Gluten Free Friday: Round Up

I had intended to post my gluten free adaptation of my favorite poppyseed chicken recipe today, but it turned out…incredibly bland.  So that one absolutely needs more work before I release it to the world. The original version takes a lot of its flavor from the canned cream of chicken soup.  The gluten free alternative I used was absolutely the right consistency but didn’t add a great deal of flavor to the casserole.  But I have NOT GIVEN UP!

In any event I wanted to share a few things.

The gluten free cream of chicken soup I made came from Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom.  I bookmarked this recipe and the companion cream of mushroom soup recipe MONTHS ago and am only just now getting around to actually making some.  As I said, the consistency was SPOT ON, and I think in recipes where there are many other flavors this would be a perfectly acceptable gluten free alternative to make traditional southern casseroles that your gluten eating friends won’t recognize as being any different than regular.  For a more flavorful cream of chicken, I think I’d use homemade stock (I didn’t have any on hand) reduced to concentrate the flavor of the chicken more instead of the juice from the canned chicken.  I haven’t made the cream of mushroom yet, but when I do, I intend to use the juice from some reconstituted dried mushrooms as the stock.  Which should make for a flavorful soup that totally knocks the canned stuff on its butt.

Fair warning: MAKE THIS IN ADVANCE.

Poppyseed chicken is usually a fast dish.  It uses leftover rice, a rotisserie chicken, and assorted other stuff that’s easy to mix up and toss in the oven.  Last night I forgot to make the rice.  Cooked the chicken in the crock pot all day, which meant I had to let it cool before I could debone and shred it.  And started making the cream of soup mix.  A normally 20 minute prep took nearly 2 hours (which was not at all helped by the fact that my dishwasher’s drain line is clogged again and I had to do copious amounts of dishes by hand).  It’ll never be as fast as opening a can, but having the Magic Mix (FYI, I used Jeanne’s GF all purpose mix for my GF flour in this recipe and chose Carnation powdered milk) prepped and in the fridge, and cubes of your chicken or mushrooms and broth as recommended by Heidi (the Gluten Free Mom) all ready, I think will significantly shorten the prep time.

Also of note, when I was at the grocery yesterday I came across Gluten Free Rice Krispies.  Now regular Rice Krispies are something that sound like they ought to be gluten free anyway.  I mean, it’s puffed rice cereal.  Where’s the wheat?  But sadly, no, they aren’t safe.  They’ve got…I think it’s malt as flavoring.  It’s not like we actually ate a lot of regular Rice Krispies before we went gluten free, but it just seemed like a ridiculous thing.  Another one of those foods that gluten has no business being in.  Same with Corn Flakes.

So when I saw the officially gluten free version yesterday, I picked up a box.  And a bag of marshmallows.  Of COURSE I have to make Rice Krispy treats.  Of note is that the gluten free version is made of brown rice rather than white.  I have no idea whether this will make them more filling or not, but on the surface it makes me feel like I’m making a healthier choice.

I’m thrilled that there are more gluten free products appearing in the normal, small town grocery store.  What I’d REALLY like, though, is to see the FDA take on the food industry and have them remove gluten from products that don’t naturally have them in it to begin with.  I think that’d go a long way toward helping with America’s obesity epidemic.

3 thoughts on “Gluten Free Friday: Round Up

  1. I love Gluten Free Fridays! Have you tried the cream of chicken from Pacific Natural Foods? It’s easy to find in the regular soup isle. All of their “cream of” soups are gluten free and taste better than the canned stuff, from what I can remember the canned stuff tasting like. It’s nice to have when you don’t have the time to make your own! Thanks for all the great recipes!

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