Hi Eva, You’re a treasure! This polenta video was long overdue. For many years my polenta always turned out clumpy. My mistake was I had the water at a full boil when pouring in the ground corn; the trick that solved the clumpiness was to have simmering water instead. Thanks for another exceptional video!
Actually, the difference between grits and corn meal is much greater than just the color. True, grits are traditionally white, but they're made from hominy which is corn treated with lime water or lye. The process is called nixtamalization and was known by the Myans. It does several things, including freeing niacin, thus preventing pellagra. Along with ordinary beans, a human can survive on these two foods. And it allows the processed corn to be made into a dough for further processing into things like masa used for making tortillias. Regular cornmeal will not form a dough with the addition of water. Nixtamalization also helps prevent the formation of mold.
Yes. I've read that the explorers who brought maize/corn over did not also bring over the knowledge of nixtamalization. The northerners, who ate polenta much more than the southerners, developed a niacin deficiency that limited their mental abilities. The southerners called the northerners "polentoni," which was a derogatory appellation, as a result. Nowadays, people avoid the deficiency problem by eating it with cheese, or milk, meat sauce, lentils, chickpeas, etc., which provides the necessary amino acids, complementing the polenta.
@@sharonstrickland6421 in the south we eat both but I’d say we use yellow for supper and white for breakfast. You can also find red grits, purple grits, and mixed grits that contains more than one variety, usually white and yellow together.
In my family you had the three stages of polenta: first the freshly made and soft polenta. Then the leftovers were cut into slices and toasted on a plate or on the grill (like bruschetta). The parts that were not toasted were sautéed in a pan with butter and covered with sugar. Also in my town (Mantova) leftover polenta is used to make a "pancake" called "Fiapon". My grandparentes used to told me me how polenta was the food of the poor in the toughest times. For dinner they ate slices which they gave a little flavor by rubbing them on a smoked herring (Cospeton) and they also usually eat polenta for breakfast in the milk.
And the smoked herring was hanging from the ceiling! You can also dip your leftover butter fried polenta in the milk for breakfast. Mantova has a lot of tricks for eating polenta.
Damian, good information, thank you. Do they prepared it from corn kernels? Do they know or knew the process to ground the corn, would they use lime to boil and let it cure the grain?
Polenta was a staple growing up. My family is from Lammari, just outside of Lucca. When my wife and I went to Italy and spent a whole week in Toscana the food just felt so much like home, only better!
Fried Mush is a Southern US analog, where leftover corn grits (or boiled cornmeal) are often left to cool and congeal. It is then sliced, dredged in flour, drenched in beaten egg, pan-fried, and served with maple syrup, honey, molasses, or sorghum syrup.
I had mush for breakfast and to me it was a treat. My family is German and English of Germanic origin. So I'm not sure where my grandma learned how to make it but we had it . So sad things like this are way sided in modern America. Man this brought back memories. I wish my granny were alive today. What a sweet woman.
Thank you for this recipe! My great grandmother was from Reggio Amelia and she never wrote down recipes and her version was like the first recipe. My grandma always wanted polenta that thick, but I didn’t figure it out to make it for her with the right texture. She loved the leftover slices fried crisp in butter with eggs for breakfast. Now I can make it in her honor the correct way. ❤
I’m from the North of Italy and my grandma used to make polenta for the whole family almost every weekend in the winter, at 85 she would stir it for 45-50 minutes non stop (and it gets hard pretty much as soon as it starts absorbing some of the water!) and when it was ready she would always have some in a cup with warm milk as a treat for her hard work. My brother and I loved eating it with granulated sugar or Nutella as a dessert. I feel like my childhood would not have been the same without this dish, it is so comforting to me. Sorry Eva I will never try it with ragù because it feels like betrayal to me lol
Absolutely wonderful!!! I learned a lot about polenta (which I love eating)...Eva - you really should be awarded a doctorate in Italian food and cooking. I am so envious of your knowledge.
Here in Brazil we make all kinds of polenta - we also have many types of grounded corn, so you can make polentas with many different textures. We also have angu. Angu is similar to polenta, but made with a very finely textured cornflour called fubá. Some people add the fubá to the water still cold, mix well and only then take it to the fire to cook, mixing all the time to avoid clumps.
Bergamasco fan reporting: Fontina as a change is approved for the polenta taragna :) Otherwise use an older Taleggio. Firm and strong, it still melts very well in it :)
My Mom a great Italian cook would never use polenta because she lived on it during the depression years and will not cook it to this day ! I do want to try it and will try your recipes.
Similarly, my Mom grew up in a German town in Romania, and she said they had polenta with cheese almost daily. Once they left Europe, she didn’t want to eat it again, and she never made it for us growing up, so I had to discover it on my own. But I really like it! Thanks for this interesting video!
@@fasullodavvero Mia madre ha 94 anni e viveva nella parte povera della città, ma aveva una buona famiglia e mi ha dato una vita fantastica. Ma lei non cucinava la polenta e mi raccontava di mangiarla da piccola essendo povera. Grazie.
I'm Slovenian- American and we make polenta, but it's made from corn flour (not cornmeal, which is too coarse) or buckwheat and it's not a porridge. It's moldable (you can make disks with a cleaned tuna can) and served with things like goulash. 🤷🏻♀️ I eat it plain with some butter, too. And now, it's 3am and I want some!!!
I love polenta, being part native American my people have corn porridge also made from many types of corn. Try some blue corn polenta it should be available where you live.
I don’t know if it’s just in Rome or it is just the “quartiere”, but when we put the meat sauce and the parmigiano on top, we also sprinkle a bit of olive oil!
It reminds me of the Dutch Griesmeelpap. Semolina Durum wheat cooked with milk, sugar, and ground almonds (or almond extract). My wife loves it when I make it.
Back home in Uruguay we eat as much polenta as the italians simply because ,at some point in time, there were as many italians as locals in there. Obviously that historical fact brought a lot of culinary new ideas to a nation that lives mainly on red meat. Fresh pasta (ravioli,cappelletti,tortellini, etc) is purchased in what we call "pasta factories" every sunday, specially in winter, some people use to make them at home, an almost lost custom today. Corn meal is as cheap as rice or dry pasta in there and polenta was always a welcomed variation on the poor's people diet. Generally is served with a heavy pasta sauce on top with chunks of beef and sausage ;any leftover (without the sauce) was served as breakfast with sugar and milk the next morning (sort of a latino version of Corn Flakes if you will). Amazing recipes guys, keep they coming please. Greetings from Toronto.
70 or so years ago, my mom from Sabio Chiese, then living in Buenos Aires, couldn't fin the corn flour thin enough so she used a little of semola. I never could make it to be as soft and to keep the great shape as she did. Yes, used cooper and a long stick. Used a thread attached on the handle of the round wood paleta. She cooked it all the time, with rabbit or chicken, toasted slices, or in the oven or fry pan with butter and cheeses of any kind. And she even mixed with milk and sugar and eggs to make little sweet frying things. I ove polenta terania with the cheese that stretched a mile....delicios. I like the ball filled with the soft cheese that I carried in my hands. My father this thing that bothered him, we would eat polenta and baggette and he said, no bred with polenta.
