Gluten Free Engineer - Making Gluten Free Easy

My Favorite Gluten-Free Products Right Now

• Carrie Saunders • Episode 17

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Sometimes, the best gluten-free finds are the ones we stumble across and instantly fall in love with—and today, I’m sharing a few of my absolute favorite gluten-free products right now.

These are the staples, snacks, and lifesavers I keep coming back to—whether it’s for convenience, flavor, or just because they make my gluten-free life so much easier.

This is a casual, chatty episode you can listen to while running errands or meal prepping—so let’s dig in!


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Carrie Saunders:

Quick reminder before we get started on this episode this podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. Sometimes the best gluten-free finds are the ones we stumble across and instantly fall in love with, and today I'm sharing a few of my absolute favorite gluten-free products. Right now, these are the staples, snacks and lifesavers I keep coming back to, whether it's for convenience, flavor or just because they make a gluten-free life so much easier. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Gluten-Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders.

Carrie Saunders:

In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, a moment that changed everything, but I was determined not to let it hold me back. With my two engineering degrees, I set out to reverse engineer the gluten-free lifestyle, breaking down recipes, safety tips, travel hacks and everything in between to rebuild a life I love. Whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance or simply choose to live gluten-free, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we simplify the gluten-free lifestyle, make it fun and prove that you don't have to miss out on anything. So first, let's start off with baking products. I love to bake as you probably have already guessed by now if you're a regular listener and I absolutely just love to bake. I love to bake for others and, as of this recording, I am going to be preparing a graduation party for my middle child from college, so I'll be baking this weekend, I'm sure, two different types of cakes or cupcakes and other things as well, and my most favorite gluten-free flour blend is Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1. The King Arthur 1 to 1 is also great as well. I just tend to gravitate towards the Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 because I can get it in bulk on Amazon. I can also find a lot larger bags in our grocery store and it works really well. I've actually never had it fail on me and not produce a result that I absolutely love. So getting a great 1-to-1 blend that is local to you is very important, and this one is a good one because it's an all around good blend. It's great in cakes, it's great in cookies, it's great to make pasta, it's also good to make bread with this one. So find one that you really like. That works for many things. Now, if we are making pasta, I do slightly prefer the Aero Mills brand a little bit more. It creates a little bit more of that bite, that responsive bite to it when you're making homemade egg noodles. But they honestly, the Bob's Ramon one-to-one is what we usually use because that's what we usually have in our pantry.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, as far as cake or brownie mix, I am typically a from scratch person, so this is one I don't really have a whole lot of in my pantry because I literally would just whip something up from scratch just about the same amount of time as it would from a box. But I do know that the Katz brand is really great, as well as the King Arthur gluten-free box pre-made mixes are also really great. So if you're in a pinch and you're not quite like me where you don't like to make things from scratch completely understandable, we all are different in that realm, but the those box mixes are really, really great. And I always love to have a small bag of xanthan gum on hand, because many times, whenever I am baking certain things from scratch, I will purposely add a tad bit more xanthan gum to my one to one blend when I know that it's going to need a little bit more help in sticking together. So I always love to do that as well.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, another staple that I love too in kind of the baking realm but we're going to be sliding a little bit more into the pizza realm is Bob's Red Mill. Pizza crust in a bag that's gluten-free is absolutely wonderful. I have a from scratch recipe for pizza crust, but this other one, the Bob's Red Mill one, is actually really great for making pizza monkey bread, which we'll add to our recipe list on our website, the glutenfreeengineer. com. But this pizza monkey bread is so delicious and great at making pizza monkey bread and pizzas in a pinch. You can just whip them up. You can pre-bake them too and have them ready in your freezer. So that is a really great quick go-to for making pizzas.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, when it comes to breads or wraps, one of the things that I love is I love Canyon House Bakehouse bread, and we will be putting links to all of these in our show notes. But the Canyon Bread, I find, is a good general bread. It's great for toast especially. It's also good for sandwiches. It's firm but not too dry. It is a little bit more on the dry side. If you like something really soft, I would recommend the brand bread. That one's really soft. We got away from that bread for a while because it had soy in it. We have soy issues in our family, but they actually listened, I think, to customers and removed the soy, but we haven't tried it since they did that. But that bread was one of our favorites till we realized we couldn't have a soy in our house. It's super soft. It's like what you would typically think of as white bread.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, as far as wraps goes, the Siete brand I absolutely love. I love it for wraps, I love it for chips, I love it for so many things Crackers I think it's got pretzels, they just have. Everything of theirs that I've tried is absolutely divine. I absolutely love it. And that brand is additionally, grain free. So the Siete brand is grain free and gluten free. It has I believe it's a top nine. Allergens are not in that, so that's a great product if you have multiple food issues, like we do in our family. So the Siete brand, I absolutely love it. Oh, and they have great corn tortillas too. They have great like burritos, as you can tell. It's one of our favorites. They also have taco mix for it, which we have ended up being using lately. I used to make my taco mix from scratch, but theirs is so good that we tend to just use that one as well.

