Polenta?

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icimani
icimani Posts: 1,454 Member
in Food and Nutrition
What is it?

and what can you do with it?

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  • LoraleiDean
    LoraleiDean Posts: 100
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    Oh Yum!
    It's cornmeal that you boil in water and add things like cheese to make it all creamy and fabulous.
    You can eat it warm, or cool it and cut wedges out, or you can even fry those wedges to make it crispy AND creamy.
    Try it, you'll love it!
  • nashsheri33
    nashsheri33 Posts: 225 Member
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    polenta is corn meal, more finely ground than grits. also more expensive, because it's a lot trendier than grits. polenta is usually yellow, but you can find white too.

    you just cook it in boiling water, stir it a lot, and season it however you like. that's the basic recipe. you can cook it in chicken broth and/or milk, add cheese, garlic, onions. mushrooms and swiss is good. tomato and goat cheese. re are lots of recipes on the internet.

    you can sprinkle it in soup to make the soup thicker.

    sometimes you can find it already cooked, formed into logs. then you just slice it, and heat it in a pan coated with a little oil. or use it for a base for roasted vegetables.

    that's about all i've ever done with it.
  • Elliehmltn
    Elliehmltn Posts: 254 Member
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    Buy yellow corn meal in the baking/flour aisle. It's cheap. Mix 1/4 cup with 1/4 cup water to make a slurry. Boil a cup of water (you'll probably want to salt it. You can use bouillon instead of salt, and add garlic powder, basil, oregano, whatever strikes your fancy.) Slowly stir in the slurry and keep stirring. After it goes plop-plop for a few seconds, it's ready. Let stand a couple minutes, then serve with butter or gravy like mashed potatoes or tomato sauce to make it genuine polenta, or pour it into a greased loaf pan and chill overnight, then next day slice and fry and serve with butter and syrup and forget about logging for the rest of the day. Don't use garlic, basil, oregano, or bouillon if you're going to be doing the syrup thing.... just cook it in salted water. You can get 2 or 3 meals out of a double batch of this. I took cornmeal with me on the Appalachian Trail and cooked it as above adding those canned French fried onions and bacon bits. Yummy.

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