Just Diagnosed With Coeliac Disease: Do You Need a New Toaster, Pans and Air Fryer?

Some of it, yes. A short list of things in a kitchen hold on to gluten in a way that washing up doesn't fix, and those are worth replacing. Most of your kitchen is not on that list. Metal cutlery, plates, glassware, stainless steel pans and anything that goes through a hot dishwasher are fine to keep and use as normal.

The reason this question comes up so often in the first week is that the advice online swings between "throw everything out" and "just wash it properly", and neither is quite right. The useful distinction is whether an item is porous, scratched, or full of crumbs you can't reach.

Worth replacing

• The toaster. Crumbs sit in the bottom and in the element slots, and there is no realistic way to clean them out. A separate toaster is the simplest fix. Toaster bags work if you have no room for a second one.
• Wooden spoons, wooden chopping boards and wooden rolling pins. Wood is porous and holds residue in the grain.
• Scratched plastic chopping boards, particularly any that have been used for bread or breaded food.
• Scratched or worn non-stick pans and baking trays. Once the coating is damaged, gluten can lodge in the scratches. Intact non-stick washes clean.
• Colanders and sieves that have drained wheat pasta. The mesh and the holes are genuinely difficult to get clean.
• Anything with baked-on residue — old cake tins, well-used loaf tins, pizza stones.
• Shared oil in a deep fat fryer. Oil that has cooked breaded food is not usable, no matter how long ago it was.

Fine to keep, washed normally

• Metal cutlery, including the knives.
• Plates, bowls, mugs, glassware.
• Stainless steel and cast iron pans (cast iron that has cooked a lot of breaded food is worth scrubbing back and re-seasoning).
• The oven itself, as long as you cover food or use fresh trays and foil.
• The dishwasher. Washing gluten-free and gluten-containing items together in a hot cycle is generally considered fine.

The air fryer

If the basket and drawer come out and go in the dishwasher, and the coating isn't scratched, a thorough clean is usually enough. What causes problems is the crumb tray, the mesh and the heating element area on a machine that has been used regularly for breaded food, because that's the same problem as the toaster in a different shape.

Households where one person eats gluten and one doesn't often end up with a second small air fryer for exactly this reason. If yours is new, or has mostly cooked chips and chicken, keep it and clean it properly.

The bit people miss: shared jars and shared flour

Two things cause more accidental exposure in a shared kitchen than any piece of equipment.

Double-dipping. Butter, spreads, jam, peanut butter, chutney, mayonnaise. A knife that has touched bread and gone back into the jar has contaminated it. Squeezy bottles solve this, or keep your own labelled jars and be firm about it.

Wheat flour in the air. Baking with ordinary flour puts a fine dust into the air that settles on surfaces for hours afterwards. If someone in the house bakes with wheat flour, it's worth doing it when you're not preparing food, and wiping down properly afterwards.

Food staples that catch people out in the first month

The equipment questions get all the attention, but most first-month mistakes are in the cupboard rather than the drawers. These are rated on ClearToEat and are worth checking before you cook with them:

• Soy sauce is rated avoid for gluten-free — standard soy sauce is brewed with wheat. Tamari is the gluten-free version and is rated safe.
• Malt vinegar is rated avoid, as are malt extract and malt syrup, which turn up in sauces and cereals.
• Stock cubes and bouillon are rated caution — some contain wheat, so this is a brand-by-brand check.
• Fresh sausages are rated caution, because rusk is a common binder.
• Homemade gravy is rated caution — it depends entirely on what you thicken it with.
• Oats are rated caution, and that one needs a longer explanation than a bullet point. Ordinary oats are routinely contaminated during growing and milling, so only oats labelled gluten-free are suitable.
• Beer is rated avoid.

Naturally gluten-free basics are the easy ground to stand on while you learn the rest: white rice, potatoes, eggs, chicken, and rice pasta or corn pasta are all rated safe for gluten-free.

If you're managing more than one diet

This gets more complicated if you also have IBS, histamine intolerance or lactose issues, because a food being gluten-free tells you nothing about the rest. Oats are rated caution on low FODMAP as well as gluten-free. Tamari solves the gluten problem but is rated avoid on both low FODMAP and histamine. Lentils and chickpeas are rated safe for gluten-free and avoid on low FODMAP.

The ClearToEat food finder checks a food across gluten-free, low FODMAP, histamine, lactose-free and SCD at the same time, which saves cross-referencing several sets of rules while you're still learning the first one.

One last thing

You do not have to sort all of this out in week one. The toaster and the shared butter are the two changes that make the biggest difference for the least effort, and the rest can happen as you go. If you're in the UK, Coeliac UK's guidance is worth reading alongside anything your dietitian gives you, and it's normal for the whole thing to feel manageable a few months in when it feels impossible on day three.

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Photos by Franco Debartolo and Martijn Baudoin on Unsplash.

This article is general information, not medical or dietary advice. Coeliac disease affects people differently — please work with your GP or a registered dietitian on the plan that's right for you.