Today, we’re talking about cooking gluten-free Chinese food. Many of you have asked questions about which Chinese ingredients contain gluten or about gluten-free substitutions over the years, so we’re laying it all out here.
We’ll discuss recipes and ingredients that are already gluten-free, as well as GF substitutions for key Chinese ingredients.
An Easy Cuisine to Adapt to a Gluten-Free Diet
I think that Chinese food—and Asian cuisine in general—is actually easy to enjoy on a gluten-free diet.
We’ve found that unlike Western diets, which generally do use a lot of wheat flour, the Asian diet places a greater emphasis on rice and other starches. In recent years, we’ve also seen the arrival of gluten-free equivalents for some of those sauces that do use a small amount of wheat flour in the fermentation or production process.
Furthermore, while you may shy away from Chinese food for fear of soy sauce and other “mysterious” ingredients that may or may not include gluten, many Chinese dishes are actually naturally gluten-free!
If you have more than a sensitivity to gluten and must avoid it at all costs, making your own Chinese food at home is the ticket. We have the recipes and adaptation tips you need to start enjoying Chinese food without the gluten!
Our 10 Essential Chinese Pantry Ingredients: Gluten-free Edition
For anyone new to Chinese cooking, we have a suggested 10 Essential Chinese Pantry Ingredients to start with. You may be surprised to learn that 6 out of the 10 ingredients on the list are already gluten-free:
- Sesame Oil
- Cornstarch
- White Pepper
- Ginger
- Scallions
- Garlic
For the remaining 4 ingredients, we have gluten-free substitutions!
- Oyster Sauce: Oyster sauce is one of our most-used seasoning sauces, especially for stir-fries. Lee Kum Kee, the original oyster sauce brand, now has a gluten-free oyster sauce on the market. We normally buy Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Sauce, but you can also find the gluten-free equivalent, Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Green Label Oyster Flavored Sauce. (Look for the green label with the panda bear on it, not the red label.) This sauce is gluten-free and MSG-free, and you can find it online or in Chinese grocery stores.
- Chinese Light Soy Sauce: Chinese light soy sauce is perhaps the most ubiquitous seasoning sauce in Chinese cooking. While there are gluten-free soy sauces out there, as well as tamari (which—be careful—may or may not actually be gluten-free), we prefer using a gluten-free Chinese light soy sauce rather than Kikkoman or other GF soy sauces. Luckily, Lee Kum Kee has also come through here with a gluten-free light soy sauce. Look for a green label on the bottle!
- Chinese Dark Soy Sauce: Chinese dark soy sauce is used to add a deep amber color to dishes, as well as being a seasoning ingredient. Lee Kum Kee does make a gluten-free dark soy sauce as well, but we have mainly seen it available in a food service size bulk jug, rather than as individual bottles. This soy sauce has a long shelf life—2-3 years if you keep it in the fridge, so if you want the most authentic results in your Chinese cooking, we would go for it. However, if you don’t yet want to commit to such a large quantity, you can make our Chinese dark soy sauce substitution by combining gluten-free light soy sauce with a little molasses and sugar. You won’t get quite the same effect as with dark soy sauce, but it’s a decent substitute in a pinch!
- Shaoxing Wine: Shaoxing wine is the final key ingredient in our list, and it’s a big one. It is perhaps most responsible for that hard-to-place flavor that you may be missing in your Chinese dishes. In the wine-making process, a small amount of wheat is used for fermentation. While there are rice wines that have been fermented without wheat, we find that the most accessible substitute for Shaoxing wine is a dry cooking sherry. You can find it in most grocery stores, and it will help add that extra layer of complexity to stir-fries, braises, and sauces.
With these 10 ingredients, you will be able to make hundreds of the recipes on our site—we’d say the majority, even!
That said, you may encounter a few other Chinese ingredients in these recipes and be unsure whether or not they’re gluten-free. If not, you may be wondering what to use as a substitute. Let’s get into that next.
