Gluten and Grain Tags

Not all gluten is the same gluten, and not everyone who avoids one grain has to avoid the others. So the recipes here don’t just carry a single “has gluten” label — each gluten grain gets its own tag, and there’s a separate tag for the “it depends on the brand” cases. Here’s what each one means.

The three grain tags

• contains-wheat — the recipe needs a wheat ingredient: wheat flour, bread, breadcrumbs or panko, regular pasta or noodles, semolina, couscous, farro, bulgur, seitan, a roux, a wheat-flour tortilla, pie crust, and so on.
• contains-barley — the recipe needs barley or something made from it: malt, malt vinegar, malt syrup, or beer.
• contains-rye — the recipe needs rye, including rye breads like pumpernickel.

Tagging the grains separately means you can filter for exactly what you react to. If barley is your problem but wheat isn’t, you don’t have to skip every wheat-tagged dish; browse contains-barley and avoid just those. Oats are naturally gluten-free, so an oats recipe is not tagged with any of these — but oats are often processed alongside gluten grains, so those recipes carry a footnote reminding you to reach for certified gluten-free oats if you need to.

gluten-free

gluten-free is a convenience tag. A recipe earns it only when it’s clean of all three grains above and carries no “may-contain” flag (below). If you’re avoiding gluten entirely, this is the tag to browse — it’s the strict one.

may-contain-wheat — the “check the label” cases

Some ingredients usually contain a gluten grain but not always, so the recipe might or might not depending on which product you buy. The classic one is soy sauce: it’s typically brewed with wheat, but wheat-free varieties exist. A recipe like that isn’t confirmed contains-wheat, but it isn’t safely gluten-free either — so it gets may-contain-wheat instead.

When you see that tag, check the footnote on the ingredient itself: it tells you what to look for on the label (or which wheat-free variety to use) so you can make the dish gluten-free. Pick a wheat-free product and the recipe is clean; grab a standard one and it isn’t.

The short version

• Avoiding one grain? Filter for just its contains- tag.
• Avoiding gluten completely? Trust gluten-free, and treat may-contain-wheat as “safe only if you check the label.”
• Always read the ingredient footnotes — that’s where the “which product to buy” detail lives.