Best Gluten-Free Italian Meatball Recipe

Gluten-free Italian meatballs recipe with pesto g-free pasta.

Craving meatballs but shun evil gluten? 

Have I got a meatball recipe for you. And it's so good you won't even have to apologize to your Aunt Carmella. I promise. She won't ever suspect you pulled a switcheroo on the old family recipe and made it gluten-free.

Mum's the word (or is it Mama mia?).

Let's face it. When it comes to making meatballs every family boasts an ultra-special top secret meatball recipe, right? There's a loyalty to meatball mojo as fierce and tooth baring as the die hard belief that Mom's meatloaf can cure all ills, mend bruised hearts, and restore order to chaos theory.

So why am I putting myself on the line here? How do I even dare to post a gluten-free meatball recipe? The wrong ingredient or technique might actually lead to fisticuffs. Or bristling. You might turn away from Gluten-Free Goddess in utter, sheer contempt.

I'm putting my reputation on the line here, and I know it.

So why risk it? Why torture myself with the inevitable backlash? Reason one-  an obvious plea. My meatballs are gluten-free and casein-free, in other words, GFCF. My audience. My people.

These meatballs also happen to be egg-free (yes, I hear the snorts of derision- may you wake tomorrow with a blooming albumen rash and come crawling back to peruse my egg-free recipes).

Reason number two? My spaghetti and meatballs? Killer. I'm serious.

Meatball bliss.

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The Gluten-Free Diet Cheat-Sheet: How to Go G-Free

How to Begin a Gluten-Free Diet

Foods to avoid:

Gluten is the elastic protein found in wheat, rye, barley, durum, einkorn, graham, semolina, bulgur wheat, spelt, farro, kamut, and triticale. Commercial oats also contain gluten due to cross contamination in processing (see more on gluten-free oats below).

Recipes that use flour (bleached white flour, whole wheat flour, cracked wheat, barley, semolina, durum, spelt, farro, kamut, triticale) or vital wheat gluten are not gluten-free.

Semolina, durum, spelt and whole wheat pasta, including cous cous and ramen noodles, are not gluten-free.

Beer, ale and lager are not gluten-free. Brats, meats and sausage cooked in beer are not gluten-free.

Malt vinegar, malt flavorings and barley malt are not gluten-free.

Recipes calling for breadcrumbs, breaded coatings, fried onion rings, flour dredging, bread and flat bread, croutons, bagels, croissants, flour tortillas, pizza crust, graham crackers, granola, cereal, wheat germ, wheat berries, cookie crumbs, pie crust pastry, crackers, pretzels, toast, flour tortillas, sandwich wraps and lavash, or pita bread are not gluten-free.

The vegan protein sub seitan (made with vital wheat gluten) is not gluten-free; and some tempeh is not gluten-free (you must check). Flavored tofu may or may not be gluten-free due to seasoning. Injera bread (traditionally made from teff flour) and Asian rice wraps may be gluten-free, but are not necessarily gluten-free (check labels, always).

Barley enzymes used in malt, natural flavors, and to process some non-dairy beverages, chocolate chips, coffee, teas, and dessert syrups (and even some brown rice syrups) are not gluten-free. Always check.

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Frosted Orange Creme Cupcakes - Vegan and Gluten-Free

Vegan gluten-free orange cupcake goodness.

Sunny Sweetness with a Twist

On my To-Do List for nearly forever has been creating a gluten-free vegan recipe for my favorite birthday treat- a fresh and fragrant orange cake with orange creme frosting. Since it isn't my birthday until June (and it's just the two of us living out here in our little casita in the coyote run hills) I decided to experiment with making cupcakes instead of a layer cake. Orange cupcakes just sounded fun for spring.

Sunny and sweet.

I had such a good time in the kitchen this week making these sweet little gems. In fact, I'll be working on more recipes for vegan cupcakes in the near future, including basic vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, carrot, perhaps, and a few other tasty flavor combos.

Now that I know how easy it is to bake delicious gluten-free vegan cupcakes, the sky's the limit.

Gluten-free vegan orange creme cupcakes.

Orange Creme Cupcake Recipe - Vegan and Gluten-Free

These light, refreshing little bundles of orange creme goodness remind us of angel food cake (most likely because of the lift potato starch imparts). They make a perfect tea cake or party cupcake. And the best thing is, not only do they taste like a certain retro frozen confection (you know the one- that orange Popsicle with a vanilla ice cream center), these beauties are gluten, dairy, soy, egg and rice free. An allergen-free indulgence.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sorghum flour

3/4 cup potato starch (not potato flour!)

3/4 cup organic cane sugar

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

2 teaspoons fresh orange zest

2 tablespoons light olive oil or vegetable oil

1 tablespoon raw organic agave or honey

1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice at room temperature (fresh juice gives the batter a fresh, bright taste)

1 tablespoon Ener-G Egg Replacer whisked with 1/4 cup warm water

2 teaspoons bourbon vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line a 12-cupcake pan with paper liners.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients- flours through xanthan gum. Add in the orange zest, oil, agave, orange juice, Egg Replacer and vanilla.

