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Recipe: Easy Gluten-Free Shrimp Marinade

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 2 Comments

There are many more bottled gluten-free marinades at the store than there were five years ago, but you can save a lot of money by making your own. The other day I needed something to use on some shrimp we planned to grill. I checked the pantry and fridge for available ingredients and whipped up something that was tasty and super easy to make.

Though we’ve only tried this marinade on shrimp so far, I think it will work with a nice mild white fish like tilapia as well as chicken. I named it garlic and wine marinade.

Ingredients:

  • ¼ cup white cooking wine (I use Publix brand)
  • 1 ½ t. crushed garlic (in oil)
  • 3 T. olive oil
  • 2 t. lemon juice
  • Salt to taste
  • Black pepper to taste

Directions:

  • Combine all ingredients in large Ziplock type bag.
  • Place shrimp in bag and massage shrimp so everything is coated.
  • Refrigerate bag of shrimp for 1-2 hours.
  • To grill the shrimp, put them on skewers and cook for approximately three minutes on each side.
  • To sauté the shrimp, you don’t need to use oil in the pan due to the amount of oil in the marinade. Heat pan to medium high heat and cook on each side for approximately three minutes.
  • Shrimp are cooked when firm and pink.

To use the marinade for fish, I’d put the filets in a shallow baking dish, pour marinade over the fish, cover with plastic wrap and put into refrigerator. Next time I might try adding some capers to the mixture as well. I love lemon and capers and seafood together, but would only use capers for the pan cooking method.

Using simple marinades is an easy way to spruce up a mid-week meal without going to a lot of trouble or much expense. Good marinades almost always take whatever you’re using them on to a whole new level of great taste. This is true for chicken, fish, pork and shrimp. With just a little bit of effort and a few ingredients you already have on hand, you can create some pretty fabulous gluten-free marinades.

If you’re not in the mood to create your own marinade, check out some of these recipes on Food.com. Just remember to use all gluten-free ingredients, as always. If beer is called for in a recipe, use Bard’s Tale or Redbridge as a substitute. Gluten-free soy and Teriyaki sauces can be used instead of the types that contain gluten. Most marinades don’t call for flour, but if you run across one that does, use a gluten-free flour blend, plain rice flour or tapioca starch instead. We’ve got almost two months of good grilling weather left in our area. I’m looking forward to making some more tasty marinades before it’s time to do all the cooking inside for a while.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Chicken Tostadas

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff Leave a Comment

Since we are on the go a lot now that school is back in session and the kids have activities 4 nights a week, fast dinners are the way I survive without fast food. Not only is fast food mostly unhealthy, but eating gluten-free at a fast food restaurant can be challenging. One of my staple menu items is Mexican Pizzas. I try to come up with new, creative recipes for them so that I am not serving the same thing week after week. My kids probably wouldn’t care, as they love them, but I like some variety.

Sometimes I call these “Mexican Pizzas”, sometimes I call them “Tostadas”. I decided that now was a good time for me to find out what the difference is in the name, if any. Turns out that “Tostada” is a Spanish word that means “toasted”. In Mexico it refers to a flat or bowl-shaped tortilla! Aha! The tostada originated when tortillas became stale and were no longer fresh enough to roll into tacos, but still okay to eat. LOL! I can assure you that is not why I “toast” my tortillas. 😉 When I was growing up my mom used to call Mexican Pizzas “Chalupas”. I looked up “Chalupa” and found that it is a tostada platter in Mexican cuisine! My mom must have know what she was doing, huh? I believe that I started calling them “Mexican Pizzas” when my kids turned up their noses at the food in front of them that was called a “Chalupa”.

