Cooking Gluten Free – Tips for Family and Friends

So you are having someone over for dinner who needs to eat gluten free. What do you cook? What does this mean? Hopefully this simple sheet will provide some of the answers for you.

Most importantly, gluten is in all foods and products containing wheat, barley, rye or oats, so these foods need to be avoided. This obviously means the standard products made from wheat flour such as breads, pastas, biscuits. (Note, there are many gluten free substitutes for these foods.) However, gluten may also be contained in foods that you may not expect, such as some brands of corn flour.

In order to determine if a product contains gluten, you need to read the ingredients list. It is mandatory in Australia for ingredients containing gluten and other allergens to be specified. The main things to remember when reading labels and ingredient lists are:

• If a product is labelled “gluten free”, this claim overrides the ingredient list and you can be sure that it is gluten free
• If the ingredient list contains any mention of wheat, barley, rye or oats, this food contains gluten. This includes ingredients such as wheat starch, wheaten flour and those with wheat in brackets, eg. maltodextrin (wheat)
• The exception to rule above is that the ingredient ‘wheat glucose syrup’ is OK as it has been so highly processed that it has no detectable gluten
• Malt products like milo, some mayonnaises or malt vinegar, contain barley and therefore, gluten
• When in doubt, leave it out.

The following list provides some of the less obvious foods that may contain gluten, of which there are substitutes for most, and basic food groups without gluten.