Cooking polenta at home. Step by step recipe for classic polenta

How to cook polenta? How to submit it? How to make a rich snack out of "poor" porridge? All these culinary questions will be considered in this article.
Recipe content:

Among the numerous Italian culinary treasures, many dishes are in the public domain: pizza, risotto, pasta, polenta. This is the most sonorous "roll call" of Italian dishes. In this famous list, polenta occupies a special place, which has turned from porridge for the poor into a gourmet dish. In gourmet restaurants, the dish is valued at a considerable amount. However, this dish is both democratic and rich at the same time.

Cooking polenta: subtleties and secrets

• For soft polenta, use 3 parts water to 1 part cornmeal.
• Cook the dish over low heat for 40-50 minutes, stirring constantly.
• The "historical" technology involves the use of copper utensils for cooking polenta.
• The readiness of porridge is determined when the mass lags behind the walls of the pan. Then it's time to remove it from the stove.
• Cornmeal can be white or yellow. But more often yellow is used.
• It is desirable to give preference to coarse flour, then the dish will be more healthy. From fine grinding, porridge will come out more tender with a creamy texture.
• To serve, pour the polenta into a bowl dipped in cold water. Leave to stand for 10 minutes, then spread on a plate.
• The remaining polenta is kept in the refrigerator under plastic wrap for up to 3 days.
• If the porridge is needed thick, for frying, then it is laid out on a greased baking sheet 1.2 cm thick and left until thickened or baked at 175 ° C until it warms up.
• Cut thick polenta into squares with a pizza cutter or an ordinary kitchen knife.
• Before cutting, it is kept for some time in hot water.
• To avoid lumps, the flour is slowly poured into boiling water, stirring constantly. Another easy way to avoid lumps is to pour the cornmeal into cold water, beat quickly, and then bring to a boil.
• If the bottom of the polenta is burnt, then it is transferred to another pan, without scraping off the burnt bottom, and continue cooking. At the same time, it is often stirred.
• Remove the lumpy polenta from the stove, knead the lumps, beat vigorously with a mixer.
• Soft warm polenta can replace bread during meals.

• Calorie content per 100 g - 87 kcal.
• Servings - 4
• Cooking time - 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• Water - 3 l
• Corn grits - 1 tbsp.
• Salt - to taste

Step by step preparation:

1. Boil salted water in a saucepan.
2. Gradually pour in the corn grits, while constantly stirring the mass.
3. After boiling again, when bubbles form, reduce the heat.
4. Continue to cook the cereal for 30 minutes, stirring constantly. If necessary, add water or sprinkle porridge.
5. When the mass lags behind the walls of the pan, then the dish is ready.
6. Transfer the mass to a tray, give the desired shape and leave to cool.

Ingredients:

• Yellow cornmeal - 0.5 tbsp.
• Drinking water - 1.5 tbsp.
• Salt - to taste

1. Boil water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan so that the porridge does not burn.
2. Gradually add the cornmeal, stirring it with a wooden spoon.
3. Salt and stir.
4. Bring the mixture back to a boil, stirring constantly.
5. Reduce the heat to the minimum and cook the food for 30 minutes, remembering to stir.
6. When the porridge begins to lag behind the walls, freely separate from the bottom and form a crust on the walls of the pan, it means that it is ready. The consistency of the polenta should be smooth and creamy.
7. Lay the Italian delicacy on a cutting board, shape into a rectangular shape and refrigerate.

Corn porridge

Easy recipe for polenta with cheese. How to choose ingredients, the subtleties of cooking polenta. Other cooking options for corn porridge.

40 min

170 kcal

5/5 (2)

Sometimes it seems to me that the most famous examples of Italian cuisine can be called real treasures that cannot be replaced by anything. In my personal register of the most beloved and adored dishes by my family, the Italian corn grits polenta recipe takes pride of place.

The most interesting thing about this delicacy is that it has evolved from a simple food for the poorest to an exquisite, delicate and airy dish of the nobility, which is now served in high-end restaurants at a price that just makes my eyes pop.

Did you know? Corn polenta was both bread, porridge and pasta of the Italians, it was never cooked with vegetables, as is done today by those who do not have enough cheese and milk in porridge. This dish was indispensable for the peasants of the northern regions of Italy, whom their southern relatives arrogantly called polentoni, which translates as "polenta eaters". As a result, literally every region of this sunny country has made its own adjustments to the polenta recipe, so if you have a risky temperament, start experimenting at your own peril and risk.

Kitchen appliances

How to make delicious polenta at home? Let's start with preparing the necessary appliances and utensils for this easy task. Take a pan with a non-stick coating with a volume of 3 liters or more, two or three deep bowls with a volume of 550 to 900 ml, a piece of gauze about 35 cm long, teaspoons, a cutting board, kitchen potholders, tablespoons, measuring utensils or kitchen scales, several linen towels or cotton, a colander and the sharpest knife in the kitchen.

