Basic Polenta
- Ready In:
- 40mins
- Ingredients:
- 5
- Serves:
-
4
ingredients
- 6 cups water
- 1⁄2 teaspoon table salt
- 1 1⁄2 cups cornmeal, medium-grind, preferably stone-ground
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into large chunks
- 1⁄4 teaspoon ground black pepper
directions
- Bring the water to a rolling boil in a heavy-bottomed 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat.
- Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting, add 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and pour the cornmeal into the water in a very slow stream from a measuring cup, all the while whisking in a circular motion to prevent lumps.
- Cover and cook, vigorously stirring the polenta with a wooden spoon for about 10 seconds once every 5 minutes and making sure to scrape clean the bottom and corners of the pot, until the polenta has lost its raw cornmeal taste and becomes soft and smooth, about 30 minutes.
- Stir in the butter, season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately.
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
I am a web producer and copy editor at an online newspaper.
Many of my favorite foods are down-home Southern comfort food like my grandmother and mother made, but I also live in an ethnically diverse area and have been able to learn a lot about different styles of cooking. I especially like Asian, Mediterranean and Indian food.
I'm working on learning to cook Indian food and I'm discovering that, like most traditional cuisines, it involves a lot of long complicated processes and a lot of intuition and background knowledge on the part of the cook. Hope I can begin to grasp some of that knowledge eventually.