Your Favorite Way to Cook Polenta: Tips and Tricks

[russ parsons]

this is a very good no-stir polenta that i learned from paula wolfert (hi paula!). many years ago i did a series of tests and this was the only shortcut that offered a really deep, toasted flavor.

2 quarts water

2 teaspoons salt

2 cups coarse-ground cornmeal

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons minced parsley

Combine water, salt, cornmeal and butter in 3- to 4-quart oven-proof saucepan. Bake at 350 degrees 1 hour 20 minutes. Stir polenta and bake 10 more minutes. Remove from oven and set aside 5 minutes to rest before serving.

[fifi]

russ... Does the pot in Paula's method have a lid on it?

BTW... That is my kind of recipe!

[Richard Kilgore]

Russ - No stir. That I like...a lot.

You specify a saucepan. Would a Le Cruset or other enameled Dutch/French oven work?

[Boris_A]

Russ - No stir. That I like...a lot.

I'm familiar with that method of preparation. Actually, I learned it by an old woman. (And I wonder where Paulal Wolfert learned it). If you don't stir at all, you get a fluffy kind of polenta, right? I prefer the stirred polenta, but I have guests who prefer this kind. Thus I'm applying both methods. BTW, I'm using a lid.

There's absoluely no heresy, but as I'm originating from a region where polenta is a signature dish, to call this a polenta is something like calling a piece of boiled beef breast a brisket. . For my taste, it lacks the stickiness of a "true" polenta.

Fifi, as a side note, "I have always thought of polenta as grits with a class attitude", interestingly in many regions in northern Europe, for centuries corn was considered to be an animal feed and was estimated very low compared with grits. Today, polenta entered the menu list of high end restaurants. So gold turns to lead and re-turns to gold over time.

A variant for kids (especially if you add some sugar when stirring with butter during the second phase) is this old recipe.

Edited October 13, 2004 by Boris_A (log)

[Carrot Top]

My first exposure to polenta was in the kitchen of an Italian-American woman who had emigrated to the US as a young woman.

The polenta she made...is not like these more traditional types. She had six children and little money...and her polenta was made in the form of a soup.

With sliced hot dogs added.

And there, was supper.

Her family loves it, and will forever.

[fifi]

Fifi, as a side note,  "I have always thought of polenta as grits with a class attitude",  interestingly in many regions in northern Europe, for centuries corn was considered to be an animal feed and was estimated very low compared with grits. Today, polenta entered the menu list of high end restaurants. So gold turns to lead and re-turns to gold over time.

←

Heh... Many years ago, when Italian restaurants were trying to move beyond spaghetti and meatballs, I went to this new and "trendy" place. They described some dish as served over a "square of lightly fried polenta". Well... I had never heard of polenta, the rest of the dish sounded good, I was curious about this polenta stuff, and so I ordered it. A couple of other folks did, too. When the dish arrived, we exclaimed almost in unison... "Why, that is fried grits!" We still laugh about it today.

[Busboy]

I know it's heresy but I find that instant polenta (the kind you stir, not the kind you slice) gives excellent results and, when I put up an angst-ridden post about it was assured by a variety of more-seasoned eG Italiophiles that the vast majority of Italians use the instant stuff today without guilt or significant flavor loss.

That said, I crave a creamy garlic polenta presented in a now-lost Patrick Connell (of the Inn at Little Washington). Sweat some chopped garlic in butter or olive oil, substirute whole milk for 1/4 of your water and cream for another quarter, throw in a bay leaf and a shot of tabasco as you cook, and add equal amounts of grated parmesan and dried polenta. It should come out about the consistency of grits and it won't hurt at all if you add a little water or cream at the end to get it just where you like it.

Fries up nice for breakfast the next morning, too.

[Wolfert]

I'm familiar with that method of preparation. Actually, I learned it by an old woman. (And I wonder where Paulal Wolfert learned it).

I learned this method on the back of a bag of Golden Pheasant brand polenta, a product distributed by the Polenta Company of San Francisco. This Tuscan recipe has been printed on the back of the bag for more than 20 years. The owner, Ed Fleming, told me it was an old paesan's mother's recipe.

[cakewalk]

I have never eaten polenta, much less made it, so I'm fascinated by this thread. I love all things corn-related, and I figure it's high time to try this out. I'll probably start with the no-stir method. But first, some questions:

What do you eat this with? I mean, what part of the meal is it? Main course? Side dish?

It seems so versatile. I've read things where people say they slice it, and some things where people say they eat it as a soup. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile those two applications. Maybe that's the beauty of the dish?

[lovebenton0]

Instant polenta is not bad stuff! We like this formula with garlic chicken and grilled squash.

Cook:

1/3 chicken stock, 1/3 water, 1/3 cream

1-1/2:1 instant polenta to parmigiano

salt to taste (remember the cheese is salty)

Then stir in:

handful (you decide small or large) of lemon basil

sprinkle of crushed red pepper

1-2 cloves garlic, minced and quickly sauteed

Cook another few minutes.

