Gluten Alert: Minced Meat in Lisbon May Contain Gluten

We love a good burger. This one is 100 % Gluten Free…

 We are not big meat eaters – and when we eat meat it’s mostly chicken & lamb.

When we eat meat it’s mostly for an Italian Bolognese or a good burger. And we usually make it ourselves. People say we’re good at it. But the first years here in Lisbon these dishes always ended up as disasters – the bolognese always ended-up as one of the baked- sauces my grandma used to make. 

Mushroom and tomato sauces are delicious alternatives to bolognese. But the burgers we had to get elsewhere. So we spend our first many years looking for Burger Joints with good burgers – but except for one place all Portuguese burgers are disasters – or let me re-phase this: most of the burgers have absolutely nothing to do with beef burgers we get in other countries. 

It was driving me crazy – and our Portuguese friends who was fed up with my complaining, too. One day they invited us to a brand new Burger restaurant in their neighbourhood that made Original Classic Beef Burgers: Wau – fantastic Frikadelle Sandwich was my spontaneous comment after my first bite. If it wasn’t for our common friends – who are foodies like us and share the same opinion – my comment would have started a fight. Instead we changed the subject.

If you are allergic to Gluten remember to check the content of the minced meat. And keep it in mind if you cook yourself if you want to avoid ‘surprises’.

A year ago we went shopping in Continente. We hate the place and rarely go there – it’s too big and there are too many people. While Annette was looking for something I killed time browsing through the meat fridges. Then something strange hid my eyes: Gluten Free said the label one of the packs of minced beef. GLUTEN???? 

When I checked the ‘back’ it said 85% beef and 15 % Farina Trigo aka wheat flour. Then I checked the other packs of minced meat and saw that all of them – including the expensive Angus Beef – have 10 – 15 % flour. Its the same everywhere – even at the wholesale market MAKRO. This also explained my problem with my bolognese sauce.

There is nothing wrong with flour in minced meat as long as you know it and don’t expect something else. And people with gluten allergy can get problems. So be careful or go to a place like Atalho Real in Principe Real where we go. They mince their own meat.

We don’t have it anymore – we ask Luis et Edgar here in Graça to mince the meat for us – one time only 🙂