Romanians have had polenta (we call it mămăligă) as a staple food for centuries, using a different type of grain (buckwheat or millet) prior to corn. I have visited northern Italy recently and discovered that Italian polenta uses a less processed type of corn flour/ground corn, has a more rustic and grain-y taste than ours ; we use a very ”pure” processed maize, few impurities.
Yes, especially in Transilvania, its very common. My fav breakfast was mamaliga filled with cheese, topped with sour cream . The other is polenta balls, filled with cheese then baked. Its in the cookbook of Alexandra Georgescu.
My best friend is Romanian and last year we went to Romania for a week. I absolutely loved the food, we were in the country side in the region near Moldova and everything was so fresh, I ate so much polenta with cheese. And yeah it tastes a bit different than Italian polenta
Grandpa always made the super thick polenta, formed it into a brick, there was a lot of butter involved, mozzarella stirred in and generally some kind of red sauce over it. Unless it was for breakfast, then it was no cheese, sliced, pan fried on both sides, and syrup.
My Father had a special pan and stirring stick that I still use today, he would flip it out of the pan just like a cake and cut it with a string. My family was from a small village outside of Lucca and their food was very simple.
I love learning new things about my Italian culture. My family, from Puglia , never made polenta but as a young adult in New York City I was exposed to it and have come to love it! Thank you for showing us these wonderful variations and yes please more recipes for polenta! Looking forward to the dessert one especially. Thank you again.
Polentona here (Bresciana)! Thank you for this video. I commented some time ago under one of your videos if you'd mention the different types of corn meal that can be found in ordinary American supermarkets and how Eva thinks they compare to polenta (some were saying grits and polenta are the same thing). I used to live in Colorado (many years ago) and only could find corn meal suitable for Mexican dishes. I was wondering whether these days there was more available in your average grocery store.
during winter, my grandfather would cook grits until they were as thick as is shown in this video and spread it onto a plate and place the plate outside in his screened in porch and let it cool....then slice it like a pie and serve it covered with very hot pot roast gravy (no roux or flour added, just the liquid from the meat). It was AMAZING.
Thank you guys for showing us the polenta dishes from the different regions of Italy! I am used to the meat sauce version but can't wait to try the other dishes!!
Feel so lucky to have grown up eating polenta all the time. We always had polenta taragna. We and our family in italy also cut in mashed potatoes sometimes, and sometimes dont add the buckwheat grain. Any kind of soft mild cheese would go in. There are several different kinds of ragus to serve it under, usually small salami meatballs in white milk sauce. When i lived in nyc, i often went to a restaurant where they grilled polenta slices that had green olives sliced inside. Actually very good.
Love it!!! Every couple months we'd all get together and the aunts would make the polenta. Half served with the ragu and the other half would have the cured sausages cut up and fried in extra virgin olive oil and the polenta would get sprinkled with Pecorino on top, amazing! Between this video and all the pictures of the family harvesting the olives right now, I'm getting so hungry hahaha.
We make polenta in Romania as well. And the cold one we cut the next day and fry for a little bit (traditionally on some cast iron plaque). It's amazing that way! Edit: My grandma used to do it very thick but I like it better when it's more runny. The really thick one is the one you cut and fry the next day.
I had wild boar with polenta in a mountain village in Piemonte. It was wonderful! The boar was seasoned with rosemary and juniper berries, and since that time I started making my pot roast that way.
In Uruguay, we usually make polenta with a meat sauce. In my home, it used to be sheep or lamb meat, sausage if available, and panceta (bacon). But in some places here, it is also common to prepare it as a shepard's pie using polenta instead of mashed potatoes and using a meat filling, other times just ham and cheese, and even sauté vegetables like spinach or chard.
My father used to make a very thick and course polenta like you made in this video. After it is finished cooking, he would dish it into a loaf pan and let it cool in the refrigerator, maybe two hours. Then you slice the polenta cake into thick slices, maybe 20 cm (1-1.5 in.). The slices are then fried until golden brown on all sides. They are delicious by themselves or you can dip into unsweetened applesauce with ground cinnamon, or mascarpone with chopped chives and course ground, black pepper, maybe a dash of pepperoncini. Enjoy! PS: Eva, love the new hair color with the highlights. Very flattering to your skin tone.
Romanians eat Mamaliga, well-cooked in a pan, a form of polenta made from corn meal, which also takes a long time to cook while stirring, and has to ‘burp’ (create a large bubble) so you know it’s done. Then that gets cooled in a loaf pan, sliced and anointed with butter, cheese, sour cream, and or meat-based gravy.
This brings back fond memories hiking through the Alps in Valle D'Aosta and stopping at refuges where they routinely served camoscio e polenta. And nice warm-me-up on cold days. Especially when coupled with some vin brulé.
Then, you can still add your toppings as you would normally. I understand tradition ... but I've realized that cooking is an art form ... you can make any dish your own. Just watching you guys cook is a testament this idea.
There is a great landrace corn from Italy that is available in the States called "Floriani". Its a red corn that is yellow inside and milled for use as polenta. Definitely worth seeking out!
My Nonna Antoinetta made it soft (Abbruzzo), my Nonna Rosina (Venezia) cooked it exactly like the first one in your video. I love both, but prefer the firm one. I have never seen the buckwheat polenta or Calabrese style (both look so delicious). I'm learning so much from Eva's cooking.
I loved seeing the different polenta dishes. I was not familiar with any of them. The Taragna version reminded me of something I had my whole childhood and still eat today, Pastina. I'm not sure if its a traditional Italian dish or is it something Italian Americans made up. How I make it, its almost like a carbonara. I take tiny star shaped pastina pasta using 1 cup of boiling water too 1/4 cup of pastina and cook until nearly all the water is gone, in the same bowl I'll eat it out of I put an egg and some parmigiano or Romano cheese lots cause well its cheese, black pepper and mix together until it is creamy. Add the cooked but still wet pasta to the bowl and mix very well and that is pure comfort food for me. Not sure if its traditional but my mom and aunt always fixed it for me as a child. Is Pastina a thing in Italy?
Pastina very well exist in Italy but i never saw it prepared in that way. It's coocked in broth and thats it. Mostly prepared for children and old people because its easy to swallow.
Polenta is very hard to find where I live, but I can get very finely ground corn meal and I have used it many times. It's flavor is very close and the texture is very close to what I ate in Italy.
Like Harper I too am a polenta & ragu nut, just love it on a cold winter night. Speaking of winter nights, how about some Italian soups? I make a good tomato & bread soup, but would love to see some more soup dishes for the winter. Grazie!