Carrie Saunders:

So we absolutely love the Siete brand for many of those traditional carb type of products that you might want Another one. So if you're, we're talking frozen pizza, okay. So let me tell you the Against the Grain brand I hope you can find it where you are that one is so good. It is also grain-free. It is obviously not dairy-free because they use cheese inside the pizza crust, which is what makes it taste so good. So if you a dairy issues, then unfortunately that one would not be a good brand for you. The Bob's Red Mill or the my From Scratch recipe would be better, because that doesn't have any dairy in the crust. But the against the grain pizza is so divine and delicious and we all we do is add a little bit more cheese and pepperoni, because that's just who we are we like extra cheese and pepperoni, but otherwise there is no doctoring needed on that frozen pizza and it comes out great every single time.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, as far as bagels go, we love the Canyon Bread Bagels. They have a plain bagel and everything bagel, and I also like the Carbonaut brand which is, I think, basically zero net carbs. So if you're trying to watch your carbs but you want something like a bagel, then that is a great one to do too. I recommend it like toasting it with some butter, because it can. The texture can be a little bit odd on that one, but as long as you treat it right, it tastes actually really good.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, if we go into the pantry, staples like pasta. So my current favorite brand is the Jovial brand for pasta. They have both brown rice pasta and a cassava flour pasta. I personally don't do well with corn, so this is why we're gravitating towards the Jovial brand currently and it is really really good. You won't notice that it's gluten-free. I don't think every time I cook it for my friends they have no idea it's gluten-free.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, as far as some other options for gluten-free pasta, the Banza brand is also really good. That is made from chickpea flour, so that one's really great if you want extra protein in your pasta and we absolutely love using that one to make mac and cheese from scratch. And then, if you are okay with corn, then the Ronzoni and the Brulella gluten-free pastas. It's a blend of I believe it's corn, rice and quinoa, that one. It tastes and the texture is great. I will occasionally eat a little bit of that one but, like I said, I have trouble with corn, so I try not to eat that one too much, but that one is a great go-to pasta and it's usually, in our stores, the least expensive of those three, so it's a really great option to have in our pantry.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, as far as staples goes, for soy sauce we love to use we used to use Tamari soy sauce, which is a little soy sauce. It doesn't have any wheat in it like traditional soy sauce. But we are actually currently using the Bragg's coconut aminos because we have three people of five of us who cannot tolerate soy as well. So we love the Bragg's coconut aminos. Just note that it's sweeter than soy sauce because it's like coconut aminos, and so you'll want to back off on any sweeteners that might be in your dish whenever you're using it as an alternative. And then, as far as box mac and cheese, we kind of touched on making it from scratch, but box mac and cheese we absolutely love the Annie's brand box mac and cheese, and we absolutely also love the bands of brand, which is the chickpea pasta box mac and cheese. Both of those are really really great.