To serve let sit for at least 30 minutes, covered. Or roll up or pack in loaf pan and chill to fry later. If fried this is good topped with thick golden grilled onion slices and generously drizzled with a basic fresh tomato/basil sauce.

Edited October 13, 2004 by lovebenton0 (log)

[Busboy]

The quick answer is to just think of polenta as Italian mashed potatoes. You can do anything with it. I generally prefer mine mushy; I'm thinking of spooning a healthy lake of it beneath braised lamb shanks this weekend, and I find it makes a particularly inviting pan-Euro dinner when served with Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic.

It's also great left to cool, sliced and fried up.

I have served it as a first course, fried, with white beans and tomatoes but generally serve it as a side.

As for the consistency, it's just a question of how much liquid you choose to add, and knowing that even soupy polent will congeal as it cools.

It's simple stuff, too, the hardest part is figuring out how you like it. It's almost a...cakwalk?

Edited October 13, 2004 by Busboy (log)

[Carrot Top]

It seems so versatile. I've read things where people say they slice it, and some things where people say they eat it as a soup. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile those two applications. Maybe that's the beauty of the dish?

←

That seems to me to be the beauty of many Italian foods...that one food with the same name (when spoken obviously not in the many dialects but in the newer language on the scene, "Italian") can transform itself into a myriad of forms and flavors as soon as you walk from one division of the country into another.

It makes not only for an enormous variety of foods but also for much fun

hand-waving in the air, good-mannered insult throwing and passionate debate back and forth. Which is all well and fine in the end, for there's always a good bottle of wine to share and relax with afterwards.

Ground cornmeal in all its incarnations...seems to have many uses. When Fifi mentioned grits, I remembered even another way to use them.

Does anyone else remember a number of years ago...Al Green had to cancel a number of concerts because he was taken to the hospital with first degree burns all over his body.

How did it happen?

His girlfriend was mad at him and threw a pot of hot grits on him...apparently while he was..uh, naked.

Grits. The angry Southern woman's weapon of choice?

[achevres]

For cooking liquid try 1/2 water and 1/2 chicken broth--adds a lot of base flavor without being chickeny. I also do this for grits.

What do you eat this with? I mean, what part of the meal is it? Main course? Side dish?

They can be creamier or stiffer, or in between. They are a lot like mashed potatoes, like Busboy said. Butter, cheese, blue cheese all make it even better. To my taste, however, polenta has an affinity to tomato sauce that mashed potatoes don't have.

My favorite way to eat polenta is with Italian sausage in a tomato sauce, from a Marcella Hazan recipe. She calls for Luganesa (sp) sausage, which I've never found, but it's delicious with regular Italian sausage. The recipe is in either The Classic of Italian Cooking or in More Classics of Italian Cooking.

[cakewalk]

Thanks all. I think I'm going to play with this tonight.

I never even realized polenta was Italian, I always thought it was Mexican!

[Boris_A]

cakewalk, just saw here that some eGulleteers have problems on a very high level. Therefore another suggestion:

maybe the most classic Northern-Italian polenta condiment is "Funghi porcini trifolati" (literally "truffeled porcinis").

You sautee some fresh, roughly cut porcinis with a generous spoon of butter and with one or two chopped garlic cloves for about 10-15 minutes and add some parsley and pepper at the end. That's it. Serve with freshly prepared polenta (stirred, not shaked ). Open a bottle of a hearty red wine and enjoy.

(BTW, these days we pay 25 (twentyfive) bucks for 1 (one) pound of porcinis. They know hoe to squeeze the adicts).

[slkinsey]

To add my two cents:

Definitely use yellow corn meal, coarser grinds being better.

Traditionally, the best Italian polenta is cooked in an unlined copper kettle over an open fire. It is cooked for a very long time and a crust builds up on the inside of the copper vessel. This crust imparts a great deal of the toasty corn flavor. Understanding that, I would think that any crust-forming method for the home cook would be a good one. However, if you're planning on using chicken stock or milk or loading it with a lot of gorgonzola, it's probably not worth the trouble as these added ingredients will obscure the corn flavor anyway.

[Boris_A]

It is cooked for a very long time and a crust builds up on the inside of the copper vessel.  This crust imparts a great deal of the toasty corn flavor.

When I was 16 years old, once I hiked on a road in the Swiss-Italian alps.

There were three workmen repairing the road, far from any house or building. They had a very particular, tall wood burner, and there was inserted an about 25 inch long, 8 inch wide, cylindric pot with hot, liquid bitumen to fill the cracks in the asphalt.

It was near noon, and just when I arrived there, they replaced the bitumen pot over the fire with a clean, empty copper pot of exactly the same size. They filled in some water, salt and cornmeal, they took a long wooden stick - and ecco, one hour later, they offered a rustic, toasty polenta and a cup of red wine.

I'll never forget the dual-use burner and pot!

[russ parsons]

If you don't stir at all, you get a fluffy kind of polenta, right? I prefer the stirred polenta, but I have guests who prefer this kind. Thus

boris, i was quite surprised when i tested this recipe, but it is not at all fluffy. it is a nice, thick, sticky polenta with deep, toasty flavor. the only drawback to the recipe is that it only makes 4 servings (and meager ones at that). it does not scale up. if you want polenta for 8, you need to make 2 pots.

