My Go-To Gluten-Free Meals for Busy Weeks

If you’ve ever had one of those weeks where you’re tired, busy, and the last thing you want to do is figure out a complicated gluten-free meal, this episode is for you. 

Today I’m sharing my go-to gluten-free meals for busy weeks. These are meals that are simple, repeatable, and family approved. Nothing fancy. Just real meals that work when life gets busy.

 This episode is brought to you by Find Me Gluten Free—your go-to app for discovering safe, gluten-free dining options wherever you go!
Get your exclusive discount for our listeners at theglutenfreeengineer.com/findmeglutenfree
Because dinning out gluten-free shouldn’t be a guessing game! 

Transcript

Welcome And Ground Rules

Carrie Saunders 0:00

Quick reminder before we get started on this episode. This podcast is based on my personal experiences and isn't medical advice. If you've ever had one of those weeks where you're tired, busy, and the last thing you want to do is figure out a complicated gluten-free meal, this episode is for you. Today I'm sharing my go-to gluten-free meals for busy weeks. These are meals that are simple, repeatable, and family approved. Nothing fancy, just real meals that work when life gets busy. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Gluten Free Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Kiri Saunders. In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, a moment that changed everything. But I was determined not to let it hold me back. With my two engineering degrees, I set out to reverse engineer the gluten-free lifestyle, breaking down recipes, safety tips, travel hacks, and everything in between to rebuild a life I love. Whether you have celiac disease, gluten intolerance, or simply choose to live gluten-free, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we simplify the gluten-free lifestyle, make it fun, and prove that you don't have to miss out on anything. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about my go-to gluten-free meals for busy weeks. So before getting to the meals, let's talk about a few tips that I like to keep in mind. I like to think that simple is better than perfect when it comes to when we're on the you know run and in a hurry. Uh repeating meals can reduce stress. I you guys probably all know I eat the same breakfast every single morning. Like it's um, it's really rare if I don't eat the same breakfast every morning. Um, we also just make the simple, you know, protein plus carb plus vegetable is usually enough. And I know if my husband's listening to this, he's gonna laugh because the vegetables don't always get in there. I'm gonna admit that. Um, also cooking once and eating multiple times helps a lot. So we will many times make extra for dinner, and then that gives us lots leftovers for lunch. It came into play pretty easily whenever our older two kids moved out. I just kept cooking for five or so sometimes, and then we have plenty of leftovers for lunch for the week. So busy weeks are not the time to reinvent dinner. I rely on a handful of meals that I know work and that everyone in my house will eat, especially on those weeks that we know are busy. I will generally take longer time to do a nice cooked meal on the weekend than on the, you know, during the week. Now do keep in mind that our whole household eats gluten-free. And uh, we did that many, many years ago, whenever myself and the oldest were diagnosed with celiac, and it just made things so much easier. So even if your whole house isn't celiac, like we ended up finding out mine actually is, then I would still recommend and encourage you to consider doing gluten-free for the whole household, just because it's easier on you and just because it's easier on the family. You know, figure out these naturally gluten-free meals that everybody loves, and some of them we're gonna talk about that there's really nothing you need to do to make it gluten-free, maybe a small change, potentially, and it's gonna be gluten-free and safe for everybody, and everybody's gonna love it. So, what are some of my go-to gluten-free dinner meals? Now, one of our easiest meals of the week is hamburger night. I know that might sound a bit boring, but if you do it right, it's actually pretty tasty, very filling, and satisfies all your food groups that you might need. So, we just will patty out some hamburgers quickly. I will use them on a cast iron skillet if I'm cooking inside or a grill if I'm cooking outside. And yes, I will cook outside in the middle of winter. Um, so sometimes I do fire up that grill in January. And then we usually have the Canyon Bakehouse gluten-free buns to go with it for those who want buns. I personally myself do not eat the um gluten-free buns, they're fine and wonderful in texture, but for my um taste palette, they're a little too sweet for me. But our children absolutely love the cannon bakehouse gluten-free buns. They're super soft and the texture is just right. And then we all love bacon in our house, so I will, you know, pan-fry up some thick cut uh apple wood, smoked bacon. Sometimes I might do it on the in the oven or I might do it on our black stone. All are really well, the oven's not a very quick option, but it's a very hands-off option. The black stone's a pretty