Gluten-Free Braised Short Ribs

Ribs so tender they almost cry

 This is the second time Hubby and I have tried this recipe.  It makes a fantastically tender and flavorful dish.  The ribs just melt under your fork and in your mouth.  We paired them this time with carrots and mashed potatoes, both of which are also delish with the vegetable sauce. 

• 2 pounds of short ribs (boneless)
• Two celery sticks
• Two carrots
• Half an onion
• 1 teaspoon of thyme
• 1 cup of bold Red wine 
• 1 cup Beef low sodium broth
• 1 small can of low/no sodium tomato sauce
• Tablespoon of fresh parsley
• Quarter cup of gluten-free flour (you can use a GF baking mix, or rice or potato starch flour) 
• Pepper to taste (probably a tablespoon)
• 4-6 garlic cloves
• 2-3 tbsps of olive oil

Trim the fat from the meat and dust the ribs in flour and pepper.(I just grate in pepper to the flour until it looks like enough, but I suspect it is probably a teaspoon at least). Set aside.  Grate the veggies and simmer with wine, broth & herbs in a fry or sauce pan. Press or crush the garlic and brown the meat with the garlic and oil in a Dutch oven.   When brown, add  the sauce on top of the browned meat.  Cover and cook in oven at 325 for 3 hours, stirring  and turning the meat occasionally.  After the first couple of hours you may want to remove the cover to let the sauce reduce more. If the sauce boils too much, reduce heat. 

 Notes and options:

 The sauce simmers down significantly and can get salty which is why low sodium ingredients are used.   Adjust the liquids for the amount of sauce you would like.  With the veggies, it does thicken up.

We’ve made this twice now, once with boned short ribs and once without.  The boned ribs create a much fattier sauce, so use boneless ribs, if at all possible.  If you can’t get short ribs, you could also use a roast cut and slice it into rib-size strips (about 2 1/2 to 3 inches wide).

Udi’s Plain Gluten Free Bagels

Some things you can make easy approximations with Gluten Free materials.  Pancakes we have down cold now.  Others are harder.  Sub-rolls are still eluding us, for example. 

Bagels are also doing the same.   Let’s face it.  Finding a good bagel isn’t always easy even when you’re not talking gluten-free. While I would be quite sad to say good-bye to bagels and cream cheese, Hubby was never a massive bagel fan. He could take them or leave them.  He ate largely cinnamon-raisin bagels when my parents were down and made a big bagel run, but wasn’t  a devoted fan.  None-the-less, he decided to try Udi’s GF bagels, for a change if nothing else. 

The Udi’s are softer than non GF bagels.  Hubby’s opinion was a shrug, albeit a positive one.  His comment was that they were more like fluffy white bread than bagels (and they are a bit soft).  That said, it was among the best fluffy white bread he’d had, especially for gluten-free. 

A caveat: he’s anti-cream cheese so he used these with just butter or as part  of an egg sandwich.  Cream cheese would probably hide a multitude of sins, but nothing can give them that chewy texture of your average wheat flour bagel.  On the whole, however, they are a good GF product.  Udi’s also makes cinnamon-raisin and whole grain gluten-free bagels.

Hiatus

So, where was I?

There are two reasons for the delay. 

One, I worked 65 hours a week for most of the past six months.   I didn’t entirely have time to do my laundry or sleep.  Who has time to blog? 

Two, Hubby finally got officially tested for gluten sensitivity.  Not surprisingly, he doesn’t have celiac disease.  We already pretty much knew that, given his penchant for cheating on his gluten-free diet with relatively few severe effects.  Trace amounts of gluten don’t really bother him.  He just can’t eat a plate of semolina pasta. 

Once he got the official diagnosis, he went a little crazy cheating on his diet, since he was less worried about long-term effects.  He could only cheat so much, of course, without consequences.  But he definitely succumbed to a few meatball subs. 

He does still have a gluten-senstivity, though, just not one as easily diagnosed, so we’re still testing products and plugging along with a GF life. 

We’re back!

15 Minute Thai Peanut Stirfry

It is finally warming up here (a whole 51 degrees today), and I’m losing my compulsion to cook comfort food.  Tonight I wanted a quick and easy meal that wasn’t too heavy.  The result from a forage in the freezer and cupboards turned up the following:

• 1/3 pound rice noodle sticks  (I got mine from Trader Joe’s but the Asian section of most grocery stores should have them). 
• Grilled chicken breast (1 large breast or about 1  to 1.5 cups cut up) grilled or if frozen, thawed.
• 1/2 a pound of  blanched or thawed stirfry vegetables (again, you can cut your own, or cheat — I had a nice frozen mix with broccoli, carrots, red pepper, water chestnuts, mushrooms and celery. 
• 1 tbsp olive or sesame oil
• 1/2 -3/4 cup peanut sauce (watch the ingredients as they sometimes have trace amounts of gluten)  Mine — from the foo foo store brand section of my local grocery was gluten free and had both fairly low fat and sodium content.)

I was rather hungry and impatient and threw this whole thing together in less than 10 minutes, the longest part is boiling the water.  Cook the noodles al dente (6-8 minutes probably depending the size of the noodles).  While they are cooking, thaw the chicken and vegetables, and start the oil heating in a wok or the largest fry pan you have.  When the oil is very hot, fry up the vegetables and chicken to heat them through and finish the cooking process, 2-4 minutes (longer if they’re raw). Add 2/3 of the peanut sauce and stir fry another minute. Drain the noodles and toss them in the wok, mixing up everything, add the rest of the sauce, and stir. 

Turn off the heat and enjoy. 

Serves two