Tag Archives: gluten-free cooking

food preservation, Gluten free

Homemade Gluten-Free Tater Tots

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I have been having a hard time finding tater tots at the store. When I do find them, they are very expensive and the last bag I purchased simply crumbled into little bits whenever we cooked them. However, I did find some bags of potatoes on a really good deal–20c/lb–and bought about 30 pounds. I have a couple of projects I wanted to do. One was making tater tots. I had done it one time before and we liked them, so it was time to try again.

I combined several recipes I found on the internet. I wanted plain ones, not including cheese or onions or many spices.

I parboiled peeled, whole potatoes–10-15 pounds–not sure because I used several partial bags, plus one full 5-lb one. Mine stayed in the hot water a little too long–about 8-10 plus minutes because I got distracted. I believe 4-6 minutes for small potatoes and 6-7 minutes for really big ones would be about right.

After cooling them enough to handle, I grated them and put them into a bowl. Sadly, some were so cooked it was more like pushing mashed potatoes through the grater–oops! I filled 2 of the largest Pyrex bowls I have with shreds. The following recipe is for one large bowl, which was about 5-7 pounds of shreds. Mix:

One large Pyrex bowl of parboiled potato shreds

1 Tablespoon Cornstarch

1 Tablespoon 1-1 Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/8-1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder (to taste–mine are not hot at all

I formed them into little logs with my hands and fried them in a little bit of canola oil until they were brown. Because I parboiled my potatoes too long, I confess some of mine are more like fried mashed potatoes. They still taste good, if I have to go with how many disappeared while I was frying them off. There were 5 of us here nipping on them, and yum! is all I have to say.

The only other time I made them, I didn’t cook my potatoes too long and there were distinct hash-brown like shreds in them, which finished cooking as they were pre-fried and also baked afterwards for serving. I will do that again next time.

I cooled them on paper towels and put them on a waxed-paper covered cookie sheet. That pan went into the freezer to flash freeze and I will transfer them to baggies once they cool. When I made these before, I simply warmed them up in the air fryer or oven when we wanted to eat them, just like I would do with the frozen ones from the store.

I’m excited to have tater tots in the freezer again. There were so many possibilities I saw on the internet, including adding cheddar cheese, onion powder, green onions or chives and more. There were also lots of different combinations of flours to use as binders, such as potato starch, regular wheat flour (for those it doesn’t bother), and other flours. I concluded that the main things were potatoes, salt, pepper and a little flour of some sort to bind it together. It did take quite a bit of time to form and pre-fry all these. I ended up with that huge pan full, plates and plates that people snacked on or ate for dinner, and a few extras that didn’t fit on the tray.

Gluten free, Menu plans

What Did We Eat? March 1, 2019

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This week, I made gluten-free pizza twice. The first time, it was deep dish combination pizza. I killed part of the yeast by using too hot of water, so it did not rise well. Still, it rose enough that we could eat it, and so we did!

I checked the yeast, determined I was the problem and not the yeast, and made another batch, but this time, I made 2 flat crusts. I par-baked them for 5 minutes at 500 degrees F. and froze them. Tonight, I pulled one of them out of the freezer, topped it, and baked for 15 minutes at 500 degrees F.

I also made up a few baggies of the dry ingredients for the pizza and put them on the shelf for another time when I want to make it quickly. Now that I have the recipe working properly, I will post it soon.

Rob barbecued some steak. I sautéed some frozen shrimp. I also made turkey-burger meatloaf, which we ate a few times until it was gone. We ate the chicken we got last Friday at Costco, boiled the carcass and made broth, which turned into chicken and dumplings.

We ate several kinds of canned and frozen fruit, including frozen blueberries, which Patsy ate straight from a bowl while they were still frozen. She also had smoothies a couple of times and used more frozen fruit in those. I’m not exactly sure what else came out of all those empty jars that are waiting to be put away in the shop, but I know we enjoyed eating whatever was in them!

We had home-canned green beans, lots of carrots, and quite a few salads. We had baked potatoes a couple of times and Rob made home-shredded hash browns, too.

It was a very busy week, full of medical appointments, working extra time with the kids, and other things we did. I feel happy that I got as much cooking done as I did and that all of the dishes got done, too! (Rob can’t wash his fair share until after he recovers from one of his medical tests, so I’m merrily washing away. Every day. Every dish. Patsy dries and puts away. By the way, Rob is very, very fine–it was a great result, praise the Lord–and he’s trying not to laugh too loud about having to take a break from dishes and hauling firewood!).

Jake and Michaela ate dinner here tonight, and they had cinnamon sugar toast on whole wheat bread. (Under duress, she ate 1 baby carrot and Jake ate 2 cucumber slices) Jake wants to spend the night, but I took Michaela home because she wants to be there. While I was gone, Rob cooked eggs and eggs for Jake, and he topped off his evening with mini-marshmallows, washed down with grape juice. How’s that for a before-bed snack? Hmmm. I hope your meals were less eclectic!

Gluten free

Gluten-Free buns

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I haven’t made gluten-free buns for a long time. It was time. I have a favorite recipe that I’ve made for years and years.

This recipe uses oat flour as a base and they are so yummy. They also don’t take very long to make, as they only have to rise for about 30 minutes and bake for 15. The thing that does take a lot of time for me is rounding up all the ingredients.

After I had dug through my bin of gluten-free flours and other products, I was able to come up with everything that was called for. Then, I decided to take the opportunity while it was all out to make up some mixes so I could make this again soon in a hurry.

When I was done, I had 4 bags to make up another day. Today, I made a double batch, and will freeze the left-over buns for the future as well.

I was delighted to enjoy these yummy treats again. I saved money by making them myself vs. buying buns for between $5 and $6 a package. Since I made a double batch, I got 12 buns. That would be equivalent of 2 packages at the store. Gluten-free flour is not cheap, but it wasn’t $12 for flour for these buns. Also, I had it all on hand! I used up bits of flour that had been around for a long time.

While I was at it, I emptied my gluten-free bin, washed it out, discarded a couple of things that were rancid or really, really old (come on, Becky….pancake mix from 2014? Really?), and put everything back in an organized fashion. Now, I know what I have and what I need to replace. My January “Use-it-up” project is coming to a close, but I can see there are quite a few items that still need to be used, so I can feel a February project coming on.