quick option, as well as one of my other cast iron pans using to fry the bacon up. And then while we're you know prepping all the food, we have our Alexia waffle or potato puffs usually uh cooking in our oven. Really nice quick meal uh side, I guess I should say. And they're gluten-free, except for you know, the ones that have breading on their items like onion rings, but almost all their stuff is gluten-free and also soy free, so that is a winner in our house. Um, then we might have a salad or veggie on the side, and I know my husband's gonna laugh because he listens to my podcast episode. Like, we don't do that very often. We're working on it. I promise we're trying to work on it. So this works great because everyone can customize the burger. There's very little food prep, and it feels like comfort food, even though it's homemade in your house. Now, another option we do on the week, weeknights, or sometimes on the weekend, when we've just been so busy and we don't feel like doing much else, is we'll do frozen pizza night. We love the against the grain frozen pizza. They have a pesto version, which is vegetarian, and then they also have their pepperoni version. They may have other versions somewhere in other, you know, other areas of the country, but those are the two options that are available in our town, and they're all so delicious. They bake cheese into the crust, so you gotta be able to have dairy for sure on this one, and um, it's just so delicious. It's probably the best gluten-free crust I've ever had, and it's probably the cheese that's in the crust, honestly. Plus, it's grain-free, so that's much easier on my stomach being grain free. And sometimes busy nights just need something super easy. We'll just put our oven in pizza mode, and we have these things done in about 17 minutes. Now, we do add a little bit extra cheese and paparoni to ours. That's just our preference, but they're honestly really good without even doctoring them up. Well, and we also had um Italian seasoning too, which is kind of adds a little extra flavor, but that's super easy to do. So it's quick and reliable and super tasty. And you know, just a great comfort food, covers all the food groups, and sometimes that's just what you need is a quick, easy meal. Now there's something else we've been doing recently because we found Aliyah's Italian breadcrumbs or gluten-free breadcrumbs. Oh my goodness, they are so good. So we've been getting more often than not the skinless chicken thighs, and then sometimes we'll use this with the chicken breast as well. But what I'll do is I'll pan fry some chicken. Doesn't that sound good? Like, I don't know. When you're gluten-free, fried, you know, fried anything just sounds like a luxury. And so this is actually really easy. We, as you know, can't you do soy or generic oils in our house? So we use avocado oil. So I'll just put a little avocado oil in either my cast iron pans or a good nonstick pan. I literally just take the chicken out of the package and dredge it through those crumbs. Now, do note I don't think the crumbs have any salt in them at all. Uh or at least they don't taste salty at all. So I do add some salt to the Italian breadcrumbs. Um, just do it to taste. Um, you'll you'll know the first time you do it if you need to add more the next time. Um, so then I just literally dredge the chicken through that. I don't do anything fancy, no egg washes, no milk washes, none of that. You don't really need to with these breadcrumbs if you want something quick that adds some flavor to your chicken. So just dredge it through those breadcrumbs, put it in a hot pan with some a little bit of oil in it, and then just fry it up on each side till it's you know cooked through. We might make some green beans or some potatoes. Um, we might make some sort of other simple side to go with it. So this can be you can have everything done at the same time. You've got you know, maybe a side going on in the oven or on the cooktop while you're frying up these chicken thighs or chicken breasts that are breaded with Aaliyah's Italian breadcrumbs. So good, so good. And we'll make sure that we will put the link to that in our show notes. It's not really a brand we talk about a whole lot on here, but it's the best. And on a side note, actually on our website, I have um no, this doesn't, this takes a lot of time, but I do want to say this it's onion rings that we use these Aaliyah's Italian, or no, they're actually they're Aaliyah's um panko crumbs that we use. We have a recipe for um homemade onion rings, just a hint there. Go ahead over to the gluten-free engineer after you're done listening to get that recipe. They are divine. They do take a lot of time, though. I will warn you, it doesn't really go with this podcast episode, but it just made me think of it when I'm talking about bread and chicken. And, you know, onion rings just sound delicious. So that I might have to make some onion rings this weekend. And then another thing we do is taco night. We use a Siete Taco Seasoning, we use a Ciete grain-free tortillas, and we can use ground beef in it. We usually don't do ground chicken, but if that's your preference, you certainly could. You can do simple toppings, it's super fast, easy to scale for a family, and naturally gluten-free