Gluten Free....BEER BATTER! (and it's versatile!)

What do you get when you let a nine year old make dinner? Meatballs (no pasta), salad and onion rings. She might be brilliant though. It was awesome!

I originally made the onion rings with regular flour and beer, back before "the diagnosis". It was a recipe from Giada DeLaurentis. I was ecstatic with the results, but have been concerned about altering the recipe so much now that we can't have either. Pom wanted onion rings though, so I sucked it up and made the changes.

WOW. I am still impressed. Light, YUMMY onion rings in a batter that can double as a tempura batter. For shrimp of course. This made my daughter's whole year! Diva doesn't like onion rings much so we dipped apples in the batter and fried those with a cinnamon sugar dusting. Mmmmmm.........those would be good with ice cream.

I have to apologize for the photo quality. The camera was dying, so I didn't even get a chance to see the pictures until they were downloaded.

Gluten Free Beer Batter

1 1/2 cups gluten free beer (we used Bard's sorghum beer but there are other brands)
1 cup gluten free flour (we use Gluten Free Pantry. See my note about this.)
1 egg white
2 pinches salt (plus more for dusting)

Mix all ingredients well. There will be a few little lumps. That's okay
.

Onion Rings

Slice an onion into rings (pop out the individual rings from the slices). Put the rings in the batter and drop them into a fryer. If you don't have a fryer, like I don't, pour half a bottle of oil (canola) into a pot on the stove. Set to medium high and let it heat for a good ten to twenty minutes before frying. Remove the rings when golden and place on a paper towel covered plate. Sprinkle with salt.

The onion rings turned out perfectly!

Apple Rings

If you have a corer, core the apple first. Otherwise just slice it and use a small circular cookie cutter to remove the middle from the slices. I used a pumpkin shaped one...because I could.

Pat the apples dry with a paper towel before dipping in the batter and frying. The batter doesn't stick so well without this step. Remove from oil when golden and place on a separate paper towel covered plate. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.


Apples frying in the pot .... yum. The pan below contains meatballs, that recipe to come!

Note: Gluten Free Pantry All Purpose flour uses rice flours. I don't like the flavor of bean flours or sorghum flour very well so I don't use them. I don't know how they would work. You can make your own flour as well. Celiac.com has the recipe for my go-to homemade all purpose flour. It's similar to GF Pantry's and works well. I go with the pre-made right now only because most things (brown rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, etc etc etc) are not available in this town and I happen to have a LOT of GF Pantry flour on hand thanks to my Mommy. :)

I am trying shrimp next. DH and Pom want to batter and fry bacon. I think they are odd. This is going to be used for fish and maybe even hot dogs too! Hm.....that gives me an idea. Stay tuned!