I just wanted to say thank you for your help with Polenta! My mother used to make it for us when we were kids and I hated it! But, it was a consistency issue. It was too smooth. I also didn't know you could put things in it so I finely chopped some onion & garlic, sauteed it and finished it with some Fontina cheese and it was so good, I'm going to make it again! The coarse grind was a real game changer. I'd send you a picture, but I don't know how. Sorry! Un caloroso grazie di cuore!
I absolutely loved your episode on polenta!! I've watched it twice already! My bisnonna was from the Veneto region of Italy and we had polenta quite often and actually what we're having tonight. Way back then they would make the polenta and pour it onto a clean dish towel! Nobody wanted to clean it because it took forever. My aunt Theresa married into a family from Tuscany and learned how to make "farinata", also a polenta based dish made with meat and cabbage. Have you ever heard of this dish? Anyways, love your channel!! (Harper needs to play more banjo!) C'e vediamo!
I accidentally ordered a 5kg bag of polenta ( when I had never eaten it before) , but I need to eat gluten-free. I have not been doing very well with it so this will help a lot … Thankyou cpc uk
Always a great learning experience! Eva and Harper, you greatly add to the Italian world of cooking. My grandmother was from Verbicaro in Cosensa and many of her recipes were very similar to yours. Thanks for bringing her culinary experience back to me with your 'seminars '.
Traditionally, grits were made from boiled dried hominy, a type of corn that has been treated with a lime or lye solution, allowing the tough outer hulls to be removed.May 15, 2019 Grits are made from dent corn, which has a softer and starchier kernel than other corn varieties. The mature kernels are processed to remove the outer hull, dried, and then ground into smaller bits.
I'm new this channel for last week or so, but have been going to others (Babish, Not Another Cooking Show, Sip and Feast, Chef John, etc.) for years. You guys are a blast watch! Great recipes, great information, and I loved the Oaxaca video. Really entertaining. I'll be back.
Finally Polenta! In my family we usually cooked polenta with ragú, called in Argentina polenta with pajarito (little bird) but using sausage as meat. About the Polenta Taragna, it even has the most epic song...
I love all your videos, but this was one of my favorite. Not only because polenta is a favorite of mine, but seeing all the terracotta tableware and copper pot just took me back to my hometown in Sicily. The best however was the clothespin! Now THAT is Sicilian ❤😂. Last night, I was watching La Sposa on Rai 1, and the main character is Calabrian. She was serving Nduja to a non Calabrian for dinner. He thought he could handle it, but after it settled in his mouth, he was on fire😂. I thought about you guys and the video on this particular meat.
A variant of polenta is typical of the Apennines between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, made with chestnut flour, the so-called "sweet polenta": the procedure for preparing it and the final consistency are the same as that obtained with corn flour, obviously with the difference that chestnuts give polenta a sweet taste. My paternal family is originally from Mugello, chestnut woods are widespread in those areas and in the past this type of polenta was the food that allowed many poor families to survive, the equivalent of the corn polenta typical of Northern Italy.
I still dream of the Salsicce e Polenta I had on the Bologna Train Station just as I was leaving Italy heading north. I was going to cancel the train ticket it was that good, and have another, but my Oma was expecting me the next day.
The tradition in central Italy doesn't stop there... After spreading evenly (3cm deep) the polenta on the wooden board, which is placed in the middle of the table, you cover it with the sauce and meat, and put the sausage in the very centre. People sit around the table and start eating, each from their side. The first reaching the centre will have the sausage! Of course there's always someone cheating, pushing the polenta aside onto the portion of the eater next to them, to be able to reach the goal first 😂 The day after, children at school were discussing ways of beating the adults 🤣
That center of Italy version, the more liquid one with the ragú is basically a traditional recipe in my family (no idea how it came to be, but it would have been many generations before me). Here in Brazil it's also pretty common to have fried polenta as a snack or side dish.
I love your channel! I do have to correct you on the difference between grits and cornmeal/polenta. Grits are corn kernels that have been soaked in calcium hydroxide. It's called nixtamalization. It changes the flavor and makes it more digestible. Polenta is just boiled cornmeal.
I know the real old fashioned way takes more time but when it comes to taste and texture, the extra time is well worth it when it comes to polenta and grits both. Another great one, you two. I look forward to your posts more than anything else in you tube!
There is grits made from yellow corn sold in the US. Dixie Lily, Palmetto Farms and Geechie Boy Mill are three examples of companies that make yellow corn grits.
Yumm! New subscriber here ✋🏽your channel is my new favorite! I’ve been binge watching and have learned so much about Italian/pasta and the extensive knowledge Eva has of food! She is a true foodie but doesn’t look it 👀 she is the cool laid back foodie 😄 and as a Mexican who adores spicy 🌶 food I love that she tolerates spice very well and has said very lovely things about my countries food ❤
I love to cook polenta with lots of butter and grated chedder and parmesan cheese ... like 1/2 cup butter and a cup or two of grated chedder then a taster of parmesan. I cool it in a buttered or oiled pan then slice it, flour it and fry the slices in butter. (Theme is cheese and butter). Serve with a tomato sauce or meat sauce or by self as a side dish. Oh YUM! Thank you for the reminder! (some times I also stir in crispy bits of fried bacon ar chopped sundried tomatoe it as well .. oh YUM!!).
I make polenta to go with chili, I make it early so when its time to eat I slice the polenta, and fry to reheat, its delicious crispy on the outside and soft inside.
Here in the volcanic hills outside of Padova you can find soft polenta with stew meat on top. It could be wild boar, or donkey, or beef. In Veneto donkey is called Musso. They cook this meat very long so it is soft. (Not always in a tomato sauce)
I eat mine like the first one, I add Parmesan last second and stir in sautéed morel mushrooms and asparagus. It’s good, but morel and asparagus season is too short. I’m excited to try these
My grandma would make it with the meat sauce, sometimes with beans as well. My family is from Avella, outside of Naples. All the versions of polenta from the different regions look good! I want to try them all.
My family is from near Nola, very near to Avella. My grandma in particular is from a little town at the feet of the Apennines, on the edge of the Campanian plain, near Nola, and despite it being in Naples' province she cooks a sort of fried polenta at times, but calls it pizza di granturco. The influence from Avellino and its province (Irpinia) came down to Nola apparently lmao
Usually mi famiglia di Supino makes the central type with the meat sauce. As a woodworker I was asked about 20 years ago to make 6 hard-maple polenta boards for my brothers, sisters and their families. It cost about $400 USD but I made them very much like the one mi padre inherited from his mother, who Came from Supino. When we do a big dinner with polenta every one of those 6 (+ original) boards is a lava flow of polenta with the sauce atop and the sausage in the middle as a prize. Really my favorite family dinner.