In addition to the above, you will definitely need a blender or food processor with a chopper to speed up the cooking time of polenta and make it easier for you to prepare the ingredients.

Required Ingredients

The basis

Additionally

• 50 g fresh herbs (basil, dill, parsley);
• 3 - 4 cloves of garlic.

Did you know? I strongly advise everyone to add various interesting ingredients to the standard polenta recipe that will positively affect not only the structure, but also the aroma and color of the finished dish, even if it is consumed completely ice-cold, only from the refrigerator. For example, my mother and grandmother often poured sour dried fruits steamed in boiling water, a little dried ginger, ground rosemary, basil or dried sweet bell pepper into the polenta being prepared. In addition, for the perfect implementation of the recipe, choose the highest grade corn grits, which have a fresh golden color, if possible. The use of ground groats can adversely affect the taste and smell of the finished polenta.

Cooking sequence

Preparation

Important! Try to gradually pour the cheese so that it does not grab into one lump. In order to accurately avoid this trouble, add the component by a tablespoon and do not stop stirring the bubbling workpiece for a second. If the mass begins to thicken strongly in the process, then you did everything 100% correctly.

Cooking

Did you know? Try not to open the lid of the oven during the main phase of making the stuffed corn pudding, as it is very important that the product bake quickly and this process is not interrupted by fresh and cold air. Otherwise, the porridge may burn, and the filling will not bake.

Made! Now you know how to cook an excellent, very appetizing and fragrant palenta., in which you can add various fillings for variety and improve the taste. From now on, you can delight your loved ones and guests with this amazingly beautiful and healthy dish at any time.

To properly serve this dish, it is not necessary to put a whole pallet on the table - just cut the porridge into portions and arrange on small plates. Do not forget to decorate this product with fresh herbs, cheese or berries and put another small piece of butter on top. Eat palenta without bread, washed down with cranberry juice, fruit drink, fruit compote or coffee.

Watch the video carefully

See how to turn ordinary corn porridge into a real culinary masterpiece - palenta. All the secrets of making this most useful and fragrant dish in one video.

Finally, it would be wrong not to mention to you other excellent recipes for making delicious products from amazingly healthy corn grits. For example, be sure to try the surprisingly tender and mouth-watering one in my ranking of simple dishes - a delicious, airy and tender dish suitable for all family members.

In addition, do not pass by the amazingly appetizing, because you have definitely never tried such an interesting version of this amazing dish.

In addition, do not miss the exceptionally unusual, but so delicious. At the very end, I can not recommend to the owners of modern kitchen appliances

Step 1: Boil water.

Step 2: Cook the polenta.

Step 3: Serve the polenta.

If you want to add vegetables, seafood or chicken meat to polenta, then these ingredients must be prepared in advance, for example, by frying them in a separate frying pan, and then adding them to the porridge.

If you do not add butter to the porridge, then you will have a lean vegetarian dish. But do not forget that polenta is a very satisfying and high-calorie dish, like many other dishes made from cereals.

The frozen polenta can be chopped and fried in olive oil or lightly baked in the oven. Try it, it will give the finished dish a whole new taste.

Try also at the end of cooking to add a little grated cheese to the polenta and mix everything vigorously.

Looking for a classic polenta recipe? Well, I think to myself: if you came here, it means that you are interested, and it is the classics, and not what is written on your package. So, my dears, I have to disappoint you. That's right from the start. Look at this photo. Do you have such a boiler? Not? If not, then the classic polenta will not work for you, no matter what recipe you cook it with. Because classic polenta is made in a thick-walled copper cauldron over a wood fire. Basta! (By the way, "basta" is Italian.)

On a wood fire - this does not mean "at the stake." In Italy, until the end of the twentieth century, wood-burning stoves were very actively used in the villages. And not only in Italy, by the way. If you, say, have a wood-burning stove in your country house, then you have a chance to cook classic polenta. The only catch is a thick-walled copper boiler. Both wall thickness and material are very important. Copper is the most heat-conducting material of all used for cookware. It heats up very quickly and cools down just as quickly when you take the pan off the heat. Well, the thickness of the boiler allows you to use it in high heat, at those temperatures at which modern thin copper utensils with alloying simply deform and change color. In short, a pure copper old thick-walled boiler - THIS THING !!! But they are no longer produced. Ours is hereditary. But I don’t have a wood stove, so even I can’t show you the recipe for classic polenta, with the right boiler. I didn’t scare you away yet, will you continue to read?

