Ingredient

Polenta

Polenta is coarsely ground maize cooked in liquid until the starch swells and thickens. Eaten soft it is a savoury porridge; left to set it becomes firm enough to slice and fry. It is northern Italian peasant food that became restaurant food, and it is both cheap and genuinely good when it is made properly.

The kinds you can buy

Traditional coarse polenta

Takes thirty to forty-five minutes of cooking and regular stirring. Best texture and flavour, with a distinct grain to it.

Quick-cook polenta

Partially pre-cooked. Ready in five to ten minutes. A genuine convenience with a slight loss of texture and depth. Perfectly good.

Instant polenta

Ready in a minute or two. Smoother, blander, and the furthest from the original. Fine as a base for something strongly flavoured.

Fine cornmeal

Ground finer. Makes a smoother, softer polenta and is what many cornbread recipes want.

Grits

The American Southern relative, made from a different variety of maize and usually treated with alkali. Related, not identical, and cooked much the same way.

Bramata and fioretto

Italian grades — bramata is coarse, fioretto finer. Worth looking for if you want the traditional texture.

Making soft polenta

The stirring reputation is exaggerated; the ratio and the seasoning are what matter.

1. Bring liquid to a simmer — water, stock, milk, or a mixture. Stock or half-milk makes a far better polenta than water alone. Salt it properly.
2. Rain the polenta in slowly in a thin stream while whisking. Tipping it in all at once is what makes lumps.
3. Once it thickens, switch to a wooden spoon and turn the heat right down.
4. Cook it for as long as the packet says, stirring regularly rather than constantly. It should plop rather than bubble, and it spits, so a lid tilted over the pan is sensible.
5. When it is done it comes away from the sides of the pan and the grain no longer feels gritty on the tongue. Taste for this — undercooked polenta is chalky and it is the commonest fault.
6. Beat in butter, olive oil, cheese or cream off the heat. This is not optional if you want it to taste of anything — polenta is bland by nature and it takes a lot of enrichment and salt.
7. Serve it immediately. It sets as it cools, and reheating needs extra liquid whisked in.

Setting and frying it

The second life of a batch, and arguably the better one.

• Pour the hot polenta into an oiled tray, a couple of centimetres deep, and level the surface.
• Cool it completely, in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight. It sets firm enough to cut cleanly.
• Cut it into slabs, chips, triangles or rounds.
• Fry, grill or roast them in a good amount of hot oil or butter until crisp and golden on both sides. High heat and patience — moving them too soon tears the crust.
• Serve with something wet and savoury — a ragù, mushrooms, gorgonzola, a braise. Fried polenta needs a sauce.
• Or grill it over charcoal, which is traditional in northern Italy and very good.
• Leftover soft polenta sets by itself in whatever container you put it in, which is the origin of the whole technique.

What goes with it

• Butter and parmesan — the baseline, and the thing to get right before anything else.
• Gorgonzola or taleggio, melted in at the end.
• Mushrooms, particularly with garlic and thyme, which is the classic pairing.
• A slow braise or ragù — beef, oxtail, sausage, wild boar. Soft polenta under a wet stew is what it is for.
• Braised greens — cavolo nero, chard.
• Roasted tomatoes and anchovy.
• Sausages and onions.
• Anything salty, because polenta itself is not.

Common questions