Recipe: Gluten Free Stuffed Onions

This recipe is a variation on a recipe I found in a Spanish cookbook called 1080 Recipes by Simone & Inés Ortega. It's a fantastic resource for Spanish cooking, but it's not a gluten free cookbook. Still, I love to adapt dishes to be GF, and then tweak them to fit my family's tastes.

These stuffed onions have been adapted to be gluten free, but also to include some additional ingredients that made the recipe more to my personal taste. I omitted the bread, changed the cooking water to broth, and made a few other changes along the way. I also cut the recipe from 12 onions to 6, to be more manageable.

The recipe itself isn't complicated, but it is time consuming with a few different stages. I love onions, and I really love the way their flavour changes when cooked, sweetening and taking the spicy edge off. Everyone enjoyed these, even the toddler. If there is any meat leftover after the onions are stuffed, make meatballs out of them.

**For a dairy free version, substitute the milk for a dairy free version, and omit the Romano cheese.

Important Update on Products Using Gluten Free Certification Organization Label

The Gluten Free Certification Organization is an program of the Gluten Intolerance Group, a nonprofit organization. For a product to receive certification as gluten free, it must meet strict requirements, including testing under 10ppm (the US and Canadian legal limit is 20ppm, so this is even stricter.) Companies can apply to have their product qualify to use the GFCO label on their products if they meet the requirements.

Sometimes, companies use the label even when they have not been certified under the program, or their certification changes.

This week the Gluten Intolerance Group has an update on their site about products that are using the label, but do not meet the organization's standards. In addition, there has been some recent concern about the potential for gluten to be an undeclared ingredient in some spices imported from abroad, and they are working with the Canadian government to learn more. Click here to read more.