Polenta is an old recipe, but not that of hoary antiquity. Corn came to Europe after the discovery of America, and in warm countries it seriously replaced other, more whimsical and less productive cereal crops. In Italy, accordingly, polenta replaced the pulse: a porridge made from ground spelled, millet, barley and spelt, known since ancient Rome. In short, the cereal has changed, but the cooking recipe has remained. So the technology for making polenta is a hell of a lot of years old, and in our refined conditions of the 21st century, it is very difficult to make it in its classic form.

I also tried the classic polenta - exactly once in my life, my father-in-law cooked when my parents came to get acquainted. The father-in-law's name was Giuseppe Manyago, he was from South Tyrol, whose inhabitants are called by the Italians from the plains: "polenta eaters." In short, I know the recipe, I can tell it, but I can’t cook it, because it’s simply impossible to install a domed copper boiler on a ceramic electric stove! I cook polenta in a flat-bottomed cast-iron cauldron adapted for electric stoves. Will suit you?

The main secret of the classic polenta, which distinguishes it from the product that has replaced it now, is the use of two types of cereals, with different grinding calibers. In Italy, you should take the coarsest and medium grinding, but, apart from the mills there, I have not seen this anywhere else, so in Germany I make it from corn grits and cornmeal. Using two gauges gives a very different consistency to the dish than with smooth flour. But cooking requires a bit more complex calculations than from one type of flour.

Ingredients for polenta are not counted in grams and milliliters, but in volumes. I counted in grams for this recipe, but this is not the traditional approach. It is necessary to explain how this was done normally. You can't imagine an Italian man at a wood-burning stove, measuring out flour and water with a scale and a measuring cup, can you?

The ratio of cereals for classic polenta, our Giuseppe used the following: for 1 measure of coarse grinding - 2 measures of fine grinding. And water - 4 times more than corn grits in the aggregate. That is, 12 cups of water, 2 cups of fine-grained cornmeal, and 1 cup of coarse-grained cornmeal. Cup, bowl, mug - it doesn't matter anymore, you know? Historically, there was a large cauldron, and there was some kind of small container with which water and cereals were measured.

The water is brought to a boil and salted.

First, a bowl of large-caliber cereals is poured into boiling salted water. Boil for approximately 5 minutes.

And after that, 2 cups of cornmeal are poured in a thin stream with very thorough stirring. When they hit the water, the polenta starts to spit wildly, you can seriously burn yourself. Much worse than just boiling water, because it is a sticky substance. Therefore, somewhere for a minute or two, it makes sense to close the cauldron with polenta with a lid.

When you hear that the spitting has stopped, the lid can be removed. Then there are two cooking strategies: on low heat with almost no stirring (it turns out a homogeneous polenta) and on high heat with stirring (it turns out dense, with a coarser and more heterogeneous structure). The first is easier to prepare and more beautiful, the second is more laborious, but, according to our family, it is tastier.

Today is just the birthday of the senior representative of our branch of the Manyago family, and the festive dinner was held with us, so I cooked exactly their favorite option: laborious and scary in appearance. In short, what you will see from me is not a cooking defect, but a special honor for the birthday man. Nobody forbids you to leave the lid closed, reduce the heat to low and simmer the polenta for about half an hour.

I have to stir the polenta from the edge to the center and in a circle for 20 minutes over high heat. Those. It turns out that I, in fact, whip it. Parallel stripes on the walls are traces of a scapula. From top to bottom and to the center, the next movement is a little to the right, and so on, all the time in a circle. A strong fire allows layers of a denser "skin" to form, which I constantly mix into the liquid inner layers. Stirring stops when the polenta is really moved away from the boiler wall in this way. It should form into a single dense lump. The fact that it is heterogeneous is considered by us to be just a special chic. I will cook a homogeneous liquid polenta in a saucepan.

After thickening, the surface of the polenta is compacted so that it becomes more or less even, and the polenta is kept on medium heat for another 5 minutes.

Once off the stove, let the polenta cool for 5-10 minutes. It makes sense to pierce its edges with a spatula to the very bottom so that they easily separate from the walls. Next, a round serving board is pressed against the polenta. By no means a plate! If you want classics, then you need an absolutely flat wooden surface, there are simply no such plates. I'll show you why a little further.

The pot of polenta is turned over and the polenta is planted on a wooden board. I can clearly see here that a crust has separated from the bottom of the boiler. So, it will have to be torn off and thrown away, because the boiler is cast iron and there is black frying on the crust, and the crust itself is very hard and slightly bitter. But you can even eat a crust from a copper boiler, it is different. But it is not served with the polenta that is on the board, it is torn off and used for breakfast with milk. Well, at least our Giuseppe did.

Should it be brought to a crisp? Classic polenta - yes, you definitely should. This gives it a special aroma - along with the smell of smoke from a wood-burning stove.

