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What is a typical gluten free meal?

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There’s a lot of confusion about gluten free diets and meals, and some might be asking:  What is a “typical” gluten free meal?

Well first of all, just because one can’t eat wheat doesn’t mean there aren’t still thousands of other ingredients and combinations available!  In that sense, it could be almost impossible to declare a typical or normal meal, but I can at least show you what kind of dinner is fairly typical for myself when I don’t particularly feel like cooking anything that takes effort.

A gluten free meal of steak, fried potato, and steamed vegetables

Nothing too fancy here, just the basics:  A small piece of flat iron steak, a few steak fries (Ore Ida), and a carrot steamed with a head of broccoli.  There’s a pretty nice slice of butter sitting on the vegetables, a bit of Cattleman’s Classic BBQ sauce (also gluten free), as well as a little salt and a whole lot of freshly cracked pepper on top of everything.

As you can see, this isn’t terrible different from a typical meal for anyone, whether or not they’re intolerant of wheat protein.

Cooking a gluten free meal can be easy

For this meal, there really aren’t that many steps.  First of all, peel and slice the carrots then break up a head of broccoli in to the steamer pot with them.  Wash it up, cover the lid, and then just let it sit on a low to medium heat while the other stuff cooks.

Carrots and broccoli in a steaming pot

For the steak and fries, just lightly cover the surface of a frying pan with some peanut oil, then cook for about 10 to 15 minutes on each side at a medium temperature.

A flat iron steak and steak fries in a frying pan

Once it is cooked, season and enjoy!  The vegetables are great with just a bit of butter and salt, and as you can see from the first picture I just love to put black pepper on everything!

Total prep time is about 5 minutes or less, and total cooking time is about 30 minutes or just a little bit less.

So next time you find yourself trying to cook a gluten free meal, don’t despair!  Just make sure the cooking surfaces are clean from any potential cross contamination, and try a recipe that doesn’t stray too far from fresh ingredients.

Food

Gluten Free Meal-Burger

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The hamburger is an American classic, and properly loaded up it can provide just about all the essential nutrients in a convenient starchy bun. Unless you can’t eat the bread that is.

Of course, everyone loves some fried potatoes with their burger, but I was kind of in a rush the other day and needed to turn a half pound of beef into a whole meal-burger. Luckily, there were plenty of fresh veggies around…

  • 1/2 pound beef
  • 2oz. mozorella cheese
  • 1/6 large onion
  • 2 stalks long green onion
  • 1 slice red pepper
  • About 10 leafs of spinach
  • 1 slice back bacon

Shape the burger into a patty, just be sure not to overhandle it or add salt before it cooks.  Drop the burger and the back bacon into a frying pan at about half heat, flipping the rasher (bacon) quickly and resting it on top of the burger.  (I started off with low-fat beef so I had to make sure to conserve oils)

When the bacon is ready, chop up all the veggies and add them to the frying pan.  Add peppers & onions first, then the spinach & long green onions.

As the veggies start to fry, flip the burger and add the first layer of cheese to the top.  Place the bacon off to the side for a second then start to pile up the hot veggies onto the cheese.  Once the veggies start to melt the cheese pretty well, add another layer of cheese an top of the veggies and drop the bacon on top of that!

Not only does the gluten-free meal-burger fill you up like a complete meal, it tastes pretty great as well!  Since mine was a bit dry, I made up a quick sauce from spicy brown mustard and some regular old fashioned mayo.  If you started with a fattier ground beef, you might not even need that!

Happy holidays and happy eating!