Other Gluten-free Chinese Ingredients & Ingredients Needing GF Substitutes
Okay, now that we have those main items out of the way, let’s move on to some lesser known Chinese ingredients. We’ll provide a list of ingredients that ARE naturally gluten-free, as well as a list of ones that need GF substitutions.
To learn more about a particular ingredient, click on the links provided, which will lead you to our ingredients glossary, where you can read more about it!
IMPORTANT!
Always check the ingredient labeling on the product you’re purchasing to see if it contains any wheat, as brands vary and some process their products in facilities that also process wheat. Below, we’ve included some brands that we have checked labels for at the time of this writing. However, brands’ recipes change, so again ALWAYS check the label before buying.
Chinese Ingredients That Normally Do Not Contain Gluten:
Sauces/Condiments:
- Shrimp Paste/Sauce (such as Barrio Fiesta, Pantai brands)
- Shacha (Chinese BBQ) Sauce (such as Bullhead brand)
- Chili Garlic Sauce (such as Lee Kum Kee brand)
- Rice Vinegar (such as Marukan brand)
- Sesame Paste
- Plum Sauce
- Sesame Oil
- Chili Oil
- Caiziyou (Rapeseed Oil)
- Sichuan Peppercorn Oil
- Maltose
- Pickled Plum
- Tamarind Paste
- Thai Curry Paste (such as Thai Kitchen and Maesri red curry pastes)
- Coconut Milk
- Potassium Carbonate
Dried, Cured & Pickled Ingredients
- Any dried mushrooms (such as shiitake, wood ears, etc.)
- Dried lily flowers
- Dried goji berries, dates, and longan
- Dried lotus seeds
- Dried fox nut barley
- Dried Chinese yam
- Black moss
- Any dried seaweed
- Any dried bean, such as adzuki bean, mung bean, etc.
- Any dried seafood (just make sure it’s only the seafood, without seasonings)
- Salted duck eggs/yolks
- Century eggs/Thousand-year-old eggs
- Pickled Sour Mustard Greens (to be sure, make your own Sour Mustard with my great grandma’s recipe!)
- Sui Mi Ya Cai (Sichuan preserved mustard stem; check ingredients, as brands may contain seasoning!)
- Xue Cai (preserved potherb mustard; check ingredients, as brands may contain seasoning!)
Starches:
- Rice Noodles (including rice vermicelli, pad Thai noodles, wide rice noodles/ho fun)
- Mung bean noodles
- Sweet potato starch noodles
- Rice cakes
- Buckwheat/soba noodles (great substitute for wheat noodles in noodle soups)
- Corn noodles: This is a bit obscure, but we’ve seen these “corn noodles” in some Chinese grocery stores, which behave somewhat like wheat noodles and are great for noodle soups and sauced noodled dishes.
- Alternative dumpling wrappers, such as our crystal dumpling wrappers
- Vietnamese rice paper wrappers (for fresh summer rolls as well as fried spring rolls)
- Millet
- Rice (jasmine, brown, black rice, sweet/sticky rice, black sticky rice—long and short grains)
- Rice flour
- Glutinous rice flour
- Cornstarch
- Mung bean starch
- Potato starch
- Sweet potato starch
- Tapioca starch (and tapioca pearls/boba)
- Sago
- Wheat starch (this one is tricky, as it is made from wheat flour, but has had the gluten-removed. Look for “codex wheat starch,” which is certified gluten-free, as it contains less than 20ppm of gluten.
In addition to the above, dried spices, most tofu products (the exceptions being fermented bean curd and seitan/fried gluten, which can sometimes be confused with tofu), vegetables & fungi, and fresh herbs/aromatics are all naturally gluten-free ingredients that you have in your arsenal.
That’s a lot of Chinese ingredients that are already gluten-free! Let’s talk about ingredients that are more of a gray area.
Ingredients That May Need GF Substitutions
- Fish Sauce: (some fish sauces are gluten-free, while others are not. Try Red Boat Fish Sauce, our favorite brand that also happens to be gluten-free!)
