Archive for the ‘Ask Gf-Zing! - Responses’ Category
A reader has asked for advice on gluten free baking without tapioca flour. She says:
I’m just learning to bake GF for my daughter. She does not like the taste of tapioca flour. After baking a rejected bread, we lined up all the flours & tasted them to see which one was objectionable. What do you recommend to replace tapioca? Would potato starch, corn starch or arrowroot be closest, or a mixture of one of them and sweet rice flour?
Gf-Zing has the following advice:
We think the best option would be to obtain a book of recipes for
gluten free baking without tapioca. Our favorite is Great Gluten-Free
Baking by Louise Blair, published by Hamlyn in Great Britain in 2007.
This lovely book has some excellent recipes (don’t miss the Victoria
Sandwich Cake on page 124.) This book relies on a simple combination
of rice flour and cornstarch. The book is available in the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Gluten-Free-Baking-Louise-Blair/dp/0600615839
Likewise, Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking by Darina Allen and Rosemary
Kenney, published by Stewart, Habori and Chang has a few excellent
baking recipes that do not include tapioca. The book does not have as
many recipes that exclude tapioca, but it is a great cookbook.This
book is also available in the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Gluten-free-Cooking-Recipes-Lovers/dp/1584794240
Best wishes for gluten-free holidays!
Gf-Zing! received the following questions about flour substitutions from a reader named Melissa:
I’ve read that as a substitute for wheat flour in a recipe that you can use chickpea flour for a substitute in a 1:1 ratio without any further changes to the original recipe. This seems too easy – do you know if this is true?
Here’s our answer: Chickpea flour can be substituted for wheat flour 1:1 for dusting meats that are going to be fried, but it has a pretty beany flavor so it would not necessarily be the right choice for substituting in baked goods. We would not use large amounts of chickpea flour in baked goods because of this beaniness. For frying meat, you might also try using mochiko flour (this is sweet rice flour), especially for making something like Coq Au Vin for which the flour is a vital thickening agent in the sauce.
I’ve also read that 1 cup of the following (after mixed very well) equals 1 cup of all-purpose flour, is this also true and how does it taste? 1 cup of cornstarch or arrowroot, 3 cups of rice flour, 3 cups of potato starch flour, ½ cup soy flour
As for a flour mix, for baked goods Gf-Zing! prefers the following general mix, and if we are making a cake we add extra xantham gum to the batter:
2 cups plain brown rice flour
2 cups plain white rice flour
1 1/2 cups sweet brown rice flour (this is a different kind of rice flour – you could also use sweet white rice flour)
1 1/3 cups tapioca starch or tapioca flour
2/3 cups GF corn starch
1/2 cups rice bran or rice polish
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free. Mix all the ingredients together in a large container or bag. Use as much as you need for your recipe. Store the rest.
Hope this helps!
Gf-Zing! received a request to find a gluten free Oyster Sauce and Hoisin Sauce.
For Hoisin, you might consider the Premier Japan brand of Wheat-Free Hoisin Sauce. See the Edwards & Sons Trading Company website regarding this product. We rely on the manufacturer to state the content. Please be sure to verify that any products you consume are safe for your situation. Gf-Zing! does not verify the gluten free status of products.
http://www.edwardandsons.com/Zero_Gluten_Products.html
You might consider the Lee Kum Kee brand for the oyster sauce - Assuming you don’t want either 5 or 55 gallon drums of oyster sauce, then the Choy Sun oyster sauce (yellow label) is the most likely candidate on their website (they make other kinds too, so it is important to check the bottle at the store.) - this material below is from their website as of today. Things change often in the food world, so you have to keep checking to see if they change their ingredients. Gf-Zing! does not verify the gluten free status of products.
http://usa.lkk.com/Common/corporate/faq.aspx
“Which of your products are Gluten-Free?
Products of Lee Kum Kee (USA) Foods Inc.
