How to Add Flavour to Low Fodmap Meals

People have this preconceived idea that low Fodmap meals must be lacking in flavour. There is simply no excuse for not eating tasty food when on a low Fodmap diet. Most of what you add to normal meals to create flavour is exactly the same as what we can add to our low Fodmap meals. Watch my video to see how it can be done.

The Transcript

Today, I want to talk to you about how to make low FODMAP food tasty.
Many people seem to think that the low FODMAP diet is a diet without flavour and they couldn’t be further from the truth. If you were a good cook before, you’ll be a good cook afterwards. If you weren’t very good at cooking, then nothing will change.
How do you add flavour to your food? Let’s start with herbs. Most herbs are permitted on the low FODMAP diet. Obviously, we don’t eat a whole bunch of parsley or coriander – we just chop up a tablespoon and put it into a dish, but any of those fresh herbs, or even dried herbs like parsley, coriander, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, all those main ones are absolutely fine to use in your dishes.
Also, you can use spices. They’ve recently tested a whole lot of spices and they were all fine. They do say under one teaspoon, but that’s okay. You normally only put a teaspoon into a dish that you would be serving to four people, so you’re going to be well under that limit. Any of those main spices, and even some of the more exotic ones, are absolutely fine.
Also, you can get flavours through sauces. We are allowed soya sauce, Worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, barbecue sauce, mustard, and many pickles. You just got to make sure, of course, there is no onion or garlic in them. So, again, no excuse. I make my own tomato sauce just to make sure that it doesn’t have any of those high FODMAP ingredients in it, and that’s simply easy – just boil up a few ingredients – tomatoes, canned tomatoes, and some flavours in there.
With these spices – in particular, chilli – just be careful with that. It is low FODMAP, but if you have any reflux at all, then that could cause you problems. If you have reflux, leave out chilli and go a little bit easy on the spices.
The last thing I want to talk about is how I create a base to many of my cooked savory recipes. Normally, you would cut up garlic and onions and fry that off until it was clear, and then you would go ahead and brown your meat, et cetera. Well, obviously, we can’t use onions and garlic, but we can use spring onions – the green part. That’s what I always use to get the onion flavour. Chop them up. You can do the same thing with the green part of leeks as well. I also chop up a little bit of celery just to give a little bit of soft crunch in there. And when I put the oil into my pan to cook that off, I put a teaspoon of garlic-infused oil and that gives me the garlic flavour. If I’m wanting to lift the flavor even more, I add in a red chilli. Take out the seeds and chop that up finely. Also, just a small lump of ginger and I grate that into the dish, and that gives a wonderful base for anything that you want to create, whether it’s a stew, or a soup, or any other dish.
So again, there is no excuse for not having flavour in a low FODMAP dish. Good luck with your cooking and goodbye.