In my early 20’s I invented a very tasty dish: Eggs in Purgatory served over Crispy Polenta Cakes. I swear, it worked out very well. The eggs were a little over, but I was young. The sauce was rich and spicy, and the polenta was full of parmigiano reggiano, herbs, and salt/pepper, fried in pork fat. After frying, it was still so soft, it almost failed to hold its shape. I was so proud of myself, and I am still proud, of that young woman. 🤗🤗💐💋 I did all of that, without even one recipe. I was guessing, from watching food shows, and foods I had eaten.🤘🏻 Yes, it was Valentines’ Day, and I was trying to impress an atctual cook/chef person.💋
a little clarification: while grits at one time could mean almost any kind of grain porridge, sort of like polenta, it now means a cut or milled yellow corn, white corm, or hominy, which is nixtamalized corn. hominy grits are therefore not necessarily the same as white corn grits, even if they are both white, and grits can be white or yellow or even blue, and so can hominy, though most hominy is made from white corn. polenta, like eva says, used to be a more general term for porridge made from potentially any dried legume, grain, or buckwheat (which is neither a grain nor a legume) or combination thereof, but now is usually understood to be cut or milled corn that is not nixtamalized. people who have relied on corn heavily as a staple have suffered from pellagra, due to niacin deficiency, but nixtamalizing makes niacin available and prevents pellagra where corn forms a large part of the diet. this isnt another food thing you have to worry about, as people who eat meat and fish regularly do not get pellagra. dont know about vegans though. all bets are off on everything if you're vegan i make a coarse polenta frequently as a side dish to italian sausage, slow-roasted pork shoulder or lamb, pan fried or simmered chicken, and a lot of other things. it couldnt be easier to prepare. 4:1 water to polenta, some salt, boil/simmer. i pour into the boiling water fast and hard and put no love into it because it's too coarse to get lumpy. add cheese when it's done. it doesnt have to be italian cheese. i add english cheddar and sometimes parmesan. you could add american cheese slices if you wanna be that way and it'd still be good. you could add cream cheese for the traditional polenta ala philadelphia you will find nowhere in italy. you can use mozz but it'll get stringy, though melted mozz or smoked mozz or fresh ricotta or some shaved ricotta inslata on top would be just fine. on the plate you can drizzle it with olive oil, or not. you can pour gravy on it or absolutely any hot sauce from your fridge and it'll be great. you could probably put soy sauce, fish sauce, msg and sesame oil on it and it would be still be ok, though i've not tried that. i would never trade the coarse rustic texture and flavor i get for a par-cooked 'quick' product. ya it takes 30mins but once it's going i set a timer and walk away, coming back for a quick stir every 10 mins. my son has attention-deficit disorder, autism, dyslexia, and severe peanut allergies and he can make it on or off the long list of meds we try to force him to take, so i guess anyone can like eva said, you can use any kind of corn meal, but from finer grinds you're going to get a more homogenized texture rather than something more rustic and al dente, which i prefer, but that's a matter of taste. finer polentas also require more stirring, and if you wanna get a firm, moldable result, you have to work it like eva showed. i dont do any of that and it's still great. i use an induction burner i can turn down very low, and a heavy pan with a lid. even if you serve a looser porridge like i do, the leftover polenta firms up a lot and can be cut and fried in olive oil the next day, or just heated up and eaten. i like leftover polenta with tabasco sauce as to the question of whether and which products are 'whole grain' containing the germ, i'm not going to tell you-- you can do your own research on that if you wanna know
Just made the polenta/broccoli recipe for dinner tonight and it was OUTSTANDING!!! Even my broccoli hating husband scooped up a second serving. Thank you so much for this episode. You really cleared up a lot of confusion I had about polenta. Thanks for the links to get the polenta. Can't wait to try the one with buckwheat. You two are just the best. LOve you !!! Carry on. You are educating us and we need it!!!!!!😂
When I was a kid we would have something called “corn meal mush”. We would add a pat of butter, sugar, or brown sugar, and cream. It was a great breakfast!!
Irene, I am from mexico, never tried insects, don’t want …… but they are full of the best protein, and was a diet of our Indians culture, they will pick up the eggs of the mosquitoes un the lakes and all kind of other insects,. Have a good day
Okay, last comment. My Nona used to make polenta in the central Italian style, but poured it out on a giant cutting board, the ragu, and three or four other condimento’s such as roasted mushrooms, the shredded meat from the ragu, sausage slices, etc. You took your spoon and mapped out your portion of polenta, then the condiments were passed around for you to decorate your mapped out portion, but you simply ate the polenta with each individual condiments.
We hope you guys learned something new about polenta with us today! What ingredient should we cover the basics of next?
a. The aperitivo table: a little something to eat while you enjoy with a drink.
b. After meal amari.
c. Olives snacks and dishes.
Funghi porcini!
With Fall in the air, I'd love to see Mushrooms 🍄❤️
Hi Eva, You’re a treasure! This polenta video was long overdue.
For many years my polenta always turned out clumpy. My mistake was I had the water at a full boil when pouring in the ground corn; the trick that solved the clumpiness was to have simmering water instead.
Thanks for another exceptional video!
Hi guys could you make tripe in its many versions, accommodata genovese,Tuscany, Roman, Sicilian and certainly Calabrian style😉
Actually, the difference between grits and corn meal is much greater than just the color. True, grits are traditionally white, but they're made from hominy which is corn treated with lime water or lye. The process is called nixtamalization and was known by the Myans. It does several things, including freeing niacin, thus preventing pellagra. Along with ordinary beans, a human can survive on these two foods. And it allows the processed corn to be made into a dough for further processing into things like masa used for making tortillias. Regular cornmeal will not form a dough with the addition of water. Nixtamalization also helps prevent the formation of mold.
so cool
Yes. I've read that the explorers who brought maize/corn over did not also bring over the knowledge of nixtamalization. The northerners, who ate polenta much more than the southerners, developed a niacin deficiency that limited their mental abilities. The southerners called the northerners "polentoni," which was a derogatory appellation, as a result. Nowadays, people avoid the deficiency problem by eating it with cheese, or milk, meat sauce, lentils, chickpeas, etc., which provides the necessary amino acids, complementing the polenta.
@roberto bravo sir… bravo! Excellent and efficient explanation!
Grits can be made with either white or yellow corn. Southern states prefer white corn meal. Other parts of the country prefer yellow corn
@@sharonstrickland6421 in the south we eat both but I’d say we use yellow for supper and white for breakfast. You can also find red grits, purple grits, and mixed grits that contains more than one variety, usually white and yellow together.
In my family you had the three stages of polenta: first the freshly made and soft polenta.
Then the leftovers were cut into slices and toasted on a plate or on the grill (like bruschetta). The parts that were not toasted were sautéed in a pan with butter and covered with sugar.
Also in my town (Mantova) leftover polenta is used to make a "pancake" called "Fiapon".
My grandparentes used to told me me how polenta was the food of the poor in the toughest times. For dinner they ate slices which they gave a little flavor by rubbing them on a smoked herring (Cospeton) and they also usually eat polenta for breakfast in the milk.
In Milan there's polenta pasticciata for leftovers. Basically imagine a lasagna or a timballo, but with polenta slices instead of pasta.
And the smoked herring was hanging from the ceiling!
You can also dip your leftover butter fried polenta in the milk for breakfast. Mantova has a lot of tricks for eating polenta.
