I know I’m not the only one looking for gluten free oyster sauce. There are a handful of Asian ingredients I used to cook with that, despite all logical reasoning, contain gluten. These include:

• Shaoxing Rice Wine
• Dark Soy Sauce
• Sichuan Chili Bean Paste
• Oyster Sauce

I’d all but written these ingredients off, along with their accompanying dishes, until a recent conversation with my wonderful hair stylist, Lillian. As someone who recently discovered she has a gluten intolerance, Lillian was lamenting how hard it was to cook without oyster sauce in her culinary arsenal. “How the hell am I supposed to cook?” she mused out loud. “I mean, I’m Chinese! I need oyster sauce!”

She then went on to tell me about how she’d downloaded an iPhone app that helped her to shop for gluten free groceries. This app has informed her about a gluten free oyster sauce, which she tracked down at her local grocery store. She tried it, and yes! It was good! It tasted just like she’d hoped! AND – it was ok to eat!

Finding Gluten Free Oyster Sauce

I checked out the website for the brand she’d named, Lee Kum Kee, and it did appear that they made a gluten free oyster sauce. According to the website, it was their “panda” green label oyster sauce. I looked in all of my local large-scale grocery stores and couldn’t find it anywhere, so started hitting the tiny Asian grocery stores – and I finally found it:

That, right there, is what you need to look for. There’s a larger photo at the beginning of this post so that you can get an overall idea of what the bottle looks like.

While I couldn’t find it anywhere but my local Chinatown, Lillian was able to find it at her neighborhood Lucky’s, in the Asian food section.

Now, go forth and dig out your Chinese and Thai cookbooks, my gluten-free brothers and sisters!

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