Chicken Tostadas

  • 1 lb chicken breast, cut into chunks
  • Old El Paso Taco Seasoning – Original is gluten-free*
  • Corn tortillas
  • Refried beans (Taco Bell, Ortega, Old El Paso are all gluten-free)
  • Red, orange or yellow bell pepper, chopped
  • Tomato, chopped
  • Sliced black olives
  • Shredded cheddar cheese

Other toppings to consider: sour cream or Greek yogurt, shredded lettuce, salsa, jalapenos

Directions:

  1. Heat oven to 350.
  2. Cook chicken breast chunks in a frying pan until cooked through. Once cooked, add seasoning packet & water, as directed on the package. You could also use your own blend of Mexican spices, such as cumin and cayenne, some garlic and a little salt & pepper.
  3. Lay corn tortillas out on a baking sheet sprayed with olive oil cooking spray. Spray corn tortillas with spray. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes, keeping a careful eye not to over cook.
  4. While tortillas are baking, heat refried beans on the stove or in the microwave.
  5. Spread warm beans, chicken, peppers and olives on the baked tortilla. Top with shredded cheddar & bake until melted.
  6. Top with tomatoes, shredded lettuce & hot sauce, if desired.

*I use only 1/2 of the packet of taco seasoning to cut down on sodium and it is plenty for good flavor

The kids often make their own tostadas or Mexican pizzas so they can choose toppings. This gives them a sense of ownership and makes it much more likely that they will eat the meal. 😉

Recipe: Gluten-Free Zucchini Muffins

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff Leave a Comment

After finding out about Pamela’s contest at the Georgia National fair, I have been thinking about attending the event and possibly even entering something in the contest. My baking skills leave a lot to be desired so I have no chance of winning anything, but I would just enter something for the fun of it – and to support such a great event.

There was a lone zucchini in the fridge that was on its last leg so I decided on a whim to make gluten-free zucchini muffins. As usual, I searched Food.com for a gluten recipe and then modified it to be gluten-free. I made enough changes to the original recipe to call the new one my own. Though some tweaking could definitely help the muffins out somewhat, they are as good as any zucchini muffins I’ve made to date They’re actually shockingly delicious, but don’t have large crown-like gluten muffins usually do and the texture of the muffins is delicate as well.

Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Zucchini Nut Muffins

Ingredients:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup sugar in the raw (was out of brown sugar)
  • 1 heaping cup of grated zucchini
  • 1 ½ cup Pamela’s Pancake & Baking Mix flour
  • 1/2 t. baking soda
  • 1/4 t. baking powder
  • 1 t. cinnamon
  • ¼ t. ground cloves
  • ½ cup chopped walnuts
  • ½ cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

  • Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  • Beat eggs until they are light and foamy.
  • Add the sugar, oil, and zucchini.
  • Blend well with a sturdy spoon.
  • Whisk the dry ingredients together and add to the egg mixture
  • Blend wet and dry mixtures well and fold in optional nuts and chocolate chips.
  • Spoon into greased muffin tin – filling each one only 2/3 full.
  • Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean.
  • Cool muffins in a pan for half an hour and then transfer them to a cooling rack.

The batter yields approximately 15 regular-sized muffins. Normally, I use nutmeg in zucchini muffins and bread, but I used cloves instead just to be different. The recipe I modified called for a lot more cinnamon and no nutmeg or cloves. In the future, I will use brown sugar (instead of sugar in the raw), but I was totally out of it after having bags and bags of it from a 2-for-1 deal at Publix a while back. Using paper liners in the pan would have worked well, but the muffins came out of the pan quite easily without them.

The texture of the muffins was really light, which I liked quite a bit. My husband ate two shortly after they came out of the oven, due to the smell of them driving him nuts as they baked. He said they were some of the best gluten-free muffins I’d ever made and the best zucchini version of anything I’d made, period. I’m rarely impressed with anything I bake unless it’s from a mix where I just follow the directions. But I have to admit, these are some pretty good muffins and I’d gladly serve them to gluten-eaters any day!

Recipe: Chicken & Black Bean Soup Casserole

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 1 Comment

Gluten-Free Café introduced several soups many months ago, including their version of Chicken Noodle. If you missed Kim’s review of it, you can read it here. I wasn’t overly impressed with that gluten-free Café soup, but I decided to try the Black Bean soup from the line anyway.

