8 Tips For Cooking For Gluten-free Friends // Simple Hospitality

Hello, hello! It’s been a while since I’ve been around this corner of the web, so I wanted to let you know why I’ve been gone. I don’t talk too much about my personal life that isn’t related to the dishes I’m creating and sharing, but I’ve mentioned a couple times here that we’ve been trying to get pregnant for almost 3 years. In January, we started on a new infertility treatment plan and I got pregnant on the first round of treatment for the very first time. Unfortunately, I later miscarried within a few weeks of finding out we were pregnant. So that kind of rocked my world upside down and I’ve needed to take some time off to grieve and process. I didn’t expect it to be a whole month, but you can’t rush things. I debated about saying something here, but I think it’s important to share as part of the grief process and it’s important to let other women (and families) know that they are not alone going through miscarriage. It’s way more common than most of us realize. I will probably post more in-dept about it on Friday as part of my “Currently Sustaining Us” series because I think it needs to be discussed. Through it all, my friends have been amazing, and several of my readers have noticed my absence and sent me sweet messages checking up on me! It was so lovely to know that I was missed! Thank you for all the love and support. <3

Today (well, technically last week) I am sharing a guest post with my best tips for cooking for gluten-free friends! I love to entertain guests and show hospitality to others. One of the side effects of entertaining often is having people over who have food allergies or dietary restrictions and wanting to accommodate them. Many of my closest friends (and my mom) are gluten-free, so I cook for Celiac friends often and wanted to share what I’ve learned.

Here are my 8 tips for cooking for gluten-free friends in a gluten-full household

(Note: GF = an abbreviation of “gluten-free”)

1. Be super mindful of cross-contamination! When you cook gluten-free foods in a kitchen that frequently has wheat, you need to be very careful to clean EVERYTHING thoroughly before you begin. Mixers, counter tops, toasters, baking dishes, and small appliances are huge culprits for cross-contamination, so be sure to clean them very, very well before you use them to bake gluten-free. (Run them through the dishwasher if possible) If you made brownies last week and the flour went “poof” all over your mixer, chances are you wiped it down with a wet paper towel and didn’t think anything of it. Unfortunately, there is likely still some flour hiding under the arm of the mixer, on the lever, or where the paddle attaches that could shake loose as you’re mixing. This could lead to a friend getting sick, even from a tiny bit. You can either bust out the can of compressed air and the q-tips and clean it down like you’re on CSI, or you can just chose to mix by hand in a bowl that has been run through the dishwasher. The same goes for a toaster – you’ll never get it clean enough, so either chose to use the broiler, don’t toast, or wrap your gluten-free item to be toasted in a layer of aluminum foil to protect it from the gluten then carefully extract it later. Also note: don’t eat anything with gluten while you’re cooking. You never know how much gluten might spread from your hands.