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Gluten-free recipes

These gluten-free recipes contain no wheat, barley or rye in any ingredient you need, and the hidden sources are checked as well, from ordinary soy sauce to the flour that thickens a sauce. Most of the dishes are gluten-free by nature rather than by substitution, cooked the way they are in the countries they come from.

Pad thai is built on rice noodles, bánh xèo on a rice flour batter, and butter chicken, salade niçoise and crème brûlée never needed wheat in the first place. Where bread belongs in the dish itself the recipe asks for gluten-free bread, and bread offered on the side, such as the optional naan with butter chicken, has to be gluten-free too.

225 recipes

How a recipe earns the gluten-free tag

Every ingredient that is not optional has to be free of wheat, barley and rye. Ordinary soy sauce, hoisin and kecap manis usually contain wheat, and beer and the malt vinegar in UK Worcestershire sauce are both made from barley. Any of them keeps a recipe off this page unless it names a gluten-free version such as tamari.

Optional ingredients are left out of the check. Fårikål lists two tablespoons of flour, dusted between the layers of lamb and cabbage, as optional for a slightly thicker broth; leave it out and the Norwegian dish is gluten-free as written.

Bread served alongside is written as gluten-free bread, as it is for chorizo al vino and amêijoas à bulhão pato, while adana kebab comes with gluten-free flatbreads.

Cuisines that cook without wheat

Much of Southeast Asia runs on rice. Chả giò are wrapped in rice paper rather than wheat pastry, cháo gà is rice simmered in the broth of a poached chicken, and pad thai is seasoned with tamarind and fish sauce instead of soy sauce. Thai green curry takes its sauce from coconut milk and curry paste, with no flour at all.

Latin American kitchens lean on corn, rice and cassava. Farofa is toasted cassava flour, arroz con leche and flan mexicano need no flour, and churrasco seasons its meat with nothing but coarse salt. Around the Mediterranean, tortilla española, shakshuka and salade niçoise are gluten-free the way they have always been made.

Thickening and coating without wheat flour

Wheat flour is the usual way to thicken a sauce or crisp a coating, and these recipes show the alternatives. Crema catalana is set on the hob with cornflour, chicken 65 is coated in rice flour and cornflour before frying, and bánh xèo gets its crisp, lacy edge from a rice flour batter.

Some dishes thicken with what is already in the pot. Cullen skink mashes half its potato back into the soup, and avgolemono turns chicken broth velvety with nothing but eggs and lemon. One caution when shopping: in some countries cornflour is made from wheat, so buy a packet labelled gluten-free.

Frequently asked questions

Is soy sauce gluten-free?
Ordinary soy sauce is not, because it is brewed from wheat as well as soybeans. A recipe that needs it is not tagged gluten-free here unless it names tamari or a soy sauce labelled gluten-free. That is why many Chinese stir-fries are missing from this page, while pad thai, seasoned with fish sauce and tamarind, is on it.
Is rice gluten-free?
Yes. All rice is naturally gluten-free, including sticky or glutinous rice, which is named for its texture rather than for gluten. That makes rice dishes a reliable starting point: arroz con leche, arroz rojo, cháo gà and arroz e feijão are all on this page. Watch what goes into the pot with the rice, such as stock, soy sauce or a seasoning mix.
Are these recipes suitable for coeliac disease?
The tag tells you that no ingredient, as written, contains wheat, barley or rye. It cannot tell you how a product you buy was made or whether it picked up traces of gluten, so when cooking for someone with coeliac disease, choose stock, sausages, curry paste and spice blends labelled gluten-free, and follow the advice of their doctor or dietitian.
What is a quick gluten-free dinner?
Cajun blackened fish takes about 20 minutes: fillets coated in paprika, cayenne and dried herbs and seared in a very hot cast-iron pan. Fish en papillote, fillets steamed in parchment with tomatoes, olives and lemon, is ready in about 30. For something heartier, chicken tinga, shredded chicken in a smoky chipotle and tomato sauce, takes around 50 minutes.

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