Gluten Free Soy Sauce
Soy sauce is one of those ingredients that you just can't live without, especially if you're cooking Asian dishes of any variety. Soy sauce is virtually a staple to most all Asian cuisine and trying to prepare dishes without it just isn't the same. Unfortunately most soy sauces are made from wheat making them completely "off limits" for the gluten free diet or for those who are gluten intolerant. Fortunately there are gluten free soy sauce alternatives available. There are even individual packets of gluten free soy sauce - great news for those who cannot or choose not to use any gluten in their diets.
You can't always trust what's on the ingredient list so be very careful. When researching some of the popular brands, I took a look at a bottle of LaChow Soy Sauce (one of the more popular ones out there). It had the common mandatory list of allergens like it should and of course lists soy as an allergen, but there was no mention of wheat or other gluten ingredients. So this looks to be good news, but I really don't have any positive confirmation that LaChow Soy Sauce is gluten free and since most soy sauces are made from wheat this is definitely not a recommendation. Unfortunately you will have to investigate this further yourself.
In my research of gluten free soy sauce on the net, I did come across a couple of neat recipes that I thought I would share with you. This one is very simple and is an alternative or substitute for soy sauce _ very simple. It is simply 8 parts of molasses to 3 parts balsamic vinegar. Now I haven't actually tried this myself, so you'll have to let your own taste buds be the judge. Where there is a soy sauce user present, you'll usually find someone who loves teriyaki sauce as well, right? So when I stumbled across this easy to create teriyaki sauce recipe I thought I should share it with you as well. Start out with one cup of your gluten free soy sauce (or use the alternative recipe with molasses and balsamic vinegar above). Then add a half cup of apple cider vinegar, a half cup of pineapple juice, a half cup of tightly packed brown sugar and one teaspoon of garlic powder. Put it all into a quart jar and shake it vigorously to mix it until all of the brown sugar dissolves. And, there you go - a gluten free teriyaki sauce is born!
As a reminder I can't stress enough that due to the labeling issues (further discussed on the home page of this site) you really can never be sure if a product is truly gluten free or not simply by reading the labels. This is very unfortunate, but for those of you that are gluten intolerant it means that you will have to do extensive research and probably call the manufactures directly so that you can be sure. Hopefully, in time, the industry will adopt new labeling guidelines to remove this hurdle, but for now, be aware.