Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or frustrated on your gluten-free journey? I felt that way and you’ve come to the right place to feel supported, understood and to find gluten free to be easier.
Hi, I’m Carrie Saunders, host of The Gluten Free Engineer. As someone with celiac disease (or coeliac, depending on where you’re from!), I understand the confusion and overwhelm that come with it. With a husband and three kids also navigating this lifestyle, I’ve learned the hard way how to make gluten-free living easier, safer, and more enjoyable.
Whether you’re new to gluten-free living or a seasoned foodie looking for fresh ideas, this podcast is for you. Each week, we’ll dive into topics like:
Avoiding cross-contamination and staying safe
Mouthwatering recipes and recipe conversion tips
Honest gluten-free product reviews
Travel hacks and dining-out strategies
Insights from expert guest speakers
Join me every week as we tackle the challenges of celiac disease, gluten intolerance, and gluten-free living head-on—making it simpler, more delicious, and even fun! Don’t miss an episode—subscribe now and start thriving on your gluten-free journey.
When you’re first diagnosed with celiac disease, it can feel like you need to throw away half your kitchen.
New toaster.
New pans.
New cutting boards.
New spoons.
New colander.
Suddenly you’re looking around thinking:
“Can I use ANYTHING I already own?”
The answer is yes.
You absolutely do not need to replace everything.
But there are some kitchen items that are really difficult to clean well enough to safely share.
Today we’re talking about what actually needs to be dedicated gluten-free, what can usually be shared safely, and how we managed a mixed kitchen before our entire household went gluten-free.
This episode is brought to you by Find Me Gluten Free—your go-to app for discovering safe, gluten-free dining options wherever you go! Get your exclusive discount for our listeners at theglutenfreeengineer.com/findmeglutenfree Because dinning out gluten-free shouldn’t be a guessing game!
Quick reminder before we get started on this episode. This podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. When you're first diagnosed with celiac disease, it can feel like you need to throw away half your kitchen. A new toaster, new pans, new cutting boards, new spoons, new colanders, and suddenly you're looking around. Suddenly you're looking around thinking, can I even use anything I already own? And the answer is actually yes. You do not absolutely need to replace everything. But there are some kitchen items that are really difficult to clean well enough to safely share. Today we're talking about what actually needs to be dedicated gluten-free, what can usually be shared safely, and how we can manage a mixed kitchen before our entire household went gluten-free. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Gluten Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Kiri 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. Welcome back
to the show. Today we're talking about do we need a separate toaster? What items do we actually need completely separate if you're celiac. So when I was first diagnosed with celiac disease, the rest of the family hadn't been diagnosed yet. So initially we had gluten and gluten-free food in the same kitchen in our house. So this meant that I had to think about crumbs, I had to think about shared equipment, I had to think about condiments, I had to think about cooking surfaces, I had to think about specific utensils, and then eventually the rest of the family was diagnosed too. Since 2015, our house has been completely gluten-free, and it has made life so much easier. I can't stress that enough, how much easier it has made our life. But I do know firsthand that a mixed kitchen can be managed and it just requires some systems. We even had some mess ups too when we tried to do these systems, and I will talk about that as well and how that happened. So, most importantly, you do need a separate toaster. This is probably the most important item in your kitchen that needs to be completely separate. Pop-up toasters are crumb machines, they hold on to those crumbs. You can't realistically get every crumb out of those little cracks and crevices. You can't really even clean down inside of them. It's just not practical. Current Celiac Guidance continues to recommend a dedicated gluten-free toaster, although toaster bags can sometimes be used when traveling or in a pinch. I know we've done this before. My husband actually did this recently. He asked for some foil at this hotel from their breakfast area because they had the free breakfast, and he used the foil to wrap his item in it and then put it in the toaster that was in our room. And so you can do things like that in a pinch, but in your home, it's going to be a really good idea to have a dedicated toaster just for gluten-free items. And then
there's other items in your kitchen that need to be separate as well. These are items that my dietitian recommended to me, and it's pretty general good practice guidelines. Cutting boards, especially wood or plastic ones, things that can get knife marks in it and little cracks and crevices that can trap food particles. So we use dedicated cutting boards in our mixed kitchen, and like I said, current guidelines indicate it's cut it's still a common cross-contact hotspot. It's very, very likely you're going to get cross-contact from cutting boards, especially those ones that are porous, like wood or plastic or something like that. Another thing that I was told to do to make completely separate and/or throw away were their wooden spoons and utensils. Again, this is a porous material. It's hard to know what's worked its way into the surfaces. And so we kept those dedicated and separate, or I just really didn't use the wooden ones when we were cooking in the mixed kitchen. I would only use those for the gluten foods. Colanders are also a tricky one. That is something where you know gluten can get trapped in it, especially if you have a metal mesh colander. I feel like that can get underneath the weave of the mesh. Plastic might be a little bit safer, but again, talk to your doctor or dietitian about that. Both the Celiac Disease Foundation and National Celiac Association especially flag colander strainers as cross-contact concerns. So it's better to be safe than sorry and have a separate one for that. Now, the one thing that surprised me was nonstick pans. I was getting sick from nonstick pans early on, but our nonstick pants had been around for a while. So nonstick shouldn't, in theory, hold that gluten in there. But if they're a little bit older and there's, you know, the nonstick coating's starting to peel or get cracks in it, that's when it can start to have gluten in it. We switched to stainless steel pots and pans, and we have cast iron skillets too, which again that's porous. I'll talk about that in a second. And so those the stainless steel pots and pans have a lot lower risk of cross contact if everything's cleaned right. So the stainless steel is much better for a mixed kitchen. Now let's jump to that cast iron pans. If you're one of those people who likes to use cast iron pans, that again can have cracks and crevices in it. It's not like a you know smooth, slick