Best Gluten-Free Italian Meatball Recipe

Gluten-free Italian meatballs recipe with pesto g-free pasta.

Craving meatballs but shun evil gluten? 

Have I got a meatball recipe for you. And it's so good you won't even have to apologize to your Aunt Carmella. I promise. She won't ever suspect you pulled a switcheroo on the old family recipe and made it gluten-free.

Mum's the word (or is it Mama mia?).

Let's face it. When it comes to making meatballs every family boasts an ultra-special top secret meatball recipe, right? There's a loyalty to meatball mojo as fierce and tooth baring as the die hard belief that Mom's meatloaf can cure all ills, mend bruised hearts, and restore order to chaos theory.

So why am I putting myself on the line here? How do I even dare to post a gluten-free meatball recipe? The wrong ingredient or technique might actually lead to fisticuffs. Or bristling. You might turn away from Gluten-Free Goddess in utter, sheer contempt.

I'm putting my reputation on the line here, and I know it.

So why risk it? Why torture myself with the inevitable backlash? Reason one-  an obvious plea. My meatballs are gluten-free and casein-free, in other words, GFCF. My audience. My people.

These meatballs also happen to be egg-free (yes, I hear the snorts of derision- may you wake tomorrow with a blooming albumen rash and come crawling back to peruse my egg-free recipes).

Reason number two? My spaghetti and meatballs? Killer. I'm serious.

Meatball bliss.

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The Gluten-Free Diet Cheat-Sheet: How to Go G-Free

New to gluten-free living? 

Here's a printable quick start guide on how to begin a gluten-free diet.

Karina's Gluten-Free Cheat Sheet

by Karina Allrich

 

Foods to avoid on a gluten-free diet: 

Gluten is the elastic protein found in wheat, rye, and barley (including durum, einkorn, graham, semolina, bulgur wheat, spelt, farro, kamut, and triticale). Commercially produced oats may also contain gluten due to cross contamination in processing (more on gluten-free oats below).

Recipes and products that use wheat flour (bleached or non-bleached white flour, whole wheat flour, cracked wheat, wheat bran, barley flour, semolina, durum, spelt, farro, kamut, triticale) or vital wheat gluten are not gluten-free.

Injera bread (traditionally made from teff flour) and Asian rice wraps may be gluten-free, but are not necessarily gluten-free (check labels, always).

Semolina, durum, spelt and whole wheat pasta, including cous cous, ramen noodles, and some soba noodles, are not gluten-free.

Beer, ale, lager and malted beverages are not gluten-free. Foods cooked in beer- such as brats, meats and sausage, etc- are not gluten-free.

Malt vinegar, malt flavorings and barley malt are not gluten-free.

Recipes and products using breadcrumbs, breaded coatings, fried onion rings, dredged flour coating, bread and flat bread, croutons, bagels, croissants, flour tortillas, pizza crust, graham crackers, granola, cereal, wheat germ, wheat berries, cookie crumbs, pancake mix, pie crust pastry, crackers, pretzels, toast, flour tortillas, sandwich wraps and lavash, or pita bread are not gluten-free.

The vegan protein sub seitan (made with vital wheat gluten) is not gluten-free; and some tempeh is not gluten-free (you must check, especially for soy sauce flavoring). Flavored tofu may or may not be gluten-free due to soy sauce and seasoning.

Barley enzymes used in malt beverages, chocolate chips, coffee and coffee flavors/blended mixes, flavored and herbal teas, dessert syrups, brown rice syrup are not gluten-free. Always check on "natural flavors" as well.

Unfortunately, spices have become a new concern, as many single ground spices and spice blends have tested high in hidden gluten. It is important to use due diligence on the spice issue; call the company and ask if the spice or spice blend you are using has been tested for gluten.

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Asparagus Leek Risotto Recipe

A Light Risotto for Spring

May I just take a moment and express my deep appreciation for risotto? And tender-crisp spring asparagus? A week like we've had triggers a need for comfort food- but not the heavy, spice laced comfort food of winter. Something fresh and light and creamy. Asparagus risotto to the rescue. It's been a roller coaster week for us. From opening a bottle of Veuve Clicquot to learning that our buyer had run into a snag. He missed the deadline for obtaining a mortgage. We remain hopeful and knee deep in book stacks and boxes, however. He's still trying. Still interested.

And us? We're practicing our best zen detachment.

