Stir-fry sauce

One of the big problems with gluten free asian cooking is that almost all sauces have wheat based soy sauce and/or onion powder for those fructose free. I have found a gluten free oyster sauce, but that doesn't work if you are vegetarian or allergic to seafood, there are also vegetarian 'oyster' sauces, but I haven't found a gluten free version. So anyway, I've come up with a bit of a stir-fry sauce the I reckon tastes pretty good, it's only had a few iterations so I will continue to play with it a little.

Dish: Stir-Fry sauce
Special need categories: Gluten free, fructose free, vegetarian, shellfish allergy
Special needs translated: no gluten, no onion, no animal products, no shellfish

Ingredients:

• gluten free soy sauce
• little olive oil
• brown sugar (this is a substitute for palm sugar which looks to be high in fructose)
• corn flour (check it is gluten free, i.e. made from corn/maize)
• garlic (contain fructose but usually safe in small quantities)
• ginger
• chili
• tamarind paste (I don't think this is a high fructose fruit)
• chinese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
• rice vinegar, just a little
• a little water to make it less rich and go a bit further

Method

Basically it is just a matter of combining everything in a bowl and tasting it to see what you think. I use the brown sugar because I can't use ketchup manis like I normally would and the corn flour is a thickening agent. The tamarind paste is just a fruit paste that give a bit of a 'tang' to the dish, the vinegar does a little of the same. Chinese five spice is a great spice for just about any asian dish, the actual mix of spices varies but typically it is something like fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise, cassia, ginger and/or peppercorns. The rest is about as expected I would think. You could also add some onion powder to fill out the flavour a little if it didn't have to be fructose free.

I usually mix this up in a bowl before I start cooking, make it easier to get the flavours right (I used to put my individual ingredients straight ontop of the stir-frys before). When I'm cooking with unflavoured tofu I marinade it in the sauce for a while and just tip it all in together.

Otherwise I think that's about it, mix, match, add/subtract ingredients and flavours till you find something that works. Asian cooking has lots of gluten free options however it often means you have to go back to base ingredients because in many cases, you can't use pre-prepared sauce. Have fun with it!