surface if you really get a microscope out. Now you can reclaim a non cast iron pan if it had gluten in it before. We have reclaimed those before successfully. You really have to work hard to grind them down a bit and re-season them and make sure everything's cleared out of there. So use your best judgment on a cast iron pan that previously had gluten in it and whether you can get that successfully cleaned yourself or not. So one of the most painful things I had to get rid of when we had to switch all to gluten-free and we figured out we all had sea lac disease was my pampered chef stoneware casserole dish. That was like my favorite thing to cook our chicken casserole in. And I was realizing we were getting sick every time we're eating out of it because it's porous, it's stone. I absolutely love this thing, so I had to give it to a friend, and I eventually replaced it with a brand new one. But this was something I was really sad about and I really didn't want to give it up. It just does that. Chicken curry casserole is so much better, it helps, you know, balance the moisture in it, and it's just delicious, and it holds the heat in it for a very long time. So that makes it really great for traveling to family events. Now, what are some of the things you don't need to replace? And it's some of these I kind of hinted on a little bit already, just from talking about what's safe. Um, but things you generally don't need to make brand new are stainless steel pans, um, your plates, your forks, your spoons, your knives, the ones that are made out of metal, um, glasses, especially ones that are made out of glass, ceramic dishes usually clean up just fine and don't have cracks and crevices, and any other smooth, non-porous items that are still in really good condition. So, any of those types of devices that get thoroughly washed is usually safe for a mixed kitchen. Now, I
mentioned condiments earlier on in this episode. So, this one is where we were getting, or I was getting cross contact problems, and my oldest was getting cross contact problems before we made the house gluten-free. Think about your butter dish, your peanut butter, your jelly, mayonnaise. Someone puts a knife onto the butter, gets a slice of butter, puts it on their toast, and then go get another slice of butter. Well, now you have little crumbs on that knife from that regular toast, and now you put it onto the butter again, and then it leaves a little bit of crumbs. You can actually physically see this, so you can see actually decent-sized crumbs, and it only takes 20 parts per million to have a celiac person get damaged. So I know firsthand for this because we had problems with this, and what we had problems with was our youngest was a lot younger, and so he didn't fully comprehend the situation. We also had babysitters coming in and watching our kids, and some of them weren't very careful at making sure that this you know protocol was followed. So you not only have to figure you know, figure out your current family members, but you know, who else might come into your house that might be cooking or using the food items in your refrigerator. Current celiac guidance also specifically calls out shared condiments and double dipping as common surfaces for cross contact. So, one of the good solutions is squeeze bottles for certain things you can. Uh, separate containers clearly labeled gluten-free can really help. You know, putting like the masking tape on it and writing gluten-free on it can really help jolt people's memories and help them stick with the plan.
So, appliances can get trickier. Um, an air fryer, this is a high risk of breaded gluten-containing foods being cooked inside and crumbs and circulating air can make it really difficult to make sure the food that you put in there stays gluten-free. So, I'd recommend using a separate one. Waffle iron is another example. Those are hard to clean, all those grooves in there, and some of them are a little bit more porous whenever that you know nice nonstick coating starts wearing off. So, you have to be really careful about that. Toaster oven is a bit more manageable than a pop-up toaster because you can clean it. You can use a clean tray, you could put aluminum foil barrier, so that's a little bit safer if you want to have a mixed device uh that can do gluten and gluten-free and still a toaster. And then your grill. So, this is something you need to be a little bit careful about because grills maybe many times their surfaces, a cast iron-based surface, and so this can have some porousness to it, and you could get cross-contact from a grill. So, you need to be especially careful with it. You can try to clean it really well, or you can have a specific side for gluten-free items and another side for the gluten items. Uh, you could also do a foil barrier. So, this one you could do, but you do have to be a little bit careful about it. I want
to give you a simple decision framework. I want you to ask yourself, is it porous? If the answer is yes, then it needs to be, you need to have a dedicated gluten-free version of it. Is it scratched or full of grooves? Then yes, we need to have dedicated here as well. Does it trap crumbs? Then the answer is yes, we need to have a dedicated gluten-free one here. Is it really difficult to wash? Again, we need to have a dedicated one here. Is it smooth, intact, and easily washed with soap and water? If the answer is yes, then usually you can share that item with gluten versus gluten-free.
Now, why did we end up going gluten-free in our house? Well, we went gluten-free in our house, like the whole house. Once we were realizing that the oldest was also getting cross-contacted and sick, you know, when it was just mom, I just kind of just rolled with it and was like, whatever, I'll be all right. Um, I shouldn't have said that. Really, I shouldn't have said that in my brain. I was telling this to myself, but once I saw my oldest child getting so sick from the cross contact in our kitchen, that's when my husband and I decided that we were going to take the whole house gluten-free and everybody was going to eat gluten-free in the house. Now, the ones that weren't diagnosed yet, they could eat gluten when they weren't in the house, but nobody was bringing gluten into our house. This made things so much easier and so much easier to manage. So, if this is possible for you and your family, have a talk with your family. This will lower the stress levels for you, and it's just going to make things so much easier. It's something I encourage you to explore if you can. It's something you don't have to do. You can do the protocols we talked about in this episode, but it will make life a lot easier. So,
to recap, we don't need to replace everything, but definitely dedicate a toaster, cutting board, uh, wooden utensils, colanders, non, you know, scratch, nonstick stuff, porous stone, waffle iron, air fryer, and then you can usually share the things that are smooth and don't have cracks and crevices. And just make sure that you are protecting yourself, protecting your family, those that have celiac disease so that they can have a much better, more fulfilled life by feeling great. 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 theglutenfreengineer.com. 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.
