final product isn’t very pretty, but meatloaf never is. The kids are gonna cover it in ketchup anyway, right?

Happy Eating!

Your Basic Meatloaf

1/4 cup crushed Rice Chex
1 egg
1 jar GF baby food (butternut squash)
1 TBS dried minced onion
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 TBS Heinz ketchup
1 lb. ground beef

Just looking at this picture makes me want to eat these again, even though I just had them yesterday. This here is our family’s solution to the tragic loss of fried chicken. Yes, you could bread them in the same mixture as my fabulous chicken nugget recipe, but frying full chicken legs requires deeper oil, and takes longer to fry, and, well… the truth is I already make the nuggets on a regular basis, and I’m just not into doing lots of work, you know? But these chicken legs, they couldn’t be easier. And the delectable red honey sauce is kid-friendly, but sophisticated enough for adults.

Here are the ingredients. Simple, right? Note the brands–Heinz ketchup and LaChoy soy sauce are both gluten-free, unlike many of their counterparts. [As always, manufacturers can change their formulas without notice. Be sure to double-check your ingredient lists.]

That’s 1/4 cup ketchup, 1/2 TBS soy sauce…

1 clove of minced garlic (or 1/2 tsp of the jarred kind)…

And three tablespoons of honey. I just love honey; I even use it in my tea instead of sugar. I may or may not have licked this measuring spoon after I was done with it. I’ll never tell.

Bag o’ drumsticks.

Bag o’ drumsticks plus sauce. Seal it up, mix everything around so it’s all nice and coated, then let it marinate in the fridge for an hour (or however long it is until dinner, the chicken won’t care.)

Arrange them in a greased baking dish, and pour the rest of the sauce on top. Bake in a 375-degree oven for 45-55 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when you stab the fattest one with a fork and only clear juice comes out.

Super easy, right? Take a good look now, because these beauties won’t be on the plate for long. Until I make some more, that is.

Happy Eating!

Red Honey Chicken

6 chicken drumsticks
1/4 cup Heinz ketchup
1/2 TBS LaChoy soy sauce
1 clove minced garlic
3 TBS honey