Tuesday 13 March 2012

Gluten Free Oyster Sauce and Soy Sauce

Don't you just hate it when a store stops stocking a product that is a staple ingredient in your kitchen? I do, and it keeps happening.

Prior to being gluten free one of my most favourite ingredients was oyster sauce. We would buy a huge bottle of it from Tesco that would last for ages. Then I found out that I couldn't have that particular brand because it had wheat flour in it. Oh well. But then after much research I found out that Blue Elephant Oyster Sauce was gluten free. Yay!

Well it was yay for a year or so. We could never buy it on our usual shop because Tesco never stocked it, my OH would go to Waitrose especially and bulk buy. Thing was, the price of a 190g bottle was about the same as we had been paying for the 510g Gold Plum one from Tesco, give or take 50p. That's a huge difference in price verses quantity but we were willing to pay it because it is such an important ingredient in my cooking.

Try these Gluten Free Pork Burgers and you'll see what I mean. I'm just a home cook, but those are off the scale and it's all down to the oyster sauce. (I took great delight at the seconds and possibly thirds that I dished up to my OH's petite mum when she visited. That's when I knew they were better than good.)

Then Waitrose stopped selling it around last Summer. We managed to source some from Bart Spices but for about six months the site has been saying it's out of stock. So am I.

I can't tell you how important this ingredient is in my cooking, it's like magic, a few drops and it instantly makes meals better. I've been searching all over the web for a replacement, but there just isn't any to be found. I put the question out to Twitter yesterday and an answer came back that Marks and Spencer sell a gluten free oyster sauce, however when I checked their site the product could not be found.

The same thing has now happened to me with gluten free soy sauce. I had been using Sanchi Tamari Soy Sauce for years, then a few months ago that disappeared from Tesco's shelves. I then started using Clearspring Organic Tamari Soy Sauce and now that's gone. It wasn't great anyway, it wasn't as salty as the Sanchi one so it messed up a few meals because the flavour wasn't strong enough.

It's unbelievably frustrating when these are ingredients that I use so much in cooking.

If you are reading this and know of where I can source gluten free soy sauce or gluten free oyster sauce in the UK please leave a comment or email lee at freefromg com. I need these ingredients!

A Happy Tuesday To All!

UPDATE 1/6/12: Amazon have Sanchi Soy Sauce in stock!!! They also have other Tamari soy sauces too. Fantastic news!

4 comments:

  1. Hi, there is a Chinese supermarket in Manchester called Wing Yip, they have a Web site where you can order online. I haven't used the online store as I live near the actual shop so I don't know what the online service is like but you could try it. Hope that helps!

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  2. Love Manchester! Thanks for this, I'll check it out :)

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  3. Asda own brand oyster sauce is £1 (!!) and gluten free!

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  4. Just double checked, so it is! Great tip, thanks :)

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