Polenta: The Recipe to Learn First
Polenta is coarse cornmeal, water and salt, stirred over low heat until the grains swell and soften into something that holds a spoon upright. It is a dish built to carry other things: butter and cheese on a weeknight, a braise or a pan of mushrooms on a Sunday, slices crisped in a hot pan the next day. This is the pot to learn before any of those, because the method never changes and only the water does.
The recipe was developed on Moretti bramata (shop Moretti bramata), a coarse yellow meal stone-ground with the hull and germ from corn grown on the Bergamo plains in Lombardy. The producer's directions call for two liters of water to the 500 g bag, the meal rained in and whisked, then stirred with a wooden spoon for 30 to 45 minutes. The recipe below halves that and adds two things the directions leave to the cook: how to steer the texture, and what changes at a mile high.
Soft tonight, firm tomorrow
The producer's proportion works out to four parts water to one part meal by weight. That makes a thick polenta that sets firm enough to slice once it cools. A little extra hot water from the kettle loosens it for serving soft, so one pot does two jobs: half served soft tonight, the other half poured into an oiled dish to set overnight for slicing. The quantities below are for 250 g of meal.
| Target | Total water for 250 g | What it does | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firm | 1 liter, the producer's ratio | Pours thick from the pot and sets sliceable as it cools | The board, grilling, pan-frying the next day |
| Soft | 1 liter, plus 250 ml hot water stirred in at the end | Slumps in the bowl and stays spoonable longer | Butter and cheese, mushrooms, a braise over the top |
| Loose | 1 liter, plus up to 500 ml hot water | Almost pourable, like a thick soup | A shallow bowl with a ragù or gorgonzola melted in |
Ingredients, for four
- 250 g (about 9 oz) coarse polenta (bramata), not instant; half a 500 g bag
- 1 liter (about 4 1/4 cups) water, plus a full kettle kept hot beside the stove
- 1/2 tablespoon (1 1/2 teaspoons) fine sea salt, half the producer's tablespoon for the full bag; the salting guide covers adjusting for a coarser salt
- 30 g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
- 30 g (about 1 oz) finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano, plus more at the table
- Extra virgin olive oil, for the setting dish and the next day's pan
- Black pepper, optional
Method
- Boil the water. Bring the liter of water to a full boil in the heaviest pot in the kitchen, one with a thick base. Add the salt. Fill the kettle and keep it hot.
- Rain in the polenta. Pour the polenta into the boiling water in a slow, thin stream with one hand while whisking hard with the other. Keep whisking for a minute or two after the last of it goes in, until the pot is smooth, free of lumps and starting to thicken.
- Turn it down. Once the pot is bubbling again, lower the heat to the smallest flame that keeps a lazy blip on the surface. Switch from the whisk to a long wooden spoon.
- Stir steadily for 30 to 45 minutes. Stir often, dragging the spoon across the whole bottom and around the corners, where polenta catches first. Between stirs, set the lid ajar to slow evaporation. If the pot stiffens before the grains are cooked, stir in hot water from the kettle, a splash at a time.
- Taste for doneness. Cool a spoonful and eat it. It is ready when the grains are tender all the way through, with no raw, gritty corn taste, and the polenta pulls away from the sides of the pot as it is stirred. Fully cooked bramata still has a slight bite. That is the point of it.
- Choose the texture. For soft polenta, stir in up to a cup of hot water from the kettle until it slumps from the spoon, then take the pot off the heat and beat in the butter and Parmigiano. For firm polenta, add no more water.
- Serve or set. Spoon soft polenta into warm shallow bowls, or pour it onto a wooden board in the middle of the table, and top it at once, because it firms as it cools. To save some for the next day, pour it into an oiled dish or sheet pan about an inch deep, smooth the top, cool, cover and refrigerate.
In Denver, and higher
Colorado State University Extension gives the boiling point of water as 212°F at sea level and 203°F at 5,000 feet, and lower still up the mountains: 198°F at 7,500 feet and 193°F at 10,000. The consequence, in Extension's words, is that foods prepared by boiling or simmering cook at a lower temperature at high elevation and so need a longer cooking time. High elevations are also prone to low humidity, which makes moisture evaporate faster during cooking, and Extension notes that covering food helps hold it in.
For the polenta pot, that means three changes. Plan on the long end of the producer's 30 to 45 minutes, and let the taste test, not the clock, decide when it is done. Keep the lid ajar between stirs. Keep the kettle hot, because a Denver pot will likely want more water than a sea-level recipe card suggests. The cooking at altitude guide works through the same arithmetic for pasta, beans and baking.
Why it went wrong
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Lumps | The meal went in too fast, or the water was not at a full boil | Rain it in slowly while whisking hard; press any lumps that remain against the side of the pot with the spoon |
| Gritty, raw corn taste | Undercooked | Keep cooking, adding hot water as needed; at altitude it takes longer |
| Scorched on the bottom | Heat too high, a thin pot, or the corners went unstirred | Lowest flame, heaviest pot, spoon along the whole base; leave the scorched layer in the pot rather than stirring it through |
| Set solid in the bowl | The firm ratio served as soft, or it sat too long | Beat in hot water just before serving; warm the bowls |
| Spits and splatters | Heat too high for a thick pot | Turn it down until the surface only blips; use a long spoon and keep the lid ajar |
| Bland | Too little salt in the water | Salt the water at the start so it seasons every grain; butter and cheese at the end will not make up for it |
The next day
Firm polenta turns out of the dish in one block. Cut it into slabs or fingers about an inch thick and pat them dry. Fry them in a film of olive oil in a hot heavy pan, turning once, until crisp and golden, or brush them with oil and lay them on a hot grill pan. The outside crackles and the inside goes soft again. Those slices are the reason to cook the whole bag while the pot is out.
What goes on top
Mushrooms. Dried porcini are the fastest way from a bag to a Sunday plate. Soak a handful, chop them, and cook them down in butter with their strained soaking liquid. The dried mushrooms guide explains the soak, and the Pantry Kitchen recipe Polenta with Mushrooms is the full version. A braise or ragù spooned over soft polenta makes it a main course. Gorgonzola stirred into loose polenta off the heat melts into a sauce of its own. Butter and sage, the butter browned in a small pan with a few leaves, is the next simplest finish after plain Parmigiano.
Doubling. The full 500 g bag with two liters of water, as the producer writes it, feeds eight soft, or four soft plus a dish to set. Use a bigger heavy pot and expect the timing to run toward the long end.
The rest of the shelf. Polenta: The Complete Guide covers grinds and the difference between bramata and fine meal. The polenta buying guide covers what the label says, and the storage answers piece covers how an open bag keeps. Risotto is the other stirred pot worth learning next, and the risotto rice guide covers the grains. Moretti bramata is carried at theambrosianpantry.com and at the shop at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver.
Sources & Further Reading
- Colorado State University Extension: High Elevation Food Preparation Guide
- Food Smart Colorado, Colorado State University: High Elevation Food Preparation Guide
- Manicaretti Imports: Moretti Bramata, Coarse Yellow Polenta, cooking instructions
- Manicaretti Imports: Molini Riuniti Moretti, producer profile
- The Pantry Dispatch: Cooking at Altitude