Kum Chun Chicken Bouillon Powder all sizes
LKK Chicken Bouillon Powder all sizes
LKK Pure Sesame Oil all sizes
LKK Duck Sauce all sizes
LKK Sriracha Chili Sauce all sizes
LKK Blended Sesame Oil all sizes
LKK Sambal Oelek Chili Sauce all sizes
LKK Chili Garlic all sizes
Panda Oyster Flavored Sauce 5-Gal and 55-Gal
LKK Sweet and Sour Sauce all sizes
Plum Stir-fry and dipping sauce all sizes
Gold Label Plum Sauce all sizes
Choy Sun Oyster Flavored Sauce in glass bottles and metal cans
(with best before date after Apr 1st, 2005)
From time to time, Lee Kum Kee introduces new products that are gluten-free. We clearly list the top nine major allergens on the ingredient list if they are included in the product. The nine major allergens are soy, wheat or other gluten-containing grains, peanuts, eggs, milk (dairy), tree nuts, shellfish and crustaceans, fish, and sesame. For your own safety, please check the ingredient list on the label before purchasing a product.“
Note: Here at Gf-Zing! we do not verify the gluten-free status of any product. We rely on the manufacturers to declare the status of their products. It is up to the reader to check labels, and to verify that the products they consume are safe for them to use.
The annual holiday dilemma is - how do you make a gluten free gravy that is not reminiscent of glue, or perhaps paste?
There are several methods that work well, and Gf-Zing! has tested several options for the gluten free community.
First, let’s talk about the gourmet version. Here, you add a reduction or a ‘gastrique’ to the stock, and thicken the gravy with arrowroot. It is more of a sauce than a gravy, but will be delicious. You may want to increase the quantities to produce more gravy!
Degrease the pan juices from the roast bird. To the remaining juices, add 2 cups of hard cider (or 1/2 cup white wine) and reduce by heating - reduce it down to just 1/4 cup or a few tablespoons. Add 1 1/2 cups of stock, and reduce this mixture down by one third.
Mix 1 Tablespoon of arrowroot or cornstarch with a little stock and add it to this remaining sauce gradually, stirring constantly. Heat until thickened. Add salt and pepper as needed, and strain the sauce before serving. You may add currant jelly, as well, a few tablespoons, and a few tablespoons of fresh butter, to enrich the sauce.
You can make a similar sauce using a french ‘gastrique.” For this, you cook 1/4 cup of white sugar with 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar in a 2-quart saucepan until it caramelizes into a brown syrup - this will be thick, and you don’t want it to burn so watch carefully. Next, add 1 1/2 cups of rich stock and a little wine if you like, while being careful not to be burned by spattering syrup! The caramelized vinegar and sugar is the gastrique that will make your gravy taste really good. Thicken as before, adding a mixture of 1 Tablespoon arrowroot mixed with enough water to make a soupy mixture, and cook until thickened. Refresh this gravy with a little butter, and add some salt and pepper as needed.
For a more standard gravy, use a gravy flour mix as follows:
2 Tablespoons brown rice flour
3/4 Tablespoon sweet rice flour (mochiko)
1 1/2 teaspoons tapioca starch
1/3 teaspoon of xantham gum
Mix these ingredients together thoroughly, and then use it in place of flour in your regular gravy recipe.
Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!
All the websites say it is possible, even the Zojirushi website, but none of them tell you how! Well, here’s how you cook wild rice in the Zojirushi.
1 unit rice
rinsing water
additional 3 units of water
Allow a good 2 hours before dinner.
Rinse the rice by putting it in a bowl, filling the bowl with water, giving the rice a stir and then pouring off the excess water. Do this a couple of times.
Place the washed rice and 3 units of water in the Zojirushi, and use the menu setting button to change the setting to “brown rice.”
This rice will take a long time to cook, and should be allowed to sit in the cooker for quite a while before serving, to dry out some more. Using the extra water (3 to 1 ratio as listed) will make sure that the rice is fully cooked. Wild rice is not actually a rice, and it has a tendency to be served at an inappropriately crunchy stage - when fully cooked, the grains should have split open completely, and the insides will be an interesting translucent gray-white color. There will be a pleasant chewy quality to the brown part of the grain, but you won’t need to make a trip to the dentist after eating!
To cook basmati rice in the Zojirushi (fuzzy-logic) rice cooker - that is the question! Is it possible to make this rice in the cooker and obtain the quality that one gets from cooking it using a traditional method?
