3 Essential Gluten Free Carbs for your Pantry
So the world had decided that carbs aren’t the best thing for you if you want to lose weight, but this post is not about losing weight. It’s about eating gluten free and being healthy. Thank God for that.
So let’s celebrate the carb and talk about what we can eat.
Firstly there is the obvious one that’s eaten by millions of people daily.
RICE
The great thing about rice is that not only are there heaps of styles of rice, there are also heaps of rice products to boot.
My favourite rice and rice products are:
Basmati or Jasmine - Asian meals
Arborio - Risotto, Arancini and Rice Cakes
Calasparra - fabulous Paella
Rice Noodles - there are heaps of styles - vermicilli, macaroni, flat, thick, dried or fresh.
Rice flour - a great alternative to wheat flour for dusting fish before grilling, for making salt and pepper squid for example
PASTA
Now this is a tricky one. I have tried so many gluten free pastas that my head hurts. Pasta is part of the staple diet in my household so it was ESSENTIAL that I find a decent alternative. To be honest it has been a very difficult and frustrating road. I have made pasta using gluten free flour but it’s fiddly and when you want a quick dinner, this is not the way to go. I found a great dried pasta that I use all the time. No, it’s not REAL pasta but it works for me. The brand is Barilla. For GF lasagne sheets, I find the San Remo brand great.
QUINOA
There are dishes - tagines and tabouleh for instance - that demand an accompaniment or ingredient that is made of wheat. Think couscous and burghul. Damn. Rice won’t cut it and neither will that other fab grain polenta. So what to use? Thank God there is a perfect, and I venture to say tastier alternative - I bring you the amazing Quinoa. Pronounced keen-wa this wonderful grain from Peru is both gluten free and delicious.
Cook it in a a saucepan of water just like pasta, drain and tuck in.
These days you can get just about any of these products in your local supermarket, so go on a tour of discovery and you’ll be amazed. Other products like Calasparra rice you may need to go to a specialty store for. Do it. Once you’ve made a paella with this rice you will never use another again!
Check out my recipes and you will find some simple, fresh and tasty dishes using these healthy and rockin’ carbs. So.... tuck in, carbs aren’t the bad guys they’re made out to be, just don’t eat too much.
Then again don’t eat too much of anything...