[Boris_A]

boris, i was quite surprised when i tested this recipe, but it is not at all fluffy. it is a nice, thick, sticky polenta with deep, toasty flavor. the only drawback to the recipe is that it only makes 4 servings (and meager ones at that). it does not scale up. if you want polenta for 8, you need to make 2 pots.

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Russ, now I'm perplexed. And you don't stir? I have to confess that I didn't do a polenta with this method for two years now, but normally my memory for food is quite intact. It's two o clock in the morning here, so I'll try it tomorrow and I'm really curious. I suspect in the end the specifics of the cornmeal will be the answer. But let's wait and see.

At least your observation about the amount is quite in line with mine. I always made the oven polenta with only about two inches level of liquidity max. Thus one (normal) pot will not serve many people indeed.

[coffeeroaster]

Fries up nice for breakfast the next morning, too.

OMG -- fried up with a poached egg (or two) is one of my favorite meals.

[cakewalk]

Well, I've just finished eating my first batch of polenta. Good stuff, but I certainly have a long way to go. I figured I'd keep my first attempt on the basic side.

I used the double boiler method. (It is surprisingly simple, and hardly needs any stirring.) Three parts liquid (I used milk and water) to one part coarse corn grits. (That's what it said on the label.) Salt and butter.

I got a little nervous in the beginning because when I added the boiled liquid to the corn meal there were no lumps! I've been reading all about lumps in polenta and I was anticipating the worst. Not one lump. Beginner's luck, I guess. Or else I did something very wrong.

And then I just set it on top of a pot of simmering water, covered it with foil, stirred a few times during the first half hour of cooking, and then let it cook another hour (1 1/2 hrs. total) while I got some work done. I did stir a couple of times in between, mostly because I wanted to see how it "behaved." Interesting the way it sort of sticks to itself. It was not fluffy. But it did not form a crust. It was in a stainless steel bowl on top of a pot of simmering water. I wonder if it would have formed a crust if I left it for a longer period of time?

I added some blue cheese after it was cooked but while it was still very hot, now that was really good. Would you add cheese while it's still cooking?

Tomorrow I will slice what is left and fry it. Next time I make it, I'll change the corn meal to liquid ratio. In the meantime I like it, but I don't quite get what people think is so great about it.

Thanks to all of you.

[Boris_A]

Russ, now I'm perplexed. And you don't stir? I have to confess that I didn't do a polenta with this method for two years now, but normally my memory for food is quite intact. It's two o clock in the morning here, so I'll try it tomorrow

←

I just finished our dinner. I didn't tell Beatrix how I made the polenta and she immediately asked me why the polenta is less firm and sticky as usual. She liked it very much, though.

But now I have to admit that a certain "fluffiness" (actually, we would call that something like "looseness" in German. Fluffy seems to be an expression going too far) only the first visual impression when taking out the first spoon. Well, at least for me. But it has definitely some stickiness, more than I believed to remeber, but not the firmness of a stirred one, I think.

cakewalk: "In the meantime I like it, but I don't quite get what people think is so great about it."

Don't worry. It was really a poor people's dish for decades. Some friends of mine outright refuse to eat this "hen's feed".

[Mottmott]

this is a very good no-stir polenta that i learned from paula wolfert (hi paula!). many years ago i did a series of tests and this was the only shortcut that offered a really deep, toasted flavor.

2 quarts water

2 teaspoons salt

2 cups coarse-ground cornmeal

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons minced parsley

Combine water, salt, cornmeal and butter in 3- to 4-quart oven-proof saucepan. Bake at 350 degrees 1 hour 20 minutes. Stir polenta and bake 10 more minutes. Remove from oven and set aside 5 minutes to rest before serving.

←

Perfect timing! Tis the season to braise. Russ, thanks for calling Paula's off-the-polenta-box "old paesan's mother's" method to our attention.

I made a half batch in the oven in a small covered LeCreuset casserole; it turned out just fine. I neglected to add the butter til I took it out of the oven when I also added a bunch of parmegiano. The ease of this preparation will make polenta more frequent at my house.

[russ parsons]

But now I have to admit that a certain "fluffiness" (actually, we would call that something like "looseness" in German. Fluffy seems to be an expression going too far) only the first visual impression when taking out the first spoon. Well, at least for me. But it  has definitely some stickiness,  more than I believed to remeber, but not the firmness of a stirred one, I think.

←

yes, that sounds right. looseness is definitely a better description, and i think you're probably right. i do remember that when i made polenta last weekend for the first time in a long time (stove-top, stirring method), it really struck me how thick and sticky it was ... the proverbial "spoon standing up in it" thick. it also struck me that it wasn't hard to make or even that time-consuming (especially when i only make it a couple of times a year). so why was i worried about finding a shortcut in the first place?

[fifi]

I dunno... I like your shortcut idea. I have the little Le Creuset in the oven as we speak. I whipped up a cup of "artisan" cornmeal with the quart of water, the Parmesan Reggiano is grated, and I am set for a polenta dinner. We will see how this works out.