Cooking for Coeliac Disease: Helpful Tips

We know just how worrying it can be if you or one of your family suddenly finds out there’s something you can’t eat. Knowing one of you is coeliac and can’t eat gluten, which is found in standard bread, pasta, rice and pastry, can be tough. This week (Monday 13^th May to Sunday 19^th May), is Coeliac Awareness Week, so we’d like to share our top tips for cooking for all the family when there’s a food one of you can’t eat without becoming poorly. By experimenting with tweaks to your usual dinner recipes and trying out gluten-free swaps, you’ll soon be feeling confident enough to feed everyone without any fuss. Cooking for Coeliac Disease: Helpful Tips

Get Confidence, Get Creative

If your go-to meals are along the lines of beans on toast, sandwiches, quick pasta meals or one-pan rice dishes - let's face it, that’s what most of us live off! - you will need to adapt the way you cook to make your favourites gluten-free. Whenever you’re cooking something new for the first time, you need to know you can rely on your cookware - you don’t want to spend ages carefully prepping something only for it to end up stuck to the bottom of your baking tray. If you’re changing your cooking habits, you should change your cookware too, and invest in non-stick pans and baking trays that don’t need you to spend ages washing up afterwards, which is exactly what you’ll find at Prestige. It’s even better if you can leave your pans for a minute without having to worry about them boiling over when you’ve got enough to worry about already, and that’s what our SafeCook range offers. Once you’re confident your cookware will support you in adapting your recipes, you can start experimenting.,

Easy Gluten-Free Swaps

There are loads of gluten-free alternatives out there these days, from wheat-free pasta, bread, rice and cereals to ready-made sauces and even gluten-free biscuits. One of the trickiest things to make yourself is gluten-free pastry, but luckily there are plenty of ready-roll versions out there, which mean you can still all tuck into a pie or some picnic sausage rolls as a family. Anyone that can eat gluten won’t even realise they’re eating a wheat-free alternative, as it really does taste just as good! You could use gluten-free pastry to make a batch of our puff pastry bites, which you can fill with whatever you like, and it’d work great for a homemade apple pie too. Just remember to use non-stick bakeware and you’ll be guaranteed results you can be proud of.,

Get Experimental

Once you’ve got your coeliac symptoms under control and you’re feeling a little more confident about cooking for the whole family without making anyone ill, you can start to get a bit more experimental. If you love to bake for your family and are worried you’ll have to stop, don’t be - stock up on some gluten-free flours like buckwheat flour and chickpea flour, and you’ll still be able to make your own bread. For cupcakes and homemade birthday cakes, buy in some almond flour. Jazz up your usual family dinner recipes too by using vegetable alternatives to pasta and rice, like courgetti, butternut squash spaghetti and cauliflower rice - just think of all the extra goodness you’ll be getting into the whole family! For cookware that will always be there for you, whatever your circumstances, explore the full Prestige collection here.