Cooking Traditional Foods- Purge Your Kitchen

Purge Your Kitchen, Purge Your Body

In order to remove all traces of gluten from your life, it requires some work to remove it from your kitchen. Outside of going through all of the food in your cabinets, reading labels carefully and calling companies, you must also remove any hardware from the kitchen that might be harboring gluten.

The following items must be replaced:

Toaster/Toaster Oven. It’s impossible to get all of the crumbs out.
Cutting Boards. It’s impossible to clean gluten out of all of the cracks and crevices.
Anything containing Teflon. This includes the waffle maker, contact grill, pots and pans, and electric griddles Teflon is porous and it is impossible to get all of the gluten out of it.
Pampered-Chef type Stoneware. It is also porous and it isn’t possible to get all of the gluten out of it.
Scratched Plastic. All plastic items that are scratched must go, as you can’t clean the gluten out of the cracks and nicks.
Wooden items. Again, you can’t clean the gluten out of the cracks and nicks. Well-made Items might be able to be sanded and refinished. Don’t forget wooden spoons, those must be gotten rid of, too.
Cast Iron. Cast iron is porous and you can’t clean it well enough.

Items you can clean well and keep:

Pyrex and glass cookware and bakeware. These items are not porous and can be scrubbed clean.
Stainless steel pots, pans accessories, and bowls. Stainless steel is not porous, so you can scrub it clean.
Plastic that is not scratched.
Most small appliances are fine after a thorough cleaning. However, it’s impossible to clean the toaster or any teflon appliances well enough, so they have to go. Also, you will want to carefully clean your mixer of flour dust, or get a new mixer.

The breakdown

The first thing to do is to remove every single item from your kitchen.
Wipe down all of the cabinets carefully to remove any remaining dust.
Wash and replace all of the hardware items you are keeping. Don’t forget to wash your dish caddies and silverware trays, too.
Wipe down all of the cans and boxes you are returning to the cabinets. Be sure to carefully wipe down the tops of the cans. If you are very sensitive to gluten, you might want to wash them just prior to opening the can.
Box up any items you aren’t sure about their trace gluten status, and call the manufacturer as you have time.

What to do if you’re going to keep gluten in the house

First off, realize that keeping gluten in the house in any form isn’t advisable for the first six to eight weeks. During the time period your body is purging, it is very important that you avoid gluten at all costs in order to get an idea of how your body is really going to react with no gluten. So pack away all of the contaminated kitchen items and foods and move them to the garage.

If your family isn’t supportive and wants to continue eating gluten, have them go out to eat if they want anything the first 6-8 weeks. If worst comes to worst, buy a second set of everything for the celiacs and put their old items into one lower cabinet in your kitchen and keep the door closed (or locked if you have children having to go gluten free). If they insist on keeping gluten-containing items in the house, buy them ready-made instead of cooking them, as using flour spreads contamination and it can take a minimum of 7-12 hours for wheat flour to settle out of the air. Have them eat off of disposable plates and use disposable cups if possible.

If the other adult in the household insists on keeping gluten in the house, make sure you keep two sets of everything in the refrigerator, on separate shelves. Two jars of mayo, mustard, ketchup, pickles, and the like. Clearly label everything in a way that your children can understand which one they should use. Use two separate sets of utensils, cutting boards, pots and pans, and be sure to wash the gluten-free items first to avoid contaminating the porous surfaces. If you are using a dishwasher for the non-porous items, run it on the ‘sanitize’ cycle and check everything carefully to make sure it is thoroughly clean.

Consider wearing non-gluten containing (non-powdered) gloves while you handle any gluten-containing foods, and wash your hands thoroughly after touching anything contaminated. You will also have to carefully educate everyone who comes into your kitchen on how to avoid cross-contaminating everything. Cross contamination is an insidious problem that can keep you sick and make it very hard to track down the source of the reaction.

You will quickly find that it is much easier and much less costly to keep a gluten-free kitchen and send the glutenoids out to eat when they insist on getting their gluten fix. Be prepared to have to replace items multiple times, both food and hardware, when people make mistakes.