- Hoisin Sauce: Find a gluten-free equivalent such as Lee Kum Kee GF Hoisin.
- Sweet Bean Sauce, Chee Hou Sauce, Ground Bean Sauce: Substitute a gluten-free hoisin sauce such as Lee Kum Kee GF Hoisin. Note that you may have to adjust the sweetness level of the recipe, as hoisin is quite sweet.
- Fermented Black Beans: Not always gluten-free, so be sure to check the label. Ingredients should only be soybeans, water, salt, and maybe ginger!
- Spicy Bean Sauce: This one is tricky, as it is usually imported from China, and usually fermented with wheat. However, it is essential to many spicy dishes, particularly Sichuan recipes. You could try making a substitute using homemade chili oil and gluten-free hoisin for umami. Again, you may have to eliminate any sugar in the recipe, as hoisin is quite sweet.
- Duo Jiao: These salted chilies hailing from Hunan cuisine may not be gluten-free, as they may contain cooking wine. However, you can make your own with our Duo Jiao recipe!
- Chiu Chow Chili Sauce: May not be gluten-free, as it may contain soy sauce. However, you can make your own with our recipe and gluten-free soy sauce!
- XO Sauce: Make your own using our XO Sauce Recipe and gluten-free ingredients.
- Black Vinegar: Check the labeling to make sure that your black vinegar is gluten-free, as some contain wheat bran. You can also substitute a certified GF seasoned rice vinegar in a pinch!
- Lop Cheung (Chinese Sausage)/Cured Meats: Chinese sausages and other cured meats often contain soy sauces and wines that contain gluten. Instead, try making your own homemade cured pork belly (lap yuk) with gluten-free soy sauces and wines. This cured pork belly can be substituted for Chinese sausage in most recipes. For Chinese cured ham, some are gluten-free—check to make sure—or substitute a gluten-free American country ham.
Making Recipes Gluten-free Adaptable
We have an entire collection of gluten-free and gluten-free adaptable recipes on our site. It’s pretty safe to say that rice noodle dishes, rice dishes, or vegetable, tofu, and meat stir-fries are going to be pretty easily gluten-free adaptable with the GF or GF versions of the ingredients listed above. Just make sure to remember to make those adjustments for ingredients like oyster sauce, soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, etc.
Here are some great recipes to start with!
- Rice Cakes with Mixed Vegetables
- Chicken Mei Fun
- Fujian Fried Rice
- Zucchini Stir-fry with Chicken
- Harmony Stir-fry
- Cabbage with Glass Noodles
- Crystal Dumplings (pictured in the featured photo of this post), made with wheat starch
Gluten-free Chinese Desserts
I wanted to end this article with a word on Gluten-free Chinese desserts, because dessert is one of those areas where gluten seems to rear its head most often in Western cooking and baking! How do you make desserts without wheat flour?
The answer? MANY CHINESE DESSERTS ALREADY DON’T CONTAIN WHEAT FLOUR! YAY!
Yes, many Chinese desserts are tapioca-based, rice-based, or just don’t contain much starch. Try some of these recipes:
- Mango Sago
- Mango Pudding
- Red Bean Mochi
- Taro Sago Dessert Soup
- Tang Yuan (Sweet Rice Balls with Black Sesame)
- Nian Gao (Chinese New Year Sweet Rice Cake)
- Fried Sesame Balls
- Snow Skin Mooncakes
- White Sugar Sponge Cake (Baak Tong Goh)
- Snow Fungus Soup with Pears
- Grass Jelly Dessert
- Baobing Chinese Shave Ice
- Black Sticky Rice Mango Dessert
- Cantonese Steamed Milk Egg Pudding
- Coconut Peanut Mochi
- Mango Coconut Ices
- Sweet Red Bean Soup
We hope this post has given you the information you need to start your gluten-free Chinese food journey, and shown you that you don’t have to give up Asian food if you’re on a gluten-free diet. The key is cooking it yourself!
Any questions? Let us know in the comments below!