Beat on medium speed for two minutes minutes until the batter is smooth and fluffy. Make a 'figure eight' motion if the batter climbs the beaters.

Let the batter sit a minute before spooning it into cupcake liners.

Spoon the batter evenly into twelve lined cupcake cups.

Bake in the center of a preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and firm (they should be slightly tender but too soft). Try not to open the door to peek until the very end of baking time- you don't want to jar the cupcakes and make them deflate. These cupcakes rose quite high, then slowly settled down to a slightly rounded shape at about 20 to 25 minutes.

Remove and cool on a wire rack.

When the cupcakes are completely cooled, frost with my vegan Orange Creme Frosting (recipe follows).

Karina's Notes on gluten-free vegan batter:

Gluten-free vegan batters are a tad different than wheat and white flour batters. They are stiffer at first, then stretch and get sticky as the xanthan gum and egg replacer do their thing.

Don't beat the batter to death. Let it sit for a minute  or two after mixing to let it relax and settle in.

If the batter "climbs" the beaters, slow down the speed and slightly lift the beaters to encourage the batter to move back down into the bowl. Move your beater around the bowl in figure eights, at a slight angle. Practice your technique- soon you'll be winging around gluten-free vegan baking like a pro.

Gluten-free frosting for cupcakes.

Vegan Orange Creme Frosting Recipe

Use your favorite vegan buttery spread instead of the soy-free Spectrum Organic Shortening, if you prefer.

Ingredients:

2 cups organic powdered sugar

1/4 cup Spectrum Organic Shortening

1 teaspoon bourbon vanilla

2-3 tablespoons fresh orange juice- more as needed

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl, combine the powdered sugar with the shortening and vanilla. Begin beating. Add in the orange juice a tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition. Don't add too much juice too soon. Go slowly.

Beat on medium high until the frosting is smooth and creamy. If it is too thin, add more sugar; too stiff, add a spoonful of orange juice. You want a medium bodied icing.

Spoon the frosting into a zip-closing plastic sandwich baggie, press out the air and seal tight. Cut a very small hole in one of the bottom corners-- not too big. To frost, place the cut tip over the cupcake, near an outer edge, and squeeze the bag of frosting, gripping it tightly and moving in a circular motion, spiraling in toward the center, until the swirl of icing covers the cupcake.

Top with a few pieces of orange zest. Or try a sprinkle of flaked coconut, finely chopped pecans or walnuts.

Place in a freezable container to chill or freeze. Once frozen, you can wrap each cupcake individually for single treats, if you like. Remove wrapping before thawing. To keep the icing intact.

Cook time: 1 hour

Yield: Serves 12

GFG Baking Notes:

This cake batter would make a luscious orange birthday cake. The amount of batter in this recipe should make one 7 or 8-inch round layer. Double it for a two-pan layer cake; and double the frosting.

If you prefer eggs, use 2 large organic free-range eggs, beaten.

Orange juice should be fresh squeezed at room temperature. I use California navel oranges. Using an ice cold commercial orange juice with added vitamin C, or citric acid, may affect the batter's consistency and rise (too much acid).

Before you grate the zest, wash the orange. And don't include the bitter white layer.

For those of you needing a citrus-free birthday cake, try my Banana Spice Cake and Cupcakes recipe.

For those of you unable to find sorghum flour, I imagine you can substitute rice flour. I'm not a big rice flour fan, but if it's the one gluten-free flour you can use, try it and let me know how it works. I might let the batter sit for a few minutes, too, if using rice flour. This helps soften the gritty texture of it.

Sugar provides some of the structure of this cake. If you shun cane sugar and use a liquid sweetener instead, you may have to add more structure. Those of you more adept at baking with agave, please leave a comment if you have some insight for our sugar-free readers.

{Enjoy sugary treats in moderation. Gluten-Free Goddess advises consuming no more than 2 tablespoons of sugar a day.}

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Asparagus Leek Risotto Recipe

Creamy asparagus risotto  for spring.

May I just take a moment and express my deep appreciation for risotto? And tender-crisp spring asparagus? A week like we've had triggers a need for comfort food- but not the heavy, spice laced comfort food of winter. Something fresh and light and creamy. Asparagus risotto to the rescue. It's been a roller coaster week for us. From opening a bottle of Veuve Clicquot to learning that our buyer had run into a snag. He missed the deadline for obtaining a mortgage. We remain hopeful and knee deep in book stacks and boxes, however. He's still trying. Still interested.

And us? We're practicing our best zen detachment.

With bourbon.

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Vegan Carrot Soup

A simple and elegant vegan carrot soup.