With bourbon.

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Vegan Carrot Soup- Easy + Delicious

Simplicity in a Bowl

Here's a fresh and easy vegan carrot soup recipe for spring. Why soup? Because it rains in spring. It snows in spring. It even does so simultaneously, accompanied by thunder, out here in the wilds of sunny New Mexico. We experienced the gamut of meteorological events over the weekend as we were loading boxes of books into the car. Four seasons in one day. Packing and unpacking. Once again weeding out what is no longer necessary, hunched in our cramped little storage unit, out of the stinging sleet, rummaging through boxes, weeding out for the next move. The migration West. 

To Southern California.

We are boxing and unboxing on faith. Sorting and donating. Our home inspection is on Wednesday and we expect no problems. The sale will progress. So I've been cleaning out drawers. And just where do all the crumbs come from anyway? In a junk drawer. I'm sure you have one. The drawer with twenty year old scissors and three screwdrivers that are never the correct size and rubber bands from asparagus bundles and dry brittle tape. Wine corks. This is a mystery. Do I nibble that many cookies wandering around the house looking for thumb tacks or glue?

I've also been rinsing out my collection of almost empty shampoo bottles (for recycling, yes, don't panic). I think there were five. An inch of shampoo collectively. I was saving this for goddess knows what. If I was more practical I'd simply add water near the end and use up every last drop in my shampoo ritual. But that fresh new bottle is always calling to me, with its powerful allure. Promises of pomegranate and green tea volume and luster. Offering the hope that this might be The One. The long lost key that will transform my flat and inept hair into something fabulous.

You would think, by my age, I would know better.

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Quinoa Stuffed Portobellos

Quinoa stuffed portobello mushrooms are a lovely vegan nosh.

The stars are tuning their alignment in our favor. After eighteen months on the market (and more than once price reduction along the way) there are rumblings of a house sale. Negotiations are afoot. We are walking on Easter egg shells through the weekend. Monday will bring us definitive news. Send kind and generous thoughts to our buyer. Wish him luck with his bank.

We've been preparing for good news, sorting through books both old and new. Stripping away much of what we've accumulated since our last move. Lugging movies and art books and cookbooks off in recycled Whole Foods bags to the used book store in Santa Fe. Those things we carry.

Trading media for food.

We took the cash and bought wine, gluten-free flours, olive oil and boxes of tea. Not enough to last through May. On purpose.

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Gluten-Free Garlic and Sesame Crackers

Make your own gluten-free snack crackers- it's easy.

Crackery Snacky Gluten-Free Goodness

Crackers don't get enough credit. I guess they're not cute enough. Or sexy enough. No swirls of pastel icing. No confetti sprinkles. No tiny ribbons and bows. No Jackson Pollock drips of balsamic reduction or snow pea puree.

Just simple squares.

Ho-hum brown.

Crackers are the wallflowers at the food blogger's party. Too ordinary and unassuming to garner much attention. But there might be a few of you in the same boat I row upstream.

The snack deprived boat.

So this one's for you.

Folks who can consume gluten probably take their snacks for granted. After all, they can grab any bag of chips or cracker box off the shelf of any market or convenience store and motor on over to the cheese section without breaking a sweat. Snack attack solved. Please pass the Doritos.
But for those of us living gluten-free and casein-free- it ain't so easy. (And if you happen to have additional allergies- to sunflower oil or nuts or spices- you get one complicated serpentine quest for a safe little bite.)

At this writing, I can count on one hand the number of available chips or crackers I can eat. Safely. And for some mysterious reason that only the petulant Goddess of the Universe knows, that modest handful of snack options is never stocked. Anywhere.

I search in vain every weekly trip to Santa Fe for the one potato chip I can eat. Or a single non-GMO tortilla chip. Even those funny little white rice wafers play hard to get. New Mexico appears to be staunchly plain rice cracker free (I guess rice crackers don't like to flirt with guacamole and salsa).

Which explains why I bake my own snacks and crackers.

It's a pragmatic choice. I've made Pecan Crackers, and Savory Grain-Free Crackers (back when I didn't know I was allergic to Parmesan). I've made crispy sweet potato and gold potato chips.

But this week we found ourselves crackerless. So we baked up a new recipe on the spot. With garlic and sesame seeds. If you cannot eat sesame, darling, flax seeds or hemp seeds will work.

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