Gluten Free Herbs and Spices

Diagnoses of Coeliac disease have been steadily increasing in the UK in all age groups of people. To suddenly discover that you cannot tolerate gluten in your diet presents a huge challenge for people that have always enjoyed a wide range of foods.

Although it is common knowledge that single herbs and spices do not contain gluten, being confident to choose foods that are gluten-free causes considerable anxiety. Some of the larger spice processing companies do handle products that contain gluten and may even add them to their spice blends, for example, McCormick who incorporate wheat into some of their spice mixes.

As a spice blend manufacturer based in Bromborough, UK, our spice factory is totally gluten free. Unlike other spice companies we are not totally mechanised, in fact we are still proud of producing most of our products in small batches by hand. Our products are authentic and therefore do not need to be filled with additives, fillers or free-flow agents.

So how can you be sure which products are free of gluten?

As this has become a more common question we recently decided to undertake some testing (see results here) of a number of products that we thought were at higher risk of being contaminated with gluten in the supply chain. Also as a precaution and to understand the risk factors in herbs and spices, we have spent quite a lot of time researching this and understanding if gluten is a risk in our products.

We can confirm that from discussions we have had with suppliers and other spice experts, we are confident that we can state our herbs, spices, seasonings, chillies, spice blends, salts,
peppercorns and specialist ingredients are free from gluten. Additionally, we recently sent samples for expert testing at a specialist laboratory, with the results confirming this.

Of our range of ten Gourmet Cooking Sauces prepared at the sauce factory, only two do contain gluten, these are the Vietnamese Kho sauce and the Chinese Sichuan Plum & Mandarin sauce.
All of the other eight sauces are gluten-free.

There is also a facility on our website to search for gluten-free recipes, which we hope is useful.

For further information about Coeliac disease, including the causes, symptoms and treatment, please visit the website of Coeliac UK