What’s Actually in My Celiac Pantry (No Sponsored Content, No Nonsense)

Every few months someone publishes a “ultimate gluten-free pantry guide” that includes seventeen specialty products, four of which you can only get online, two of which cost more than your electric bill, and none of which tell you what to actually make for dinner on a Tuesday when you’re tired and everyone’s hungry.

This is not that list.

This is what’s actually in my pantry. A real celiac household, feeding real people, on a real budget. Some of it is boring. All of it is useful.

The Flour Situation

I’m currently testing three different GF flours because that’s just where we are right now — the bakery side of Fern and Fog is in development and I’m not going to use a flour I haven’t put through its paces. The winner stays my business for now.

But for home baking? Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Gluten Free Baking Flour is genuinely good and I’ll say that out loud without hesitation. It’s widely available, it behaves predictably, and it actually works as a cup-for-cup substitute in most recipes without requiring a biochemistry degree to adjust ratios. If you’re newer to GF baking and you don’t know where to start, start there.

The Real Staples

Here’s the stuff I’m genuinely annoyed to run out of:

Rice. Always. Long grain, short grain, whatever’s on sale. Plain rice straight from the bag is one of the few genuinely cheap, genuinely safe, genuinely filling options in the GF world. That said — seasoned rice, rice blends, and rice mixes still need a label check. Gluten hides in the flavoring packets. Buy plain, season it yourself.

Potatoes. Same energy as rice. Endlessly versatile, naturally GF, feeds a crowd. A bag of potatoes has saved dinner more times than I can count.

Onions. If you have onions you have the start of almost anything. I don’t make a lot of meals that don’t begin with an onion hitting a hot pan.

Spices. This is where I get a little intense. I grow some of my own — herbs mostly, things that end up in the kitchen and in the garden and eventually in Fern and Fog’s spice blends — and I keep a well-stocked spice situation at all times. Good spices are the difference between “safe food” and “food you actually want to eat.”

But here’s the thing people don’t always know: spices are a hidden gluten source. Always check your labels, every single time, even on products you’ve used forever. Even single ingredient spices. Anti-caking agents, fillers, shared manufacturing equipment — gluten can show up where you least expect it. Companies change recipes and manufacturing plants without making it obvious. Something that was safe last year may not be safe this year. Spice blends and seasoning packets are the most obvious offenders, but don’t assume a single ingredient spice is automatically clear. Check it. Every time. No exceptions.

Canned and frozen fruit. We use fresh as much as possible — and in this house fresh fruit disappears faster than I can restock it — but canned and frozen are the safety net. Good for baking, good for smoothies, good for when you need something sweet and the fresh stuff is long gone. No shame in the canned fruit aisle.

GF Pasta. A pantry non-negotiable. Find a brand that holds up and stock it. Penne and rigatoni are the workhorses — something with ridges that actually holds sauce.

Chicken stock. Check your labels — stock is a sneaky place for gluten to show up. Find a brand you trust and buy it in bulk when it’s on sale.

Canned tomatoes. Base of a hundred meals. Always have them.

Eggs. Naturally GF, cheap protein, useful in approximately everything.

What I Don’t Keep Around

A bunch of expensive GF replacement products that taste like a sad approximation of something else and cost $8 for a package with six servings.

Look — some of them are worth it. I’m not going to tell you never to buy GF bread or GF pasta. Sometimes you need them and that’s fine. But they’re not the foundation of how I cook. The foundation is real ingredients that happen to be GF, not GF versions of things that were originally made with gluten.

It’s cheaper. It tastes better. And it stops you from spending your whole grocery budget on products that make you feel like you’re eating around your own kitchen.

The Bottom Line

A well-stocked celiac pantry doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. Rice, potatoes, onions, good spices, eggs, canned basics, a flour that actually works. That’s most of it. The rest you build over time as you figure out what your household actually eats.

Start simple. Cook real food. Spend the specialty product budget on things that are actually worth it.

And if you ever need spice blend recommendations from someone who grows half of them in her backyard — you know where to find us.

Fern and Fog is a celiac-safe home and kitchen brand based in Lawrence, Kansas. Spice blends, teas, baked goods, pantry mixes, and skincare — made small, made carefully, made by someone who actually has to eat this way.