Now look carefully. This is a serving of classic polenta, that’s right, condo - there is no condo: on a wooden board and with a string. The rope should either be tied to two sticks, or have loops at its ends into which you can stick your fingers. A flat, wide spoon is also desirable - to shift the layers of polenta onto the eaters' plates.

The fact is that the classic polenta is cut not with a knife, but with a thread, and it is cut from the bottom up, and not from the top down. The thread is brought under the polenta from below to the thickness of the piece, stretched and pulled up at both ends. That's why you need a board, not a plate: plates always have sides that interfere with the classic cutting method.

In general, excuse me for such a recipe with the volume of "War and Peace", but the classic polenta with all the bells and whistles is a dish that requires a lot of explanation. Because of the bells and whistles and because all the utensils for its preparation in modern kitchens are simply not used. For example, I only make this polenta for family holidays. It's a bit of a show. But this is tradition. Our son is just as interested in cutting polenta with a string as his father and uncles were interested in doing as a child.

Maybe cook all the same polenta according to the recipe that you have on the package? It's definitely easier.

Polenta is a versatile cornmeal dish that can be enjoyed either chilled or warm.

Polenta is considered a healthy food because it has some health benefits. In this article, we'll take a look at eight benefits of polenta, as well as how to prepare it.

What is polenta?

Traditionally, polenta has been associated with Italy and has been used in various Italian dishes. However, it is now also commonly eaten in many parts of the world, including various countries in Europe and the United States.

Polenta is made from yellow corn that has been ground into cornmeal. Depending on the grind, polenta can be harder or softer. After grinding, cornmeal is boiled in water, milk or broth. The typical ratio for making polenta is 4 cups liquid to 1 cup cornmeal. When cooked, it acquires the consistency of a thick porridge.

The traditional way to make polenta involves stirring in a pot for about 40-50 minutes. which may take a long time. For those looking for easier ways to prepare, polenta is sold as an instant or instant porridge. This polenta is pre-cooked and dried before being sold, so it can be cooked in 5-10 minutes.

Fully cooked polenta is also available at grocery stores. It is usually sold in oblong packages, as in its solid form it can be cut and then fried or baked.

Nutritional Benefits of Polenta

Some varieties of polenta are fortified for added nutritional value. Cooking polenta with milk instead of water can add valuable nutrients.

Source of fiber and protein

Polenta contains both protein and fiber, so it quickly saturates the body. Fiber helps keep the digestive system working properly, promotes healthy gut bacteria, and prevents constipation.

Gluten Free

For people who eat gluten-free meals, polenta is a good option. Many fiber sources such as wheat, couscous and rye

Polenta is generally safe for people with or hypersensitivity to gluten. However, it is worth checking the composition of the product, as it may contain additional ingredients.

Rich in complex carbohydrates

Polenta is an excellent source of complex carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates break down quickly and can cause blood sugar levels to rise. In addition, simple carbohydrates do not contain many nutrients. Cakes, cookies, and white bread are prime examples of simple carbohydrates.

The complex carbohydrates in polenta break down slowly, which means the digestion process will take longer. This helps keep blood sugar at the same level.

Contains vitamin A

Although it does not contain high amounts of vitamins and minerals, polenta does contain vitamin A. According to the National Institutes of Health, Vitamin A is essential for the proper functioning of the kidneys, lungs and heart.

Source of carotenoids

Polenta is made from ground corn, which is a good source of carotenoids. Carotenoids are believed to reduce the risk of a number of diseases, such as some types of eye diseases and several types of cancer.

low fat

Polenta is low in fat, so it can be part of a healthy, balanced diet. For those who want to reduce their intake of saturated fats, it is better to cook polenta with water, vegetable milk or broth instead of animal milk, and do not add cheese or butter.

Contains essential minerals

Iron, magnesium and zinc are the most essential minerals. Despite the fact that polenta does not contain so many of these useful elements, they are still there, so the dish will fit perfectly into any diet.

low calorie

Polenta is low calorie, like other whole grains that are cooked in water. It provides about 70 calories per 100g cooked serving.

Nutritious, low-calorie whole foods like polenta can be a good choice for people looking to lose or maintain weight.

How to cook polenta?

Polenta has a mild corn flavor, making it a good base for adding herbs, vegetables, or cheese. It can be used as a side dish and eaten with fish or meat.

Although polenta has a porridge-like texture, when cooked, if it is cooled, it will become firm enough to be sliced. Polenta slices can be grilled or baked with a variety of toppings, including cheese or sauces.

Raw polenta can also be used in cakes and breads in place of some flours. Using polenta in baking can add nutritional value and a moist texture to the dish.

Polenta can be eaten during brunch or as a side dish, for example, with cabbage, mushrooms and tomato sauce, or use in place of pizza dough.