Today I’m making a practice lasagne (practice for my fiancee’s birthday dinner next month). I’ve got a kick-ass vegetarian lasagne recipe, but I’ve never tried it dairy free or gluten free. I’m just about to head out to buy some noodles made of either corn flour, rice flour, or a corn-rice combo. Anything I need to know?
Do they cook roughly the same way as regular noodles? Do they stick to the casserole dish any better/worse? Any freaky textures I should expect?
Personally, I liked the ones made with quinoa. They were very similar in texture to regular pasta. They also taste very much like regular wheat pasta. It’s been a long time since I had them though.
I’ve used rice noodles before (not because I had to, I was just curious) - they cook very quickly and have a tendency to stick together once drained - so you need to get the sauce on them fast; apart from that, they’re really rather good, and I was quite pleasantly suprised by the texture, which is a lot more elastic and firm than I’d have expected from something lacking gluten.
BTW, don’t forget to watch out for gluten in the other components - the thickening agent for the cheese sauce and possibly in the meat mixture too.
Well, I made the whole thing from scratch, so no gluten in any of the components. It ended up being an almost vegan lasagne. (I used real parmesan.) It’s based on a vegetarian recipe I’ve been using since I was a student.
I found the rice noodles to be pleasantly faithful to their wheat counter parts, except… Damn! They were fragile! I didn’t get a single full lasagne noodle after they were cooked. My mom was watching and suggested cutting back on the cooking time to see if that makes a difference next time. I didn’t have problems with them sticking, but I had a cool drizzle of water running over them as I was trying to make them cool enough to handle. But I couldn’t separate them form one another without breaking them in half. They didn’t stick together, they just didn’t seem to hold themselves together well.
So once the lasagne sets, we’re going to try it with my mom (a die-hard carnivore). I am not fond of non-dairy cheese substitutes, but I found a rice-based mozzarella that is the only fake cheese to have ever passed the “Lenny test” (Lenny is my cheese-loving cat who turns his nose up at all soy based cheeses, this one he accepted).
So I’ll report back when I give my practice lasagne a try, and let you know if there are any weird flavours and/or textures.