I hate being a burden.

Ever since I was diagnosed with celiac disease about four years ago, that feeling has magnified each holiday season — a time when baked treats are passed around like the flu and well-intentioned people looking to accommodate the few breadless souls in their lives realize they have no idea what or how to cook a Thanksgiving meal without wheat flour. Maybe it’s time we all learned?

This year I went ahead and made myself gluten-free gravy, stuffing and baked desserts in an effort to understand what makes a quality, breadless holiday meal. To some that may seem like a paradox, and I’m not going to lie and say everything I made was mouthwatering. But in learning what works and what doesn’t for wheat-deficient food, I discovered how to bring more of what I need to the holiday table.

So here’s my guide on how to show up for the gluten-free people in your life. And if you happen to be the gluten-free one, hopefully this helps you show up for yourself.

Gravy

While turkey, the focal point of any Thanksgiving meal, is gluten-free, its sidekick, gravy, is often not. Ready-made mixes and classic recipes use flour to create a thicker, richer sauce.

I use cornstarch as my flour substitute. Your favorite gluten-free flour may also work. Friends tell me King Arthur’s gluten-free flour, which is a blend of rice flours mixed with potato and tapioca starch, is the best there is. My heart’s with Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 baking flour, which uses a similar mix but has the addition of xanthan gum, which helps bind the final product — a common concern within gluten-free kitchens.

Gravy’s pretty easy to make: In some cases all you need is some broth or stock, butter and the flour for thickening. But if you’re looking for an even quicker fix, I tried three different bases that practically require you to just add water.

McCormick’s gluten-free turkey gravy mix was better than I expected. The flavor requires some zhuzh-ing that goes beyond the usual salt and pepper — maybe some more thyme, sage or potentially garlic. It’s cheap and the texture is more coagulated despite only being mixed with water. It can be a bit clumpy if you don’t whisk hard enough, but you get the salty, warm taste that’s needed.

Imagine’s organic roasted turkey-flavored gravy as a base alone was the best I tried. A bit pricier, it has more vibrant flavors and a looser consistency that’s more reminiscent of the gravies I used to eat before my celiac diagnosis. It’s thick and lighter in color than the McCormick, and requires no more than five minutes on the stove.

Primal Kitchen’s classic gravy base had a slightly thicker texture than Imagine. They use coconut cream to help bind the sauce, and it gives the gravy a lighter, almost fruitier flavor after sitting in your mouth. It’s still salty and would go great on some mashed potatoes, but has less of the musky, savory flavor that I’ve come to expect.

Stuffing

Gluten-free stuffing wasn’t as difficult to make as I thought, considering the classic Thanksgiving side is made entirely of soggy bread. But it can go wrong fast.

What’s most important is that the stuffing binds, creating that thick, moist texture that’s easy to get from soaking bread in stock. I tried three different store-bought mixes to see which held together and which crumbled under the heat.

The Aldi brand liveGFree was affordable and time-efficient. The total cooking time couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes — not too surprising, considering the box’s bag of cubed bread, made from varying rice flours and starches, is coated in a suspicious off-white powder. A little over a cup of water, half a stick of butter, boil and then fold with the grocer’s nebulous mix of yeast and seasonings in a saucepan, and you’re ready to go.

After waiting 12 minutes, the mixture coalesced into a crusty stew with a yellowish hue. Maybe it was the misguided turkey flavor or my own commitment to follow the box as intended for research, but this was borderline inedible. Even with the ingredients listed, it was hard to parse out what flavors had been stuffed into the mix. The cubes seemed to be wedded to each other, but on the tip of my fork they fell apart, crumbling into mushy dough with the smell of wet onions.

Williams Sonoma’s gluten-free classic stuffing looked very promising: The cubes of dough were large, solid, with the color and texture of dried bread. No suspicious seasoning in sight. The box encouraged adding onions, celery and carrots marinated in butter, which was assuring, because that’s a baseline I’d want for cooking most dishes. After about 10 minutes of sautéing, the vegetables were folded into a bowl of the uncooked stuffing along with chicken broth, and I let it sit for another 20 to 25 minutes until the liquid absorbed.

Looking back, I would have added more stock and maybe some garlic, oregano and rosemary. My mom suggested thyme, parsley and some more butter. Despite soaking and baking for 40 minutes, the stuffing was pretty dry. The pseudo-bread held a nice texture, maybe a bit too firm like a crouton, but it looked beautiful despite the cubes struggling to bind into a cohesive dish. It was clear why this stuffing was more expensive: The stuffing cubes were far better quality, with the flavors you would expect.

Aleia’s gluten-free savory stuffing did not initially look appetizing. The cubes were less defined, seemingly more mushy. It prompted a similar preparation as the Williams Sonoma version, calling for carrots, celery and onions marinated with butter. But this mix had a separate spice packet. You could see the parsley, thyme and sage inside; their addition to the vegetables, alongside chicken stock added into the saucepan, gave me my first Thanksgiving-worthy whiff. After folding the mixture into the stuffing cubes in a separate bowl, the concoction was baked for about 30 minutes (I’d cook even longer for a golden top).

I was shocked to find that despite the stuffing appearing mushy, the bread held its texture with a cohesive set of moist and savory layers like that of a normal stuffing. It was not nearly as beautiful as the Williams Sonoma version, but far more flavorful.

Dessert

Here’s where it gets hard. Unless you’re a gifted, almost magical baker, your wheatless dough will not rise like those made with regular flour. Luckily for you, I have two dessert options destined to provide the sugar rush you’re looking for.

Almond cake has been my go-to treat since my celiac diagnosis. My dad, who uses a recipe found on a blog by chef David Lebovitz, whips it up whenever I’m in town and it feeds at least a dozen people. It’s pretty quick, too.

One and a third cups of sugar, a whole package of almond paste, and about 3/4 cup of my favorite gluten-free flour are ground in a food processor until broken up. Then a cup of cubed, room-temperature butter, ideally slightly melting, is added to the mix with teaspoons of vanilla and almond extract. One at a time and with pulsing in between, add six eggs. Then another quarter cup of flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, and salt.

By the end, you should have a pretty smooth mix that fills your nose with scents of amaretto and vanilla. It neatly pours into a greased baking pan with parchment paper lining the bottom and bakes for slightly over an hour until golden brown. Once it cools, the texture feels like dough — fluffy and rich with soft flavors that don’t send you spiraling into a sugar coma. It shocks me how good it is every time.

Baked crisps are better than most gluten-free pies, in my experience. Maybe I’m just unskilled, but after multiple attempts to keep a cherry pie crust from falling apart, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that crisps, which have a crust along the top but none encasing the fruit, can be as good, if not better. I made mine with blueberries.

You can improvise a bit. In a bowl, I mixed at least two cups of blueberries with just over a tablespoon each of sugar and Bob’s Red Mill flour, along with a similar amount of lemon juice and a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and poured it into a greased pan. In the same bowl, I folded together about 3/4 cup of gluten-free oats, less than half a cup of brown sugar, two more tablespoons of flour, a small bag of sliced almonds, a little over a teaspoon of cinnamon, and salt to taste. Then I rubbed in three tablespoons of cold, cubed butter until the mix felt like a crumbly paste, and poured it over the top of the blueberries.

I wanted it crunchy and the blueberries bubbling, so I baked the treat for close to 50 minutes. It came out with a rich crust and tart blue underbelly, carrying fumes of cinnamon and sugar into my apartment — a hard-earned reward that reminded me how empowering it is to take charge of what brings you joy.