Basmati rice is a delicious rice enjoyed by many cultures. It has a mildly pop-corny flavor and a wonderful texture. In some countries, basmati rice is cooked with a delicious bottom crust created by steaming the cooked rice on a base of butter or buttered sliced potatoes. In other countries, it is cooked as biryani, or in many pilaf-style dishes. Basmati rice is enjoyed plain as well. Traditionally, this rice is soaked before cooking and the grains of rice come out separate and elongated from the soaking/cooking. In some countries, after the initial boiling of the rice, after the cooking water has been absorbed, a cotton cloth is placed over the rice and the top placed on the pot. The cloth absorbs the last vestiges of steam from the rice, and leads to even more separate grains. That’s what happens in a traditional way….now for what happens with a rice cooker.
We have successfully cooked delicious basmati rice in the Zojirushi, but read on. We have tried just putting the rice in the cooker and treating it like any other white rice, but if you do that you will not get the double-long, fluffy but slightly chewy grains that make basmati rice one of the world’s premier foods. To obtain the finest quality finished product, you should soak the rice in salted water and not use the water measuring lines on the cooker bowl - instead you need to use the measuring cup - 2 measures of water per measure of rice.
Use the clear measuring cup that is provided with the cooker. We say that to make sure that nobody exceeds the capacity of the rice cooker by using a larger measuring cup.
Do not add lentils to the rice for traditional dishes that require lentils. You want to avoid adding anything during cooking that will clog up the steam vents!
First: Measure the rice using the clear cup. Wash the rice. Soak the rice in a bowl for one half hour, by adding twice as many measuring cups of cold water to the washed basmati rice, and add 1/2 teaspoon of salt for every measure of rice.
Then, transfer the rice and all the soaking liquid to the rice cooker and use the regular white rice setting to cook the rice. The Zojirushi (fuzzy-logic) rice cooker will add another soaking cycle to the cooking time. It will take nearly an hour to cook. When it is done, fluff it up with a fork, without scratching your cooker bowl, and let it sit in the cooker for another 15 minutes. The basmati rice cooked this way, in the Zojirushi (fuzzy-logic) rice cooker, will have separate grains, not stuck together. It takes a long time, but, if you were using a traditional method to cook the rice, whether Iranian (Persian), Indian or other method, there would be a step where the rice steamed after the initial cooking - it just takes longer to cook this type of rice in general!
If you prefer the rice a little bit more “al dente,” or you don’t have as much time, then just put the washed basmati rice and water (1 measure of rice, 2 measures of water and 1/2 teaspoon salt per measure of rice) in the cooker and change the cooking setting to “harder” using the menu button. Push cook. This rice will be ready to eat when the rice cooker starts singing. The grains will have a slightly greater resistance to the bite - our favorite way to eat this rice.
We fried some finely grated garlic in ghee (browned clarified butter), then dribbled this mixture on the cooked basmati rice and fluffed it around with a bamboo rice paddle from Japan. (The Zojirushi comes with a plastic paddle, but we are ashamed to say that we had previously melted that paddle and several other plastic paddles during interrupted cooking adventures…) Anyway, adding a flavored butter sauce was a winning strategy!
Having cooked basmati the traditional Persian way, where it is soaked and then boiled and strained, and then steamed on top of a butter and yogurt mixture, and having cooked it in a couple of different traditional Indian ways, we would say that this method (adding salt to the water and using the rice measuring cup to measure the water,) is acceptable for everyday cooking of basmati rice using a Zojirushi rice cooker.
When the gluten-free person makes that trip to the grocery store, they enter like a cart-horse with blinders on - seeing only the 25% of the product aisles that have gluten-free food in them. Naturally, we gravitate towards the produce section, where the vegetables are neatly sealed in gluten-free packages by their allmighty maker - not even the food industry could introduce a “solution” into a potato, or add a modified food starch to lettuce. So, we are always happy to see our colorful vegetable friends! A safe oasis of green, orange and red in a desert world of wheat.
The salad course is a favorite, so we collect a variety of healthy vegetables, but then we wander over to the dressing shelf and have to get out those reading glasses to see what creepy ingredients the manufacturers have added to the products. We are ready to present to you here, on the gluten-free Gf-Zing! website, a selection of salad dressing recipes that will make your vegetables sing!
Check the Salads and Dressings link in the menu on the left for some salad dressing recipes.