Carrie Saunders:

And as far as freezer meals go, there are several of them that we really like, but honestly it's kind of a pick and choose between a few different brands. So Saffron Road is one of those that has some gluten-free ones that are really good, and that's one of the ones we tend to lean towards. Also, real Good Foods is also a really great freezer brand, but the only problem with that one is it tends to be pretty high in salt, so I would recommend using that one at your discretion as far as that goes. So when we're looking at freezer meals, do you make sure especially gluten-free ones, do you make sure that the other sub-ingredients like how much salt it has is reasonable.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, when we go to snacks and treats, so I love to use the Annie's gluten-free chocolate chip chewy granola bars. Those are really great as a go-to snack, as something I can have in my purse or a bag. That is an emergency. You know I need to eat something type of snack and I also. Just it's just a really great little snack too. So the Annie's brand makes a chewy gluten-free granola bar. That is one of our favorites. Everybody in the family absolutely loves those.

Carrie Saunders:

And then we also tend to look for some of the beef jerky brands. Some of them are actually gluten-free. Now this is where you do need to be very careful to make sure that they are gluten-free because many times, beef jerky uses traditional soy sauce, which has wheat in it. So even though you would think beef jerky might not might not have any gluten in it, because it's literally dried beef it's the seasonings they put on it. So when you're looking for a snack that is beef jerky type, make sure you are double checking that is certified gluten free of your celiac or that there's no gluten ingredients if you're gluten intolerant or avoiding gluten on your own.

Carrie Saunders:

Now, another treat that I absolutely love is the Enjoy Life brand. So if you love to have granola bars and things like that, they make really great granola bars. They also make the best chocolate chips I've ever tasted, and they're the top eight allergen free as well. So they're dairy free, they're soy free, they're nut free, they're dairy-free, they're soy-free, they're nut-free, they're gluten-free. So they are a great option when you have a mixed set of food issues in your family. So the Enjoy Life brand is one of our other main staples that we absolutely love, and everything we've had from them is top-notch, high quality, and Pamela's has some soups that are gluten-free as well. So just be looking through the soup aisle if you're looking for some easy, ready-to-make soups, because there are several varieties out there that do make some really good gluten-free soups.

Carrie Saunders:

So, while I talk a lot about, on the episode, making things from scratch because really that's ideal, because then we can control what ingredients are going into our foods sometimes these convenience items are just necessary, either because of time, because of mental energy, or we're, you know, in a hurry, like I said, as far as time goes, and we just need a break from cooking and from making everything from scratch, since we cannot go out to eat nearly as much as, or as easily as, traditional people who don't have food issues. So, while I still encourage you to make sure that you're, you know, cooking from scratch as much as you can, just because it's a lot healthier for you and you're controlling everything, these are some great options as far as if you do need something quick, if you do need something pre-made. These are some of the brands that I highly recommend, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few as I'm talking on this episode, so I will do a follow-up one if some more come to mind. So I would love to hear from you, though. Do you have a favorite brand that you absolutely love? You can always click on the button on your podcast player or on our show notes website to text me and let me know what are your favorite gluten-free products and brands and why do you love them, and I can feature that on a future episode. And I would be really excited to try some other things as well and see if I can find them in my area. So be sure to give us a little text there and let us know what is your favorite gluten-free products too. And you can also drop those in our free Facebook group. Just go to facebookcom. Forward slash groups. Forward slash the gluten-free engineer. You can also find that link on our show notes, the glutenfreeengineercom website.

Carrie Saunders:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gluten-Free Engineer. If you found value in this story, please share it with someone who might need encouragement on their own gluten-free journey. For more tips, recipes, resources and even links to my YouTube channel, head on over to theglutenfreeengineercom. It's your one-stop hub to make gluten-free living simple, fun and full of flavor. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss out on an episode, and we will see you next week. The Gluten-Free Engineer podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I share my personal experiences and stories about living with celiac disease and navigating a gluten-free lifestyle. This podcast does not provide medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional for medical questions, concerns or advice specific to your health.

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