gluten-free eats

Adam Ragusea aragusea was a public radio reporter, is now a journalism professor, and has recently become a YouTuber talking about home cooking with a healthy dose of science. I was thrilled by last year’s Alternative Starches: How to thicken sauces without flour. He demonstrates making gravy with

• flours: rice, potato, and corn (US: corn starch)
• starches: tapioca, arrowroot
• gums: xanthan and agar agar.

He also explores how some gums maintain their staying power at all temperatures, which finally explained why wheat flours sometimes show up in ice creams.

I’ve been using cornstarch and arrowroot to make slurry gravies for decades. Adam blew my mind by making a traditional browned roux with both potato and rice flours, and they look great! Adam summarizes:

If you need to make a gluten-free gravy, you can try making your roux with rice flour or potato starch — I'd do the rice flour because it's more opaque. That makes a really delicious gravy. Nobody is gonna miss the wheat.

Content notes: although he has sponsors, YouTube is running US campaign ads to start and randomly in the middle.

Have you made fat-and-flour based sauces with gluten-free ingredients? Which flour did you use? Please share any hard-won lessons or handy tips.