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I originally made the onion rings with regular flour and beer, back before "the diagnosis".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!

Mushroom Garlic Chicken with Green Beans and Herbed Quinoa

When I began this blog, one of my intents was to help others who are going through the gluten free adventure. Whether it was a decision made from necessity or a desire to be healthier, it seems difficult to eat and cook gluten free with all of the processed food choices in the market, at least it did to me.

Turns out that with the exception of bread, gluten free cooking is pretty easy. Take, for example, this meal. It's one of our favorites, but it's super easy, healthy and pretty economical too.
A note about my recipes. I say organic for two reasons. 1) Who the hell decided that it would be good for humans to consume all of those chemicals?! 2) Things like tomato sauce should be naturally gluten free right? Naturally yes, but most canned tomato sauces are NOT all natural. And many are not gluten free. Organic foods are though. Well, organic wheat bread or organic barley obviously is NOT gluten free but organic processed foods, aka tomato sauce, chicken broth and the like, do not add all of the chemicals and preservatives like MSG.

I haven't mastered the whole uploading pictures thing yet...bare with me please.

Ingredients first!

Mushroom Garlic Chicken

3-4 chicken breast halves
2 shallots
3-4 garlic cloves
10 (or so) mushrooms, sliced
2 tblsp butter
salt and pepper to taste
Mozzarella Cheese, shredded (as much or as little as you desire ... YUM)

Green Beans

1/4 cup vegetable broth
2 (or so) fresh, trimmed grean beans
salt and pepper to taste

Herbed Quinoa

1 1/4 cups water
1 cup quinoa
onion powder
garlic powder
herbes de provence
10 leaves fresh sage, torn roughly
1-2 Tblsp butter

OKAY now, first things first, when there aren't any amounts, it means that I didn't measure. Use a few shakes. I love garlic and herbes de provence so I use more of those. Use your own tastes. :)

To the process!

1. Melt 2 Tblsp butter over medium heat in a heavy frying pan. Mince the garlic and shallots, add them and the mushrooms to the butter in the pan. Saute about 7 minutes then add Chicken. Cook for 10 minutes on each side.

2. In the meantime, boil the water with the butter, onion and garlic powders and herbes de provence for the quinoa.When it's done boiling, add the quinoa, cover and simmer 12 minutes. Add sage, turn off stove, re-cover and let set 5 minutes.


3. Remove (only) the chicken from the pan and place on a plate. Sprinkle mozzarella over the chicken. Cover so the mozzarella melts. While that's melting, add green beans and broth to the chicken pan. Let simmer 10 minutes or until green beans are as done as you want them. Last but not least, serve and ENJOY!!