Here's a fresh and easy vegan carrot soup recipe for spring. Why soup? Because it rains in spring. It snows in spring. It even does so simultaneously, accompanied by thunder, out here in the wilds of sunny New Mexico. We experienced the gamut of meteorological events over the weekend as we were loading boxes of books into the car. Four seasons in one day. Packing and unpacking. Once again weeding out what is no longer necessary, hunched in our cramped little storage unit, out of the stinging sleet, rummaging through boxes, weeding out for the next move. The migration West. To Southern California.

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Quinoa Recipe: Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms with Pine Nuts and Raisins

Quinoa stuffed portobello mushrooms are a lovely vegan nosh.

The stars are tuning their alignment in our favor. After eighteen months on the market (and more than once price reduction along the way) there are rumblings of a house sale. Negotiations are afoot. We are walking on Easter egg shells through the weekend. Monday will bring us definitive news. Send kind and generous thoughts to our buyer. Wish him luck with his bank.

We've been preparing for good news, sorting through books both old and new. Stripping away much of what we've accumulated since our last move. Lugging movies and art books and cookbooks off in recycled Whole Foods bags to the used book store in Santa Fe. Those things we carry.

Trading media for food.

We took the cash and bought wine, gluten-free flours, olive oil and boxes of tea. Not enough to last through May. On purpose.

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Gluten-Free Garlic and Sesame Crackers

Make your own gluten-free snack crackers- it's easy.

Crackers don't get enough credit. I guess they're not cute enough. Or sexy enough. No swirls of pastel icing. No confetti sprinkles. No tiny ribbons and bows. No Jackson Pollock drips of balsamic reduction or snow pea puree.

Just simple squares.

Ho-hum brown.

Crackers are the wallflowers at the food blogger's party. Too ordinary and unassuming to garner much attention. But there might be a few of you in the same boat I row upstream.

The snack deprived boat.

So this one's for you.

Folks who can consume gluten probably take their snacks for granted. After all, they can grab any bag of chips or cracker box off the shelf of any market or convenience store and motor on over to the cheese section without breaking a sweat. Snack attack solved. Please pass the Doritos.
But for those of us living gluten-free and casein-free- it ain't so easy. (And if you happen to have additional allergies- to sunflower oil or nuts or spices- you get one complicated serpentine quest for a safe little bite.)

At this writing, I can count on one hand the number of available chips or crackers I can eat. Safely. And for some mysterious reason that only the petulant Goddess of the Universe knows, that modest handful of snack options is never stocked. Anywhere.

I search in vain every weekly trip to Santa Fe for the one potato chip I can eat. Or a single non-GMO tortilla chip. Even those funny little white rice wafers play hard to get. New Mexico appears to be staunchly plain rice cracker free (I guess rice crackers don't like to flirt with guacamole and salsa).

Which explains why I bake my own snacks and crackers.

It's a pragmatic choice. I've made Pecan Crackers, and Savory Grain-Free Crackers (back when I didn't know I was allergic to Parmesan). I've made crispy sweet potato and gold potato chips.

But this week we found ourselves crackerless. So we baked up a new recipe on the spot. With garlic and sesame seeds. If you cannot eat sesame, darling, flax seeds or hemp seeds will work.

Crisp and lovely gluten-free crackers.

Garlic and Sesame Gluten-Free Cracker Recipe

I ended up using a half cup of pecan meal in this recipe because nut meal adds to the taste and texture of gluten-free crackers. If pecans are a problem for you, almond meal will work. Or use a quarter cup of seeds, if you prefer (note that adding seeds into the dough may make the crackers less crisp).

Whisk together the dry ingredients:

1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup pecan or almond meal
1/4 cup quinoa flour or brown rice flour
1 tablespoon potato starch
2 teaspoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried minced onion
1 teaspoon dried thyme or dried crushed rosemary
1 teaspoon xanthan gum

Stir in:

1/4 cup good olive oil
Ener-G Egg Replacer for 1 egg whisked with warm water
1/3 to 1/2 cup warm water, to start
1 tablespoon honey, raw agave or molasses

Instructions:

Stir the ingredients until a stiff dough forms- you'll need to press the dough out into a thin layer, so if it appears too dry, or it falls apart easily, add one tablespoon of warm water and mix; repeat until the dough is malleable but not too wet.

Divide the dough in half.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or a reusable Exopat.

Using oiled hands flatten and spread half the dough on the prepared baking sheet. Make as thin a layer as possible. Use the edge of a rubber spatula to straighten outside edges, if you like.

Score the flattened dough into cracker sized pieces. I used a pizza cutter to do this.

To bake you'll need:

Sea salt
Sesame seeds (or flax seeds, or hemp seeds)

Sprinkle the scored dough with salt and sesame seeds.

Bake in the center of a preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes till firm and slightly crisp (they will crisp up more as they cool). I use an Exopat, so keep that in mind; they may cook faster without one. Keep an eye on them.

Remove and allow the crackers to cool on a rack.

We bag and freeze the cooled crackers. If you find they soften from humidity, reheat them on a baking sheet for a few minutes before serving.

Makes 36 crackers.

Sesame seeds add a nice touch.

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