Following a gluten free diet can seem difficult at first. How do you replace wheat? Rice is probably one of the best answers.
Why rice? Because it is a staple food throughout a large geographical area, and it is the mainstay for many cultures. Japan, southern China, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, south India are examples of countries that use rice as their mainstay. These are countries where you can live an almost perfect gluten-free-diet without even trying.
Notice: I said “almost perfectly gluten-free”.” There are small amounts of wheat in some of the cooking, found in soy sauce for example. If you have a gluten-allergy or wheat-allergy, the amount of wheat in soy sauce and other minor ingredients may not be enough to affect you.
If you are celiac however, this may present a problem. But with so many cultures, geographical areas and cooking styles following a rice-based diet, you can simply choose a different country, India for example, where they do not use soy sauce and where you can eat rice that is dependably gluten-free.
At home, you can easily modify Chinese and Thai rice-based recopies to either exclude soy sauce (not recommended) or simply cook with gluten-free soy sauce.
Rice is a remarkably versatile food. It can be made into a main course or a desert, the flour can be used for baking, and there are some types of gluten-free-beer that are made with rice.
Rice does have limitations. It is not so easy to make bread with it, although it can be mixed with other flours and xanthan gum to create a loaf.
Using rice four in baking produces excellent results, but goes stale quite quickly.
You don’t have to use rice for everything, but you can certainly base most of your cooking on it, and eat your yummy gluten-free baking quickly before it can go stale.
By seeking out rice-based recipes, you can follow a tasty and nutritious gluten-free diet with ease.