So my darling daughter is having an engagement party and wants me to cook.
No problem.
She wants some good BBQ
Again no problem
“Oh by the way,” she says, “2 or 3 of the guests are vegan and gluten free eaters”
Problem!
I have no clue as to what to prepare and serve them.
Anybody got some suggestions?
Well, kebabs can certainly be made vegan and gluten free; however, depending on the vegans they may object to using the same BBQ as meat and whatnot.
I have a very tasty thai green curry that’s vegan and gluten free, depending on what you serve it over (quinoa would be a safe choice) but you can’t really BBQ it - would you like me to post it?
Post! Post!
Ok!
Thai Green Curry
2 tbsp thai green curry paste
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can coconut milk
1/2 purple onion sliced
I eggplant sliced
3 cups of assorted mushrooms (I like to use shitaki, portobello, enochi, oyster, field, etc)
1 large carrot sliced
6 broccoli florretes
1/2 cup snap peas
1 package medium - firm tofu (depending on preference - firm may be a bit easier to cook with if you’ve never used it before
Warm olive oil in a large sauce pan - add curry paste.
Saute purple onion in this mix until tender. Add coconut milk. Add all other ingredients saving the mushrooms, eggplant and tofu till last (they take less time to cook). Simmer everything over medium heat until cooked to your liking.
Serve over quinoa
Quinoa
2 cups quinoa
4 cups water (FYI - you can make it with any liquid similar to rice; however, you’re probably safest using just water for this particular group)
Soak quinoa for 15-30 minutes
Place in a pot with water, bring to a boil and then cover and simmer over low for 15 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.
Remove from heat and let stand 5 minutes
Fluff with fork and serve.
Does it need to be something that you barbecue, or can it just be stuff you might serve at a barbecue?
I don’t know if you can grill these veggie burgers, but I’ve made both black-bean and cashew versions, and they’re great when cooked in a skillet. You’d need to find some sort of egg replacer; I think vegans use ground flax seeds for this sort of thing, but as I’m not vegan, I haven’t tried them myself.
There are tons of barbecue-friendly gluten-free bean salads out there, but I really like this one, which always sells well at family barbecues attended entirely by non-vegans.
Also, grill fruit (for everybody, as long as the vegans are OK with eating from the same grill as the meat was cooked) for dessert. I’ve just finished making honey-glazed grilled pineapple for my lunch guests tomorrow, and even on my dinky little Foreman grill, it came out great. My apartment smells awesome now. I don’t have orange-blossom water around the house, and didn’t think that rose-blossom water would match the rest of my menu, so I added a splash of vanilla to the marinade instead, which seems to have worked well.
Three bean salad. Classic for a barbecue, simple, vegan, protein.
A word of warning for the grilled fruit recipe. The vegans I know don’t eat honey.
If just vegan, I like seitan as a grillable protein. You can buy tempeh, which should be available at a health-food store, and easily grillable, although it’s gonna be a little flimsier than seitan. You can marinate it in basically whatever you want and then grill it, barbecue sauce, whatever (may hafta make your own, based on available commercial brands) Should be plenty of other acceptable options based on whether or not they’ll eat things grilled on the same grill, if not, you can make “chicken salad” with Vegannaise. Grilled corn salad or raw. Grilled veg or you could use a cast-iron skillet.
Last cookout we had was:
BBQ seitan sammiches
“chicken” salad
Mango/marinated tofu spring rolls
potato salad
Something with caramelized onions
Candied almonds, because we bought almonds for something desserty
Well, I didn’t take very good notes, but if you take anything meaty, it’s usually trivial to veganize it. Gluten-free I’m not so good with, but vegweb.com is a good recipe resource. I don’t think it’d be much of a problem to make all the sides vegan and just have meat for the carnivores as the only difference.
The vegan + gluten free can be a trick as far as finding pre-made protein products to grill. If daughter were to perhaps ask these guests for suggestions as to what a host might find at the store that would be suitable? They would really appreciate being asked, and will have brand names and products to list already in their head. The vegan stuff I can think of offhand also has wheat gluten in it, so I’m no help. But if it were me hosting or putting together the guest list, I would ask the special diet guests what they would like. It makes things a little easier on everyone, and nice for them if they can know you will be providing for them - many, many vegans I know go to parties pre-fed, with the expectation they won’t have anything to eat there, or very little aside from the plain veggie tray.
Really, they will appreciate being asked!
Risotto (without any dairy products) is something my gluten free family mamber likes, also polenta is a hit. Trader Joes has a nice frozen polenta and vegetables mix (it has carrots and spinach mixed in) that really good, though I am not not sure if it’s vegan or not. But you could borrow the idea if needed and mix some shredded carrot and spinach into some gluten-free polenta or grits.