The soup sat in the pantry for a while because I didn’t want to use it as soup. I wanted to use it to make a casserole of some kind. Finally, last week, I thought of something to make with the Black Bean soup. Even though I made this dish on a weekend evening, I was in a rush to get dinner together. The result was a surprisingly tasty casserole and it can be modified easily to suit one’s personal preferences.

Ingredients:

  • 3 C. cooked chicken pieces (I used left over rotisserie chicken)
  • 1 can black bean soup
  • ¾ C. shredded cheddar cheese
  • Fritos corn chips (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Mix chicken, soup and cheese together and put into a greased baking dish.
  2. Top mixture with corn chips (regular size or crushed Scoops chips)
  3. Bake in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
  4. Serve over fresh green salad or rice.
  5. Top with sour cream if desired.

There are several things you can do to jazz up this basic casserole. The soup is very good, but not very spicy so I might add minced jalapenos or green chilies the next time I make the casserole. You could use Mexican cheese instead of plain cheddar and you could add corn or other veggies to it as well.

Even though not much thought went into making this last minute dish, my husband liked it so much that he had three servings, finishing off the entire thing. It really was very good and with a little tweaking, it could be outstanding. That is my kind of recipe – simple to make using only a few ingredients.

Sometimes people get stuck in a rut when they are on a restricted diet for whatever reason. It can be easier to just rotate several tried and true dishes again and again, instead of making something new. It took me quite a while to trust myself to start throwing things together without following a recipe.

As much fun as it is to follow a great recipe and end up with wonderful results, it’s even more rewarding when you open up the pantry and fridge and figure out how to use what you find to create something new. It doesn’t have to be complicated or a masterpiece. Have fun with your gluten-free creations – you never know what you might come up with next!

Recipe: Gluten-Free Cornbread

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 5 Comments

Do you like cornbread? I love cornbread! As I began to write this post, I googled to see if cornbread was 1 or 2 words. I found a lot of different answers, though I think I like this one the best. It seems that it can be spelled cornbread or cornbread. So, there you have it. If anyone knows any different, please let me know!

Cornbread goes with so many meals – chili or other Mexican dishes, a southern-style breakfast, BBQ ribs, hot soups, and more. I have even experimented with several different variations, including pumpkin cornbread! When I first went gluten-free, I was using Gluten-Free Pantry’s Yankee Cornbread mix. It is simple to prepare and easy to find in stores. The end result tastes great, too! There are other mixes on the market that are equally as good – Pamela’s Cornbread mix and Bob’s Red Mill Cornbread mix just to name a couple.

Another option is to make your own cornbread from scratch using cornmeal and any recipe that you may have used previously or that you can find. I have used the one on the side of the Quaker cornmeal box numerous times with good results. I typically use any gluten-free flour mix that I have on hand for the flour. If using the Quaker cornmeal makes you nervous, there are companies that make gluten-free cornmeal, such as Bob’s Red Mill.

I often make cornbread into muffins so that I can easily freeze them & then grab them when I need to without defrosting the whole batch. Sometimes the kids will eat them for breakfast with a little butter & jelly. Another idea is to use cornbread crumbs for breading chicken or a casserole topping. I always make cornbread stuffing (or dressing if you are from the south) for the holidays.

Here is a simple recipe to make cornbread from scratch:

Cornbread

**From the back of the Quaker Yellow Corn Meal Box

***Double this for the stuffing

  • 1 ¼ cups Pamela’s Baking Mix
  • ¾ cup cornmeal (Used Bob’s Red Mill Stone Ground Cornmeal)
  • ¼ cup sugar (1/8 cup for stuffing cornbread)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt (I omitted this b/c there is salt in Pamela’s baking mix)
  • 1 cup buttermilk (the box says to use skim, I like buttermilk in my cornbread)
  • ¼ cup vegetable oil (I use canola)
  • 2 egg whites or 1 egg beaten (I used the beaten egg)

Heat oven to 400. Pam 8 or 9-inch baking pan. Combine dry ingredients. Stir in milk, oil, and egg, mixing just until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour into pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown and the toothpick comes out clean.