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Polenta is a dish made from cornmeal that is boiled into a thick, porridge-like consistency. You can serve hot scoops of it on a plate, or let it cool till it hardens, then slice it and recook it in baked dishes or by frying.

In the north of Italy, Polenta is as much a part of daily living as pasta is in the south. In the Veneto region, they prefer Polenta made out of white corn.

You can make it yourself, or buy it already made in tubes at the supermarket. It can be fiddly to make but the tubes are very expensive compared to the cost of making it yourself from cornmeal and water, and taste a bit of the plastic they are in. You use coarsely-ground cornmeal that is more like sand, rather than the really fine stuff that is more like flour.

Here are the standard proportions for making enough Polenta for 4 people.

2 cups (1 pound / 450g) of cornmeal
4 cups (32 oz /50 ml) of boiling water
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Cooking Tips
To make Polenta (exact recipes vary), you boil water and add the cornmeal in a slow stream, and then stir constantly for half an hour. After that, it will stick like crazy to the pot and the spoon, and you get a few scoops of Polenta to use, with the rest glued to the pot. You end up in tears, and on the phone calling for a pizza.

Or, you can make it in a way that will make purists hopping mad. But you will end up making Polenta far more often.

Use a non-stick pot and a vinyl whisk that won't scratch the non-stick pan. Don't even try making it in a non-stick pot. It's just not worth the grief.

Get a separate pot (doesn't need to be a non-stick one) going with boiling water. This pot of water is going to become the bottom of a "double-boiler" to cook the Polenta with. If you have a double-boiler set whose top pot is non-stick, great. In lieu of a pot of boiling water, you can use one of those metal trivet-y things that go on top of stove burners to fake the bottom of a double-boiler. In the non-stick pot, bring the right amount of water for your Polenta to a boil along with the salt. Add the cornmeal in a slow stream stirring with the vinyl whisk. When it's all in, cover the non-stick pot, place this on top of whatever you are using as the "bottom" of the double-boiler, and let simmer for 45 minutes. Just give it a stir every so often. Pour yourself a drink in the meantime.

If you want stiff Polenta to slice up for other uses, pour the cooked Polenta in a buttered loaf pan and set it in the fridge till it is hard. Then tip it over onto a sheet of waxed paper on a cutting board, and cut it either with a good serrated bread knife, or with unflavoured dental floss (seriously -- don't use the minty stuff). Both will work to get you clean slices that don't all crumble on you.

You can buy Polenta making machines that do all the work for you, but it's almost certainly not worth it unless you plan to make Polenta every day of your life. Think of all the single-use tools already huddling in your cupboards. If you can't assemble the stuff for the non-stick double-boiler idea above (and for heaven sakes don't buy any of those bits just for making Polenta once or twice), then just get yourself a tube of it from the grocery store.

Substitutes
For the Polenta meal, you can substitute coarsely ground yellow cornmeal, or hominy grits, or try using millet or buckwheat, as people used to do before the introduction of corn into Italy.

Equivalents
1 cup = 6 oz / 175g

Storage
You can make up a whole bunch of Polenta slices, wrap each in plastic wrap, and freeze for up to a year.

History
Italy of course didn't have corn much before the 1700s, it being a New World food, and their needing time to trust it and figure out how to grow it.

Before that, yellow Polentas were made from millet, and grey Polentas made from buckwheat. Chestnut flour would also be used. The substitution of these items for corn led, unfortunately, to outbreaks of pellagra (see corn).

The Romans made "pulmentum" out of barley, millet, bucket or ground chick peas, depending on the recipe.

Also called:

See Also:

Cornmeal, Hasty Pudding, Nsima, Polenta Taragna

Other entries for:

Porridge
Cream of Wheat, Hasty Pudding, Mamaliga, Nsima, Pease Porridge, Polenta Taragna, Polenta, Sour Cream Porridge, Sowans, Tartan-Purry, Uppuma, Wheatena, Zenzai

Other entries for:

Savoury Dishes
Alfredo Sauce, Béaltaine Caudle, Boiled Dinners, Bouchées à la Bénédictine, Bouchées à la Périgourdine, Chop Suey, Crappit Heids, Curry, Darioles, Favetta, Fondue, French Fries, Koromo, Pancakes, Pies & Tarts, Pizza, Relish Trays, Sandwiches, Soups, Spring Rolls, Steak Tartare, Sushi, Tenkas, Teriyaki, Timbales, TV Dinners, Yakimono, Zakuska

Other entries for: Dishes

Desserts, Dumplings, Salads

Related Recipes

Blueberry Polenta Cake, Lemon Rosemary Cake, Polenta, Polenta with Raisins and Maple Syrup, Spiced Polenta, Sweetcorn and Onion Polenta