Seitan and tempah aren’t gluten free.
Tofu is, and grills well. Press it, load it up with some flavor (not MOST BBQ sauces are neither vegan (sugar) or Gluten Free (soy sauce), but if you go to a natural foods co op you should be able to find something off the shelf. Or you can make your own BBQ - sweeteners are often an issue for vegans since many don’t eat processed sugar or honey - but you can use raw sugar and turn it into simple syrup.)
Along with a grilled vegetables, salad, fruit, that isn’t bad. And potato chips.
Vegan AND GF is hard - as Sea Dragon Tattoo said most meat substitutes are made with gluten as their protein. My ex-sister in law was a GF vegan, frankly it was a pain in the ass cooking for her - but she wasn’t a pleasant person. Spend two days combing through Vegan cookbooks, make a special run to the co-op for special margarine (it isn’t all vegan) and other ingrediants, cook - bake a GF, Vegan cake (disgusting) and get “I don’t eat sweet potatos.”
Hmm, I guess some tempeh isn’t, although a cursory google search reveals that there are widely-available brands that are advertised as GF. No GF’ers in my life, so hadn’t ever paid attention to packages.
Of course, seitan, being almost entirely gluten, isn’t GF. 
Actually, depending where you buy it, sugar is fine.
Some plants use bone meal to grind the sugar but I believe most don’t anymore - a quick google search will reveal how to check with your particular bag of sugar.
Not trying to be troll-y, but should someone who is so specific about their food really expect party hosts to cater to their needs? I would think that if you were at the point that you would refuse to eat certain brands of sugar you should be expected to bring your own food to a BBQ. I could not imagine going out of my way to buy sugar and whatever other vegan-killer products to replace what I already had, just for a few guests.
Regarding gluten, I was at a blues club in St. Louis and a woman was pestering the bartender about which items on their menu had gluten, claiming she had an allergy. "does [this] have gluten? what about [that]?’ The bartender had no idea what gluten was, and the cook was not much help either (it was just a burgers and fries kind of menu). Finally, he became frustrated enough to ask her; if she was really allergic to gluten why didn’t she know what foods it was in?
Minestrone soup with little potatos instead of noodles (if using store vegi stock, check ingredients for gluten!) and fancy greens salad with toasted sunflower seeds in place of croutons… that’s what I fed my gluten-sensitive friend last time she was up, and it happened to be vegan too! 
Speaking for a family member with a gluten allergy, the allergy part is really, really important.
Keeping foods separate is very important - a bit of flour or breadcrumbs can contaminate another dish and trigger several days of intestinal discomfort for the gluten sensitive.
Keep bowls, cutting boards etc. separated.
Because gluten is wheat protein. And wheat protein comes up where you don’t expect it.
Its in soy sauce. Its used sometimes (not always) to thicken soups. It might be added to spices as a stabilizer. Its obviously in most bread, cake and cookies - the gluten free don’t even risk that, unless they are specialty baked goods or the rare flourless cake recipe. Its often on french fries, usually, but not always in gravy. Its in most, but not all breading, most - but not all bbq sauces. It sneaks into salads in the form of croutons (and someone with a real allergy can’t just pick them off). The very allergic shouldn’t eat anything fried in the fryer that was used for onion rings - even it the item in question is gluten free.
Cooks who can’t read ingredient lists and tell you when something contains an allergen really should be fired.
Maybe this is a flashback to the 90’s, but grilled marinated portabellas are really good, and gluten free *and *vegan.
Although it’s not clear to me from the OP: are we talking about people that are both vegan and gluten free, or are there some people that are vegan and other people that are gluten free?
I have food allergies, I have learned what kinds of dishes tend to contain my allergens and I don’t consider them, at all. Its not worth the trouble. I certainly wouldn’t ask that my meal which would normally contain my allergen be prepared specially without it, it’s easier for everyone involved to stick to the foods I know are safe and have them prepared as the cook intended.
I don’t think that a burger slinger in a smoky hole in the wall bar is going to be a trained chef And allergist, and should not be expected to drop everything to read the ingredient list of every item in his kitchen to decide if there is gluten in it. Expecting the man to be fired? Silly.
One of the items I remember the diner in question asking about was the bacon cheeseburger and fries…if gluten is obviously in most bread and often in french fries as your post states, she should have just skipped that menu item entirely. Ditto to any fried items since they did have onion rings on the menu. It seems like common sense to me.
If one is at the point where they can’t eat a salad if a crouton happened to have touched it or eat something fried in the same oil as an onion ring, they need to be more careful about the places they choose to eat. One can’t just roll into a random bar in the Midwest and expect them to offer a plethora of gluten free choices, it’s just unrealistic.