Cuspitun FTW! (Mantovani nel mondo.)
@@mimnbo86 that is also done in Milano.
Damian, good information, thank you. Do they prepared it from corn kernels? Do they know or knew the process to ground the corn, would they use lime to boil and let it cure the grain?
My dad was from Abruzzo and you brought tears to my eyes serving polenta on the wood board. Great memories eating it with tripe! Molto grazie!!
Eating it with tripe so delicious.Thank you
Abruzzo heritage here, and I LOVE polenta with sausage sauce and pecorino romano!! 🤩
My family is also from Abruzzo. 🥰🥰🥰
My family is from pescara abruzzo and ascoli piceno marches
Polenta was a staple growing up. My family is from Lammari, just outside of Lucca. When my wife and I went to Italy and spent a whole week in Toscana the food just felt so much like home, only better!
I love that Eva was so keen to eat the polenta taragna that she forgot the obligatory 'buon appetito!' 🤣
Fried Mush is a Southern US analog, where leftover corn grits (or boiled cornmeal) are often left to cool and congeal. It is then sliced, dredged in flour, drenched in beaten egg, pan-fried, and served with maple syrup, honey, molasses, or sorghum syrup.
SO DELICIOUS!!!!
Yes, one of my favorites, my parents were from West Virginia. Always makes me sentimental. ❤
Love fried mush!!!!
I had mush for breakfast and to me it was a treat. My family is German and English of Germanic origin. So I'm not sure where my grandma learned how to make it but we had it . So sad things like this are way sided in modern America.
Man this brought back memories. I wish my granny were alive today. What a sweet woman.
Never had it but we also never had leftover grits from a breakfast either.
Thank you for this recipe! My great grandmother was from Reggio Amelia and she never wrote down recipes and her version was like the first recipe. My grandma always wanted polenta that thick, but I didn’t figure it out to make it for her with the right texture. She loved the leftover slices fried crisp in butter with eggs for breakfast. Now I can make it in her honor the correct way. ❤
Finally! Polenta.., never cooked it, so we will learn from Eva and at the same time we learn some italian words too🤩🤗🙏😍
I’m from the North of Italy and my grandma used to make polenta for the whole family almost every weekend in the winter, at 85 she would stir it for 45-50 minutes non stop (and it gets hard pretty much as soon as it starts absorbing some of the water!) and when it was ready she would always have some in a cup with warm milk as a treat for her hard work. My brother and I loved eating it with granulated sugar or Nutella as a dessert. I feel like my childhood would not have been the same without this dish, it is so comforting to me. Sorry Eva I will never try it with ragù because it feels like betrayal to me lol
Absolutely wonderful!!! I learned a lot about polenta (which I love eating)...Eva - you really should be awarded a doctorate in Italian food and cooking. I am so envious of your knowledge.
Here in Brazil we make all kinds of polenta - we also have many types of grounded corn, so you can make polentas with many different textures. We also have angu. Angu is similar to polenta, but made with a very finely textured cornflour called fubá. Some people add the fubá to the water still cold, mix well and only then take it to the fire to cook, mixing all the time to avoid clumps.
Bergamasco fan reporting: Fontina as a change is approved for the polenta taragna :)
Otherwise use an older Taleggio. Firm and strong, it still melts very well in it :)
My Mom a great Italian cook would never use polenta because she lived on it during the depression years and will not cook it to this day ! I do want to try it and will try your recipes.
Similarly, my Mom grew up in a German town in Romania, and she said they had polenta with cheese almost daily. Once they left Europe, she didn’t want to eat it again, and she never made it for us growing up, so I had to discover it on my own. But I really like it! Thanks for this interesting video!
@@fasullodavvero Mia madre ha 94 anni e viveva nella parte povera della città, ma aveva una buona famiglia e mi ha dato una vita fantastica. Ma lei non cucinava la polenta e mi raccontava di mangiarla da piccola essendo povera. Grazie.
I had an uncle who grew up very poor and wouldn’t touch polenta as an adult!
I'm Slovenian- American and we make polenta, but it's made from corn flour (not cornmeal, which is too coarse) or buckwheat and it's not a porridge. It's moldable (you can make disks with a cleaned tuna can) and served with things like goulash. 🤷🏻♀️ I eat it plain with some butter, too.
And now, it's 3am and I want some!!!
I love polenta, being part native American my people have corn porridge also made from many types of corn.
Try some blue corn polenta it should be available where you live.
I don’t know if it’s just in Rome or it is just the “quartiere”, but when we put the meat sauce and the parmigiano on top, we also sprinkle a bit of olive oil!
It reminds me of the Dutch Griesmeelpap. Semolina Durum wheat cooked with milk, sugar, and ground almonds (or almond extract). My wife loves it when I make it.
I can't believe this channel doesn't have like a million subscribers
The beauty of all - is how BRILLIANTLY- EVA - ties all into Italian history --
My grandma was from soveria mannelli so that Calabrian polenta brought me back to her kitchen. Thank you.
I am from the center of Italy. We served our polenta as we celebrate usbeing together. What joy it was to see your are correct. Thank you so much.
Back home in Uruguay we eat as much polenta as the italians simply because ,at some point in time, there were as many italians as locals in there.
Obviously that historical fact brought a lot of culinary new ideas to a nation that lives mainly on red meat.
Fresh pasta (ravioli,cappelletti,tortellini, etc) is purchased in what we call "pasta factories" every sunday, specially in winter, some people use to make them at home, an almost lost custom today.
Corn meal is as cheap as rice or dry pasta in there and polenta was always a welcomed variation on the poor's people diet.
Generally is served with a heavy pasta sauce on top with chunks of beef and sausage ;any leftover (without the sauce) was served as breakfast with sugar and milk the next morning (sort of a latino version of Corn Flakes if you will).
Amazing recipes guys, keep they coming please.
Greetings from Toronto.
70 or so years ago, my mom from Sabio Chiese, then living in Buenos Aires, couldn't fin the corn flour thin enough so she used a little of semola. I never could make it to be as soft and to keep the great shape as she did. Yes, used cooper and a long stick. Used a thread attached on the handle of the round wood paleta. She cooked it all the time, with rabbit or chicken, toasted slices, or in the oven or fry pan with butter and cheeses of any kind. And she even mixed with milk and sugar and eggs to make little sweet frying things. I ove polenta terania with the cheese that stretched a mile....delicios. I like the ball filled with the soft cheese that I carried in my hands. My father this thing that bothered him, we would eat polenta and baggette and he said, no bred with polenta.
Romanians have had polenta (we call it mămăligă) as a staple food for centuries, using a different type of grain (buckwheat or millet) prior to corn. I have visited northern Italy recently and discovered that Italian polenta uses a less processed type of corn flour/ground corn, has a more rustic and grain-y taste than ours ; we use a very ”pure” processed maize, few impurities.
Cool story bro
We can say that the Roman Empire really made europe the continet it is today even in the food
No need to be rude guys...
