Best gluten-free cookbook
December 11, 2010 8:03 AM

What's the best general gluten-free cookbook?

My friend was recently diagnosed with celiac disease and I want to give her a broadly useful gluten-free cookbook. She's an experienced cook, loves good food, but is super busy now, so simple recipes would be best. I want a GF cookbook that will help her cook good food while avoiding the ingredients she's intolerant of.

The chain bookstore near here had 34 gluten-free cookbook titles. Can you help me pick the best one or two? I'm not looking for a book just about GF baking.
posted by sevenstars to Food & Drink (6 answers total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
Make It Fast, Cook It Slow is a slow-cooker cookbook that also happens to be gluten free. If your friend is busy, a slow cooker might work really well in her life.

Also, many of the recipes are available the author's blog, http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/
posted by overeducated_alligator at 8:24 AM on December 11, 2010


I really like The Wheat-Free Cook.
posted by arianell at 9:11 AM on December 11, 2010


I've been using 1,000 Gutlen-Free Recipes by Carol Fenster a lot. I also like Gluten Free Girl's site and plan on getting her cookbook. Nice thing about the Fenster book is its completeness - after reading a lot of the recipes one gets a good handle on how to convert recipes.
posted by leslies at 10:02 AM on December 11, 2010


The Gluten Free Girl and the Chef. NYT named it one of the best of the year.

The website (also Gluten Free Girl) is awesome, and while I'm not gluten free, I've used many of her recipes.
posted by bibliogrrl at 10:15 AM on December 11, 2010


I've heard good things about The Primal Blueprint Cookbook - I'm asking for it for Christmas so I can't speak from persona experience yet!
posted by Earl the Polliwog at 2:01 PM on December 11, 2010


I don't know why the NYT named Gluten Free Girl's cookbook one of the best of the year. I bought it for my sister-in-law and she called me and asked if there was another book she could get instead. I took a look at it and came to the same conclusion she did: poorly written recipes that don't often turn out the way they're supposed to, too much personal information (if you want a memoir with recipes, it'll be fine), and the recipes are SO high in fat and calories as to make them practically useless for every day or go-to cooking. Oh, and you won't find "simple" recipes there and your friend will need to get several bags of substitute flours and special ingredients - the Bob's Red Mill mixes are better anyway and easier to find in the store.

This one is great, this one is for quick and easy recipes, and this one never fails me or my sister-in-law.

Bette Hagman and Carol Lee Fenster are the goddesses of gluten-free cooking, so you wouldn't go wrong with anything else written by them as well.
posted by cooker girl at 7:17 PM on December 11, 2010


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