Your flour shelf,
sorted.

The signature guide

Your flour shelf, sorted.

Indian cooking leans hard on wheat — but the pantry is also full of naturally gluten-free grains that were here long before maida. Here's the full sort.

*Kuttu and oats are naturally gluten-free but often contaminated during milling — buy certified gluten-free versions only. See the Indian kitchen.

Good news

So much of your plate is already safe.

Once you're past the flour shelf, a huge amount of everyday Indian food is naturally gluten-free — no special products required:

• All dals and legumes — rajma, chana, moong, masoor, and so on.
• Plain rice and rice-based dishes (check that no wheat was added).
• Most vegetables and fruit, fresh and cooked.
• Dairy — milk, curd, paneer, ghee.
• Naturally gluten-free classics — besan cheela, most dosas and idlis (confirm no wheat/rava), poha, most South Indian staples.

The catch is always the additions: a wheat-based hing, a rava batter, a flour-thickened gravy. The food itself is usually fine — it's what's stirred in that isn't.

Reading labels

What "gluten-free" actually means.

Internationally, a food can be called gluten-free only if it contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten — the threshold considered safe for people with celiac.¹ On a label, watch for wheat, atta, maida, sooji, barley, malt, rye, and less obvious terms like "hydrolysed wheat protein." When a packet doesn't clearly say, treat it as unsafe until you've confirmed.

References

Sources for this page

Every clinical claim above is numbered and traced to one of these sources. Superscript numbers in the text link here.

1. NIDDK (NIH) — a food is considered gluten-free below 20 ppm of gluten; this is the safe threshold for celiac disease. View source →