Whether you’re new to a gluten-free diet or have been eating this way for years, Becky Excell, the cook and author of five bestselling cookbooks with a sixth out this week, is here to put the fun back into your food.
Crowned the “Queen of gluten-free” by none other than Nigella, Excell has a following of more than one million on her social media channels and is an ambassador for Coeliac UK.
Her sixth book, Gluten-free Air Fryer is packed with recipes for our favourite kitchen gadget – according to Lakeland, 45 per cent of UK households now own one – including 20-minute pizza, chicken balti pot pies, and halloumi popcorn, all the kinds of crunchy, carby comfort foods those following a gluten-free diet struggle to find great recipes for.
Excell has been gluten-free since 2009, when a range of debilitating coeliac-type symptoms flared up in her first year of university. She started to feel very unwell, but blamed it on her typical fresher lifestyle of late nights, alcohol and takeaways. When she went to see her GP, they recommended she stop eating gluten to see if that helped. It did, and the results were so life-changing that Becky hasn’t eaten it since.
However, this means that she has lived as an undiagnosed coeliac for 15 years, because in order to take the test, you need to have been eating gluten for the previous six to eight weeks. (One in 100 people in the UK is estimated to be coeliac but only 36 per cent are diagnosed).
“I couldn’t have gone back to eating gluten,” she explains. “I wouldn’t have been able to study or work. People think being coeliac is all to do with your gut, but I was struggling with all kinds of symptoms.
“One of the biggest was extreme fatigue. Another odd symptom is having no enamel on my teeth and other dental issues. There are so many symptoms that aren’t the standard bloating or cramps.”
Symptoms, according to Coeliac UK, can include sickness, diarrhoea, stomach pain, bloating, extreme fatigue, mouth ulcers, skin rash, tooth enamel problems, liver abnormalities, unexplained infertility, recurrent miscarriage, osteoporosis, neurological problems or slow growth in children. There is a self-assessment questionnaire on the charity’s website.
Even though Excell successfully cut gluten out of her diet, managing her new life led to her leaving university. “It made me hide away and not want to go out,” she remembers. “Food is more than a meal, it’s a social life, and if you feel like you can’t be with people because of the way you eat, you miss out, so it has an effect on mental health, too.”
So, 15 years on, she shares how to adapt your diet and still be able to enjoy food.
The main rules
“Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye – so is oftne present in bread, pasta and cakes – carby things,” explains Excell. “It’s also in vinegars, stocks, and soy sauce. It finds its way into a lot of different foods, often to bulk things out.”
For day-to-day meals, she recommends the whole household eat gluten-free, to save on effort.
You can still eat pizza, burgers and doughnuts…
“My pizza dough is a gamechanger,” says Excell. “It’s made with yoghurt and gluten-free flour and doesn’t need to prove or rise, is easy to roll out, and you can use it for pizza or flatbreads.”
One of her favourite recipes in the new book is the chicken zinger burger, a great foil for the KFC version, and air fryer doughnuts that only need a light spray of oil.
…and Yorkshire puddings
One of Excell’s breakthrough recipes was her gluten-free Yorkshire puddings, made with cornflour – like her grandmother made them – and known for a great rise. “It’s probably my best known recipe, and one of the oldest,” she says. “It was on my blog and in my first book, and Nigella has been so supportive and shared it on Twitter and her website.”
Advice for those new to gluten-free
“You don’t have to just buy the expensive foods in the free-from aisle,” says Excell. “Learn to read the ingredients labels, as gluten cannot be hidden. It’s one of the top 14 allergens and legally has to be highlighted.” She also recommends looking at Coeliac UK.
“But I tell people to try and focus on what they can eat, not what they can’t eat. I started my food blog as a hobby and out of frustration. I was trying to solve this problem [finding enjoyable gluten-free recipes] for myself, and suddenly people turned up.”
Easy swaps
A few ingredients that make gluten-free cooking easier are now all readily available. Lots of Excell’s recipes are based around small substitutes, such as gluten-free soy sauce or pasta. She prefers brown rice pasta as it holds its shape better than others. With bread she uses psyllium husk, which gives it structure and texture.
“Otherwise it would be so heavy, more like a weapon,” she jokes. In cakes, xantham gum is often the secret. For breadcrumbs, she crushes up gluten-free cornflakes.
Eating out
“You must do your research,” says Excell. “Ask before you go if they can do gluten-free food. When your food arrives, you need to check, and check again. It’s sad, but you shouldn’t trust anyone. Early on I found this hard, confidence-wise. You might think you’re being a bit of a bore in front of people, but it’s really important.”
As takeaways can be very difficult for anyone who can’t eat gluten, Excell has stepped into this gap with heaps of recipes for fakeways and comfort food. She says that it’s often not the food itself, which might sound gluten-free, but how it’s prepared.
“Chinese or other Asian takeaways might use a gluten-free sauce (always check), but they’ll be using the same pans, and in a busy kitchen, cross-contamination can be everywhere, which is something people often don’t realise.”
Common misconceptions
“People think that heat kills gluten,” says Excell, and staff often use this as an explanation. “Heat does not kill gluten in any way.”
People often misunderstand cross-contamination, where even a crumb or grain can find its way into foods that appear to be gluten-free. Excell found that early on people would suggest she take bread off a burger, or eat just a little bit of a food containing gluten, when even tiny amounts can make people really ill.
“But one of the biggest misconceptions people have is that gluten-free food isn’t nice and you have to eat an awful diet,” says Excell. “As long as you do the research and have the right recipes, you can have a really normal diet and don’t have to miss out at all.”
The tricky parts
“I really struggle with the fact that I can’t be spontaneous when eating out,” Excell says. “I can’t just pop into Greggs or somewhere like that, and on holiday I can’t go into just any restaurant. You lose the ability to be free with everyone and have to check menus and plan everything, which in my head takes some of the fun out of food.”
How does she know her fakeaways taste as good as the real thing? Thankfully her boyfriend can eat gluten, so she asks him to try everything and confirm they’re as tasty as the originals.
Gluten Free Air Fryer, by Becky Excell, is published by Quadrille on Thursday, at £22