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Garrapiñadas
Walking around Buenos Aires you will see many vendors making and selling something called Garrapiñada. It smells great and it only costs 2 pesos but what is it and is it gluten free? I must have walked past literally a hundred of these guys over the last month that I’ve been living in the city but I was never sure exactly what it was and had never got around to asking.
Luckily last Sunday after a fun trip to San Telmo’s fantastic Sunday market, I decided to ask one vendor exactly what this Garrapiñada consists of.
Good news! It is simply peanuts covered in melted sugar….served warm! Nothing else has been added and there is no chance of contamination as you can watch them prepare it so it’s 100% gluten free. Oh and did I mention that it’s also amazing and so addictive! The perfect snack for exploring the city and I can’t wait to have more now that I know it’s gluten free!
Pablo
Dec 4th, 2012Garrapiñada is not a safe gluten free snack!
It can have cross contamination in the ingredients or in the process when they sell other gluten snacks in the same cart
Laura
Dec 10th, 2012Pablo, I completely agree with this! Back when I was travelling in Argentina and wrote this post I wasn’t yet aware of the threat of cross contamination from nuts. When I return I will certainly be more wary.
Interestingly, during my 6 months in Argentina I ate handfuls of peanuts and raisins every day which I got from Dieteticas. I never had any gluten symptoms and I trained and ran my first full marathon whilst eating these so I definitely wasn’t low in energy. Would you consider nuts in Dieteticas to be safe or should celiacs avoid these?
Pablo
Dec 11th, 2012I think there will be some risk of cross contamination with peanuts unless they have shells. I don’t trust peeled nuts.
There are some gluten free certified nuts but they are hard to find.
Raisins are harder since there’s no certified ones. Then the good practice is to get them from a vendor that doesnt mix shovels and wash them before eating.