Separate cooking surface for GF?

[Anonymous]

Please excuse my ignorance. We are hosting a small dinner and one of the guests has celiac‘s disease. We are planning to grill the protein we are serving. If we use a barbecue sauce that contains gluten on half of the meat and a dry rub that is gluten-free on the other half, do they need to be cooked on different surfaces and with different grill utensils?

[Anonymous]

Ask them, because people have different tolerances. For some people it could be an issue and for others not at all.

[Anonymous]

Definitely ask. My friends whose son has celiacs use a seperate toaster for his bread.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I would keep everything separate, or there is cross contamination, which is a bid deal for celiac.

I would ask the person, but generally 1) grill on a clean grill by itself first, 2) use foil and separate utensils (and be careful not to mix up) or 3) bake their portion in the oven. Its nice of you to accommodate them, it can be complicated.

[Anonymous]

So treat it as it has to be separate. Celiac people can get really sensitive because they do not eat gluten. Gluten does not go airborne(specially in sauces) but there maybe residue on the grill from sauces, soy sauce, rolls, utensils, etc.

You can clean the grill. The grill would have to get to 500 degree for a set time to burn the gluten into ash/carbon. Think it is 30 minutes at 500 degree or higher.

If you don’t want to do that(or you are using a smoker) you can put the gluten free meat on tinfoil and keep them separate from everything- ie other meats and grill surfaces.

There are a lot of BBQ sauces that are gluten free. I don’t know if you are making the sauce or using store bought. This way you do not have to do two separate meats. Usually the sauce one puts on as you cook will lose a lot of the favor. So for cooking the brand of sauce does not really make a big difference.

[Anonymous]

Celiac here. Stubbs bbq sauce is gluten free. If you can use that and clean the grill first, you can cook all at the same time and minimize possible issues.

Thank you for being so considerate!

[Anonymous]

I would use foil to cover the grill. It is really hard to get it completely gluten free. Also, you should use separate utensils and spatula. Gluten Free Scanner is an app that will tell you if items are gluten free. But I’d also ask the guest. For some with celiac it is safer if they bring their own food.