when you're using a safe tortillas and using a taco packet that doesn't have any wheat in it. I don't think I think most of them don't, but do double check if you're not using the CATE brand. Uh, another thing we do is steak night. A steak with potatoes or green beans, you know, just really a simple protein, a carb, and um a vegetable can really get you where you need to go. Now there's some meals that for nights when I don't feel like cooking at all. If you want a quick, quick meal in five minutes or less, Kevin's prepared meals are actually delicious. They are so um clean. If you're looking at their ingredients, it I was actually shocked when we found these in the store a few months ago, and they literally are all pre-cooked, and you just warm everything up on the cooktop. And then, so we just have precooked rice already in the fridge. We would just warm that up in the microwave, add on um one of their meals, which is usually like a Korean style beef or Korean style um barbecue chicken or a Thai coconut curry sauce, etc. Like they have some really delicious stuff already pre-made. Uh, sometimes it already comes with the veggies, so when there, that's how I get some of my veggies sometimes. And I use these for lunch too. Sometimes we use them for dinner, sometimes we use them for lunch. They're just a really great way to get a nice meal in you without all the fuss, and you can seriously be done in about five minutes. Now, here's some quick meal prep ideas. So, what I do is sometimes on a Sunday, I will buy chicken breasts when they're on sale, and then I will pan fry them in my um cast iron skillets or I might grill them on the you know grill, and I'll pre-cook them, I'll chop them up, I'll put them in a baggie flat, stick them in the freezer, let them, you know, freeze up, and then we'll like break them up, and then you've got pre-cooked chicken in your freezer that you can warm up anytime on the stove to put on tortilla shells, on a salad, um, you really anything like that. It makes it super simple to have that pre-cooked chicken. I started doing that because I was getting frustrated with the uh bags of precooked chicken, grilled chicken in the store being super duper salty. I just didn't want that much salt on my taste budge, really, or in my body. So this just makes it really simple. We know what's in it. There's no extra additives added to it. It's just the chicken that you've pan-fried up or you know, cooked on the grill, and a little bit of salt and pepper that you may have added to season it, but it's a lot less salty and it tastes so much better than the stuff you're gonna get pre-made in the bags, and it's really, really easy. And then some ingredients I always keep on hand is I usually keep basamati rice already pre-cooked in the fridge. I might make a large batch on the weekend, and then it's great for lunches on quick dinners. Um, we also have like frozen vegetables, frozen sausage, that pre-cooked frozen chicken I was talking about, corn or grain-free tortillas as well. And then let's talk quickly about why repeating meals is actually helpful. This totally reduces decision fatigue. So don't feel bad if you're repeating meals. I recommend maybe rotating a new meal in once or twice a week, but seriously, repeat those meals each week if you need to, especially in your busy you know, lives, whenever you know, we have lots of kids going to all the places, uh, or maybe just time of your life where you just don't have the energy to come up with new things all the time. It also makes grocery shopping easier and it creates some reliable meals everyone likes, so you can you know use those favorite meals and repeat them weekly. You don't need 30 recipes, sometimes you just need five reliable dinners and ones that really everybody just loves. And if you enjoy practical gluten-free ideas like this, head on over to the glutenfreeengineer.com and sign up for our newsletter. You'll also find our podcast show notes there, as well as recipes that I am adding as I can. And then the biggest thing that makes busy weeks easier for me is cooking ones and planning for leftovers. That little extra effort during dinner saves a lot of stress the next day. It makes it so much easier to have lunches available and also potentially another dinner meal or two in the week. Hopefully, these tips today, that's really hard to say, help you make a less stressful weeknight meals for your and your family. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gluten Free Engineer. If you found value in this story, please share it with someone who might need encouragement on their own gluten-free journey. For more tips, recipes, resources, and even links to my YouTube channel, head on over to theglutenfreengineer.com. It's your one-stop hub to make gluten-free living simple, fun, and full of flavor. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss out on an episode. And we will see you next week. The Gluten Free Engineer Podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I share my personal experiences and stories about living with celiac disease and navigating a gluten free lifestyle. This podcast does not provide medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional for medical questions, concerns, or advice specific to your health.