How to batter if you are gluten intolerant?

Battering is a cooking technique that brings a crunchy touch to many preparations and that, in addition, it is essential in some recipes so that they do not fall apart, preserving a creamy interior. Surely you are already imagining some delicious vegetable croquettes or a crispy marinated tofu.

The steps to batter they are very simple:

Traditionally, first is flouredthat is, it is passed through white wheat flour. it is passed by egg or by a vegetable substitute of the eggand the batter is ready for the pan or oven. At this point, we can also choose to bread it. The most traditional breading is with breadcrumbs. For a crunchier touch, we could use the Japanese option, panko.

He bread crumbsIf we bread as we normally do, we can buy it packaged or at the bakery, but we can also do it by grating the stale bread we have at home. It’s a reuse product.

But either because we do not consume bread or wheat flour, because we have restricted gluten or because we are looking for new flavors and textures, here are 3 variations for batter that will surprise you.

Coat with gluten-free flour

Gluten-free flours are a staple of vegetable batters. Not only because we need these flours for the flouring step, but because many of them also work as vegan eggs. That is, we can use them in both phases of the batter.

There is 3 gluten-free flours that have a great adhesion capacity and they are very interesting:

Corn flour Rice flour Chickpea flour

Remember that oats contain gluten, so it would not fall into this category.

To make the “egg”, we can use chickpea flour with water, adding if we want a pinch of turmeric to give it color. We can also make a mixture in equal parts of these flours, with two of them or with all three. The goal is to avoid the strong and characteristic flavor of the chickpea.

The most common ratio is to use 1 tablespoon of chickpea flour for 3 of waterand we can maintain these measures with the mixture of flours.

Breaded with nuts

If at the time of breading we want avoid gluten-free breadWe have other options.

The nut flours, widely used in confectionery, are nothing more than dried fruit without powdered sugar or salt. The most common and easiest to obtain nut flour is natural almond flour (the finest grain is the special category of confectionery).

This type of flour they do not have the enormous adherence that cereal flours have that we already know and, in the event that we are going to fry or use the iron, we must ensure that the false egg and it are well adhered.

If we are looking for an even more crunchy touchwe can use almond in small squares or laminated. The latter usually comes in a very large format so that it can be used for breading, but we can place it on a clean and smooth surface, with a cotton cloth on top, and pass the roller so that it is a workable size.

We can do the same with other nuts, although it is possible that if they are thick pieces we need two layers of batter to be able to bread them well.

Extra crispy breaded

If you are looking to enjoy new textures, there are ways of breading to get a very crunchywithout having to resort to panko.

A very ingenious option are the breakfast cereals, but most contain added sugars or unhealthy ingredients that are best avoided. However, there are other fantastic ones that we can use, such as millet or quinoa flakes.

Or also rice or puffed quinoa in its natural versionwithout cocoa or other ingredients.

Give flavor to your batters

A very good way to avoid being tempted to use more salt than necessary is add spicesand this trick also works great with breadings.

Remember that there are some, such as paprika, that may not work well in some dishes, since if it burns it can make it bitter. However, you can add lemon grass to give it a citrus taste, or chilli powder to get a spicy point.

We can also add garlic or onion to flour. In order not to add more moisture, it is recommended that we use powdered formats to the flour.

My favorite recipe: breaded avocado

Didn’t it occur to you? Well it’s delicious…

Ingredients:

1 avocado cornmeal 2 tablespoons chickpea flour 6 pieces of water sliced ​​licked almonds salt olive oil for frying, if applicable

Preparation:

Cut the avocado and pit it. Then we remove the skin and cut it into 8 lengthwise, elongated halves. Flour with the cornmeal. Mix the chickpea flour with the water, add salt. Pass the avocado through the false egg and then through the laminated almonds, which We will have broken into smaller pieces. We fry in a pan with very hot virgin olive oil. Remove the avocado pieces when they are golden brown. Serve with a dash of lemon juice and ground black pepper.

He panko is a preparation based on wheat flour, from Japanese cuisine, widely used to achieve crunchy textures due to its thickness. In many cases it is flavored and may contain ingredients of animal origin, usually fish or crustaceans, so it would not be suitable for vegetable diets.