Polenta recipes should only be made with the more authentic Italian polenta grain.
Instant polenta can shorten the cooking time to less than 10 minutes,
but it is not as tasty or as healthy as the slower cooking heirloom polenta.
What is Polenta? The term polenta actually refers to the traditional Italian preparation of cooking a variety of coarsely ground grains or starches into a porridge.
However today, polenta is commonly known as ground cornmeal that is coarse to finely ground in texture.
Polenta is boiled with a liquid to create a porridge like dish. And you can make your polenta recipes creamier by adding in butter, milk, or cheese.
You can use the extra creamy polenta with many types of vegetables, meats, and sauces to create wonderful meals.
Polenta can make a great replacement for pasta, rice, or even mashed potatoes.
Your polenta should be made from a corn that at one time culturally grew in Italy.
Authentic polenta is an heirloom variety that produces a porridge that is deep in color and in flavor.
It comes from a variety of corn called otto file in Italian.
You can also use a medium or coarse ground cornmeal, but it won't be the same as the otto file heirloom variety.
This authentic corn is milled differently than the other types of cornmeal. This yields a different and more consistent grind that produces a more uniform polenta dish.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Eat your polenta as a creamy porridge topped with a pat of butter.
Or top your polenta with a ragout, sauteed mushrooms, roasted vegetables, or grilled fish.
Put the creamy polenta in a shallow rectangular dish and put it in the refrigerator to harden for a few hours.
This will allow you to cut the polenta into many different shapes.
Then you can grill, fry, stack, or bake the polenta.
Polenta recipes can include french-fry-shaped polenta brushed with oil and baked to make polenta french fries.
Or use round polenta cakes to replace the English muffin in an Eggs Benedict recipe.
The ideas are almost endless for what you can do with chilled polenta recipes.