Yes, especially in Transilvania, its very common. My fav breakfast was mamaliga filled with cheese, topped with sour cream . The other is polenta balls, filled with cheese then baked. Its in the cookbook of Alexandra Georgescu.
My best friend is Romanian and last year we went to Romania for a week. I absolutely loved the food, we were in the country side in the region near Moldova and everything was so fresh, I ate so much polenta with cheese. And yeah it tastes a bit different than Italian polenta
Grandpa always made the super thick polenta, formed it into a brick, there was a lot of butter involved, mozzarella stirred in and generally some kind of red sauce over it. Unless it was for breakfast, then it was no cheese, sliced, pan fried on both sides, and syrup.
My Father had a special pan and stirring stick that I still use today, he would flip it out of the pan just like a cake and cut it with a string. My family was from a small village outside of Lucca and their food was very simple.
I love learning new things about my Italian culture. My family, from Puglia , never made polenta but as a young adult in New York City I was exposed to it and have come to love it! Thank you for showing us these wonderful variations and yes please more recipes for polenta! Looking forward to the dessert one especially. Thank you again.
Polentona here (Bresciana)! Thank you for this video. I commented some time ago under one of your videos if you'd mention the different types of corn meal that can be found in ordinary American supermarkets and how Eva thinks they compare to polenta (some were saying grits and polenta are the same thing). I used to live in Colorado (many years ago) and only could find corn meal suitable for Mexican dishes. I was wondering whether these days there was more available in your average grocery store.
This year we had some "brustolà" (grilled) polenta with "soppressa" salami, mushrooms and Monte Veronese cheese in Italy. It was amazingly good !!
during winter, my grandfather would cook grits until they were as thick as is shown in this video and spread it onto a plate and place the plate outside in his screened in porch and let it cool....then slice it like a pie and serve it covered with very hot pot roast gravy (no roux or flour added, just the liquid from the meat). It was AMAZING.
Thank you guys for showing us the polenta dishes from the different regions of Italy! I am used to the meat sauce version but can't wait to try the other dishes!!
Feel so lucky to have grown up eating polenta all the time. We always had polenta taragna. We and our family in italy also cut in mashed potatoes sometimes, and sometimes dont add the buckwheat grain. Any kind of soft mild cheese would go in. There are several different kinds of ragus to serve it under, usually small salami meatballs in white milk sauce. When i lived in nyc, i often went to a restaurant where they grilled polenta slices that had green olives sliced inside. Actually very good.
La polenta Taragnarock
Orgoglio dei paioli della Valhaltellina! 🌟
ruclips.net/video/Mq0IqiFXIZQ/видео.html
Appena ho visto il titolo ho avuto la stessa tua reazione, ho giusto controllato se qualcuno aveva già fatto questo commento prima di me :D
@Diana Pohe 🤣🤣😂😂 'fettivamente qualche parente scandinavo lo abbiamo...
@@cpav9062 io sono tarda, ci sono arrivata solo quando effettivamente hanno aperto il capitolo sulla Taragna😂
That copper pot is amazing!
Love it!!! Every couple months we'd all get together and the aunts would make the polenta. Half served with the ragu and the other half would have the cured sausages cut up and fried in extra virgin olive oil and the polenta would get sprinkled with Pecorino on top, amazing! Between this video and all the pictures of the family harvesting the olives right now, I'm getting so hungry hahaha.
Polenta with sausage, caramelized onions and bell peppers is one of my favorite fall comfort food 👍🏻
We make polenta in Romania as well. And the cold one we cut the next day and fry for a little bit (traditionally on some cast iron plaque). It's amazing that way!
Edit: My grandma used to do it very thick but I like it better when it's more runny. The really thick one is the one you cut and fry the next day.
I had wild boar with polenta in a mountain village in Piemonte. It was wonderful! The boar was seasoned with rosemary and juniper berries, and since that time I started making my pot roast that way.
Love from South Africa. Just bought my first packet of Polenta. Love your Video. Thanks guy Will try making it..❤
In Uruguay, we usually make polenta with a meat sauce. In my home, it used to be sheep or lamb meat, sausage if available, and panceta (bacon). But in some places here, it is also common to prepare it as a shepard's pie using polenta instead of mashed potatoes and using a meat filling, other times just ham and cheese, and even sauté vegetables like spinach or chard.
My father used to make a very thick and course polenta like you made in this video. After it is finished cooking, he would dish it into a loaf pan and let it cool in the refrigerator, maybe two hours. Then you slice the polenta cake into thick slices, maybe 20 cm (1-1.5 in.). The slices are then fried until golden brown on all sides. They are delicious by themselves or you can dip into unsweetened applesauce with ground cinnamon, or mascarpone with chopped chives and course ground, black pepper, maybe a dash of pepperoncini. Enjoy! PS: Eva, love the new hair color with the highlights. Very flattering to your skin tone.
Romanians eat Mamaliga, well-cooked in a pan, a form of polenta made from corn meal, which also takes a long time to cook while stirring, and has to ‘burp’ (create a large bubble) so you know it’s done. Then that gets cooled in a loaf pan, sliced and anointed with butter, cheese, sour cream, and or meat-based gravy.
This brings back fond memories hiking through the Alps in Valle D'Aosta and stopping at refuges where they routinely served camoscio e polenta. And nice warm-me-up on cold days. Especially when coupled with some vin brulé.
Then, you can still add your toppings as you would normally.
I understand tradition ... but I've realized that cooking is an art form ... you can make any dish your own.
Just watching you guys cook is a testament this idea.
There is a great landrace corn from Italy that is available in the States called "Floriani". Its a red corn that is yellow inside and milled for use as polenta. Definitely worth seeking out!
My Nonna Antoinetta made it soft (Abbruzzo), my Nonna Rosina (Venezia) cooked it exactly like the first one in your video. I love both, but prefer the firm one. I have never seen the buckwheat polenta or Calabrese style (both look so delicious). I'm learning so much from Eva's cooking.
I loved seeing the different polenta dishes. I was not familiar with any of them. The Taragna version reminded me of something I had my whole childhood and still eat today, Pastina. I'm not sure if its a traditional Italian dish or is it something Italian Americans made up. How I make it, its almost like a carbonara. I take tiny star shaped pastina pasta using 1 cup of boiling water too 1/4 cup of pastina and cook until nearly all the water is gone, in the same bowl I'll eat it out of I put an egg and some parmigiano or Romano cheese lots cause well its cheese, black pepper and mix together until it is creamy. Add the cooked but still wet pasta to the bowl and mix very well and that is pure comfort food for me. Not sure if its traditional but my mom and aunt always fixed it for me as a child. Is Pastina a thing in Italy?
I have family in Italy, I'm pretty sure the children in Italy are fed pastina, soup style. I have only seen pastina in soup though.
Pastina very well exist in Italy but i never saw it prepared in that way. It's coocked in broth and thats it. Mostly prepared for children and old people because its easy to swallow.
@@Caoneman Exactly right, except that it was served to children and old people because neither one had teeth!
Polenta is very hard to find where I live, but I can get very finely ground corn meal and I have used it many times. It's flavor is very close and the texture is very close to what I ate in Italy.
Like Harper I too am a polenta & ragu nut, just love it on a cold winter night. Speaking of winter nights, how about some Italian soups? I make a good tomato & bread soup, but would love to see some more soup dishes for the winter. Grazie!
I just wanted to say thank you for your help with Polenta! My mother used to make it for us when we were kids and I hated it! But, it was a consistency issue. It was too smooth. I also didn't know you could put things in it so I finely chopped some onion & garlic, sauteed it and finished it with some Fontina cheese and it was so good, I'm going to make it again! The coarse grind was a real game changer. I'd send you a picture, but I don't know how. Sorry! Un caloroso grazie di cuore!
I miss my childhood.PLEASE Eva make that video polenta fig apple.sounds great for the winter.
I absolutely loved your episode on polenta!! I've watched it twice already! My bisnonna was from the Veneto region of Italy and we had polenta quite often and actually what we're having tonight. Way back then they would make the polenta and pour it onto a clean dish towel! Nobody wanted to clean it because it took forever. My aunt Theresa married into a family from Tuscany and learned how to make "farinata", also a polenta based dish made with meat and cabbage. Have you ever heard of this dish? Anyways, love your channel!! (Harper needs to play more banjo!) C'e vediamo!
I accidentally ordered a 5kg bag of polenta ( when I had never eaten it before) , but I need to eat gluten-free. I have not been doing very well with it so this will help a lot … Thankyou cpc uk
Thank you, Ava. Polenta brings comfort to my soul. My ancestors are from the north of Italy. ❤
Always a great learning experience! Eva and Harper, you greatly add to the Italian world of cooking. My grandmother was from Verbicaro in Cosensa and many of her recipes were very similar to yours. Thanks for bringing her culinary experience back to me with your 'seminars '.
Hi eva im 8yrs.old live in da tropics and my papa with me love your videos.
Traditionally, grits were made from boiled dried hominy, a type of corn that has been treated with a lime or lye solution, allowing the tough outer hulls to be removed.May 15, 2019
Grits are made from dent corn, which has a softer and starchier kernel than other corn varieties. The mature kernels are processed to remove the outer hull, dried, and then ground into smaller bits.
Thank you for the buckwheat recipe! We eat a lot of buckwheat here in Quebec, and this seems just the thing for a cozy meal after a day of skiing. : )
I'm new this channel for last week or so, but have been going to others (Babish, Not Another Cooking Show, Sip and Feast, Chef John, etc.) for years. You guys are a blast watch! Great recipes, great information, and I loved the Oaxaca video. Really entertaining. I'll be back.
WOW they all looked YUMMY! May need to try the one with ragu!
Finally Polenta! In my family we usually cooked polenta with ragú, called in Argentina polenta with pajarito (little bird) but using sausage as meat.
About the Polenta Taragna, it even has the most epic song...
Love to see Eva's take on polenta dishes. Classic American shrimp and grits is fantastic. I once made it with gorgonzola instead of cheddar. Fabulous
I love all your videos, but this was one of my favorite. Not only because polenta is a favorite of mine, but seeing all the terracotta tableware and copper pot just took me back to my hometown in Sicily. The best however was the clothespin! Now THAT is Sicilian ❤😂. Last night, I was watching La Sposa on Rai 1, and the main character is Calabrian. She was serving Nduja to a non Calabrian for dinner. He thought he could handle it, but after it settled in his mouth, he was on fire😂. I thought about you guys and the video on this particular meat.
A variant of polenta is typical of the Apennines between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, made with chestnut flour, the so-called "sweet polenta": the procedure for preparing it and the final consistency are the same as that obtained with corn flour, obviously with the difference that chestnuts give polenta a sweet taste. My paternal family is originally from Mugello, chestnut woods are widespread in those areas and in the past this type of polenta was the food that allowed many poor families to survive, the equivalent of the corn polenta typical of Northern Italy.
In the winter my mum makes me polenta every Sunday. It is good with gorgonzola and accompanied with meat and mushrooms
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming LMAO😂😂 Great recipes ❤from Melbourne Australia ❤️
@ 12:53 That look had it all: the startle, the puzzlement, the guilt plus about ten "mild flavours" 🤗
I still dream of the Salsicce e Polenta I had on the Bologna Train Station just as I was leaving Italy heading north.
I was going to cancel the train ticket it was that good, and have another, but my Oma was expecting me the next day.
The tradition in central Italy doesn't stop there...
After spreading evenly (3cm deep) the polenta on the wooden board, which is placed in the middle of the table, you cover it with the sauce and meat, and put the sausage in the very centre. People sit around the table and start eating, each from their side. The first reaching the centre will have the sausage!
Of course there's always someone cheating, pushing the polenta aside onto the portion of the eater next to them, to be able to reach the goal first 😂
The day after, children at school were discussing ways of beating the adults 🤣
That center of Italy version, the more liquid one with the ragú is basically a traditional recipe in my family (no idea how it came to be, but it would have been many generations before me). Here in Brazil it's also pretty common to have fried polenta as a snack or side dish.
OK! You've got my mouth watering again. I would like to see how Ava prepares lamb.
I love your channel! I do have to correct you on the difference between grits and cornmeal/polenta. Grits are corn kernels that have been soaked in calcium hydroxide. It's called nixtamalization. It changes the flavor and makes it more digestible. Polenta is just boiled cornmeal.
I know the real old fashioned way takes more time but when it comes to taste and texture, the extra time is well worth it when it comes to polenta and grits both. Another great one, you two. I look forward to your posts more than anything else in you tube!
There is grits made from yellow corn sold in the US. Dixie Lily, Palmetto Farms and Geechie Boy Mill are three examples of companies that make yellow corn grits.
Yumm! New subscriber here ✋🏽your channel is my new favorite! I’ve been binge watching and have learned so much about Italian/pasta and the extensive knowledge Eva has of food! She is a true foodie but doesn’t look it 👀 she is the cool laid back foodie 😄 and as a Mexican who adores spicy 🌶 food I love that she tolerates spice very well and has said very lovely things about my countries food ❤
So glad you found us! ❤
I love to cook polenta with lots of butter and grated chedder and parmesan cheese ... like 1/2 cup butter and a cup or two of grated chedder then a taster of parmesan. I cool it in a buttered or oiled pan then slice it, flour it and fry the slices in butter. (Theme is cheese and butter). Serve with a tomato sauce or meat sauce or by self as a side dish. Oh YUM! Thank you for the reminder! (some times I also stir in crispy bits of fried bacon ar chopped sundried tomatoe it as well .. oh YUM!!).
I was worried the entire time that Eva's sleeves were going to catch fire! 😩🤦🏼🤌🫣
BTW, your blouse is adorable 😍
I make polenta to go with chili, I make it early so when its time to eat I slice the polenta, and fry to reheat, its delicious crispy on the outside and soft inside.
Thank you for this video!!!
Semolina is one of my favs...
Thank you for your recipes,let me have another one middle of my birthday cake.
Here in the volcanic hills outside of Padova you can find soft polenta with stew meat on top. It could be wild boar, or donkey, or beef. In Veneto donkey is called Musso. They cook this meat very long so it is soft. (Not always in a tomato sauce)
Last Saturday, I went to look for mushrooms, on Sunday we made polenta with mushroom ragout. Also very good the next day .
I'd love to see the video you teased showcasing how she uses the leftovers.
I eat mine like the first one, I add Parmesan last second and stir in sautéed morel mushrooms and asparagus. It’s good, but morel and asparagus season is too short. I’m excited to try these
My grandma would make it with the meat sauce, sometimes with beans as well. My family is from Avella, outside of Naples. All the versions of polenta from the different regions look good! I want to try them all.
My family is from near Nola, very near to Avella. My grandma in particular is from a little town at the feet of the Apennines, on the edge of the Campanian plain, near Nola, and despite it being in Naples' province she cooks a sort of fried polenta at times, but calls it pizza di granturco. The influence from Avellino and its province (Irpinia) came down to Nola apparently lmao
@@Hastdupech8509 YES! I've fried also! VERY tasty!
Usually mi famiglia di Supino makes the central type with the meat sauce. As a woodworker I was asked about 20 years ago to make 6 hard-maple polenta boards for my brothers, sisters and their families. It cost about $400 USD but I made them very much like the one mi padre inherited from his mother, who Came from Supino. When we do a big dinner with polenta every one of those 6 (+ original) boards is a lava flow of polenta with the sauce atop and the sausage in the middle as a prize. Really my favorite family dinner.
In my early 20’s I invented a very tasty dish: Eggs in Purgatory served over Crispy Polenta Cakes. I swear, it worked out very well. The eggs were a little over, but I was young. The sauce was rich and spicy, and the polenta was full of parmigiano reggiano, herbs, and salt/pepper, fried in pork fat. After frying, it was still so soft, it almost failed to hold its shape. I was so proud of myself, and I am still proud, of that young woman. 🤗🤗💐💋 I did all of that, without even one recipe. I was guessing, from watching food shows, and foods I had eaten.🤘🏻 Yes, it was Valentines’ Day, and I was trying to impress an atctual cook/chef person.💋
a little clarification: while grits at one time could mean almost any kind of grain porridge, sort of like polenta, it now means a cut or milled yellow corn, white corm, or hominy, which is nixtamalized corn. hominy grits are therefore not necessarily the same as white corn grits, even if they are both white, and grits can be white or yellow or even blue, and so can hominy, though most hominy is made from white corn. polenta, like eva says, used to be a more general term for porridge made from potentially any dried legume, grain, or buckwheat (which is neither a grain nor a legume) or combination thereof, but now is usually understood to be cut or milled corn that is not nixtamalized. people who have relied on corn heavily as a staple have suffered from pellagra, due to niacin deficiency, but nixtamalizing makes niacin available and prevents pellagra where corn forms a large part of the diet. this isnt another food thing you have to worry about, as people who eat meat and fish regularly do not get pellagra. dont know about vegans though. all bets are off on everything if you're vegan
i make a coarse polenta frequently as a side dish to italian sausage, slow-roasted pork shoulder or lamb, pan fried or simmered chicken, and a lot of other things. it couldnt be easier to prepare. 4:1 water to polenta, some salt, boil/simmer. i pour into the boiling water fast and hard and put no love into it because it's too coarse to get lumpy. add cheese when it's done. it doesnt have to be italian cheese. i add english cheddar and sometimes parmesan. you could add american cheese slices if you wanna be that way and it'd still be good. you could add cream cheese for the traditional polenta ala philadelphia you will find nowhere in italy. you can use mozz but it'll get stringy, though melted mozz or smoked mozz or fresh ricotta or some shaved ricotta inslata on top would be just fine. on the plate you can drizzle it with olive oil, or not. you can pour gravy on it or absolutely any hot sauce from your fridge and it'll be great. you could probably put soy sauce, fish sauce, msg and sesame oil on it and it would be still be ok, though i've not tried that. i would never trade the coarse rustic texture and flavor i get for a par-cooked 'quick' product. ya it takes 30mins but once it's going i set a timer and walk away, coming back for a quick stir every 10 mins. my son has attention-deficit disorder, autism, dyslexia, and severe peanut allergies and he can make it on or off the long list of meds we try to force him to take, so i guess anyone can
like eva said, you can use any kind of corn meal, but from finer grinds you're going to get a more homogenized texture rather than something more rustic and al dente, which i prefer, but that's a matter of taste. finer polentas also require more stirring, and if you wanna get a firm, moldable result, you have to work it like eva showed. i dont do any of that and it's still great. i use an induction burner i can turn down very low, and a heavy pan with a lid. even if you serve a looser porridge like i do, the leftover polenta firms up a lot and can be cut and fried in olive oil the next day, or just heated up and eaten. i like leftover polenta with tabasco sauce
as to the question of whether and which products are 'whole grain' containing the germ, i'm not going to tell you-- you can do your own research on that if you wanna know
FYI: In the south you can find Grits in yellow corn.
You should add some cream, more butter, and sharp cheddar cheese.
So fun .. that googling picture of you Harper made me LOL😂😂😂❤
Just made the polenta/broccoli recipe for dinner tonight and it was OUTSTANDING!!! Even my broccoli hating husband scooped up a second serving. Thank you so much for this episode. You really cleared up a lot of confusion I had about polenta. Thanks for the links to get the polenta. Can't wait to try the one with buckwheat. You two are just the best. LOve you !!! Carry on. You are educating us and we need it!!!!!!😂
Thank you I really had no idea what to do with polenta
Just like my grandfather made...copper pot, turned out on the "polenta" board and cut with a string. Thanks!
When I was a kid we would have something called “corn meal mush”. We would add a pat of butter, sugar, or brown sugar, and cream. It was a great breakfast!!
I love learning all this. Thank you and I’d love to see the leftover polenta video, if you create that.
This looks far more appetizing than the insects from last week’s video 😂😂😂. The broccoli one looks relatively quick and yummy. I may have to try it!
Irene, I am from mexico, never tried insects, don’t want …… but they are full of the best protein, and was a diet of our Indians culture, they will pick up the eggs of the mosquitoes un the lakes and all kind of other insects,. Have a good day
Okay, last comment. My Nona used to make polenta in the central Italian style, but poured it out on a giant cutting board, the ragu, and three or four other condimento’s such as roasted mushrooms, the shredded meat from the ragu, sausage slices, etc. You took your spoon and mapped out your portion of polenta, then the condiments were passed around for you to decorate your mapped out portion, but you simply ate the polenta with each individual condiments.
Eva when you talk ,I laughed because I see me in you,I love you guys😘