Parmesan Polenta with Red Sauce
Sonia saw this Parmesan polenta recipe in a Cook's Country magazine and requested that we try it. So she deserves credit for putting this into our rotation!
In case you're not familiar with it, polenta is a cornmeal pudding, which is often chilled and then sliced and baked or fried.
(The fried mush we eat is an example of that.)
In this case, the polenta has some savory flavorings, such as garlic, pepper, and Parmesan cheese, whereas the fried mush mixture I make is just cornmeal, water, and salt.
Parmesan polenta is a good vegetarian main dish, but you could also serve it as a side along with something like Italian chicken sausages.
There's a printable recipe card at the end of this post, and here are some photos to give you an idea of how this goes!
To start, heat oil and butter in a pan until the butter melts.
Then smash a few peeled garlic cloves. I just whack them a few times with my meat mallet.
Add them to the butter/oil mixture, and cook until they're slightly browned.
Remove the garlic, add water, bring to a boil, and then sloooowly add the cornmeal, whisking as you go so as to avoid lumps.
The mixture will thicken up a little immediately.
But you need to keep cooking it over low heat for another 20 minutes, stirring every few minutes so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot.
This is not exactly labor intensive, but you need to be in the same room as your stove!
So, I like to make this when I have other kitchen tasks I need to do anyway. Then I can just stop every few minutes and give the polenta a stir.
It's hard to see in the photo, but after 20 minutes, this should be VERY thick.
Stir in half and half and Parmesan cheese.
Then pour the mixture into a greased 8x8 pan, and let it cool on a wire rack.
Once it's room temperature, refrigerate for 2-3 hours, or until completely cooled.
You could top your polenta with jarred tomato sauce (easy!)
But if you want to put into a little extra effort, you can use the polenta-cooling time to make a quick pot of homemade tomato sauce.
(Using canned tomatoes; this is not hard!)
Once the polenta is chilled, heat your oven to 375 ° F.
Turn the polenta out onto a cutting board, cut into 6 pieces, and place onto a greased baking sheet, or a baking sheet lined with parchment.
Bake for 30 minutes, or until the bottoms are just beginning to brown. Serve topped with tomato sauce.
Leftover pieces are good heated in the microwave and make for a lovely lunch the next day.
But I think the best leftover method is to microwave the pieces and then brown the sides in a pan on the stovetop. So good!
Baked Polenta with Red Sauce
Fluffy baked Parmesan polenta, topped with an easy homemade red sauce.
Ingredients
- POLENTA
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
- 7 cups water
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 ½ cups yellow cornmeal
- 2 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated (1 ½ cups)
- ¼ cup half and half
- RED SAUCE
- 14.5 can whole peeled tomatoes
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 onion, peeled and halved through the root end
- 15 ounce can tomato sauce
- 1 ounce Parmesan, grated (½ cup)
- 1 ½ tablespoons sugar
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
- Combine butter and olive oil in medium sauce pan; heat over medium heat until butter melts. Add garlic; cook 4 minutes, or until garlic is golden brown. Remove garlic.
- Add water, salt, and pepper to pot; bring to boil over medium-high heat. Stirring constantly, add cornmeal in a steady stream. Reduce heat to medium low; simmer, stirring every few minutes, until cornmeal is tender, about 20 minutes.
- Remove pan from heat; whisk in Parmesan and half and half. Pour into a greased 8x8 inch pan and let cool to room temperature on a wire rack.
- Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours, or until completely cool.
- To make red sauce: Process whole tomatoes + the liquid from the can in blender or food processor until completely smooth.
- Heat 1 tablespoon oil in medium saucepan until shimmering; add halved onion and cook until lightly browned, about 4 minutes. Add pureed tomatoes, tomato sauce, Parmesan, sugar, salt, garlic powder, and remaining 3 tablespoons oil. Simmer 15 minutes over medium low heat. Remove from heat, remove and discard onion, and keep sauce warm over low heat.
- Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper; grease parchment. Heat oven to 375°F.
- When polenta is fully chilled, remove from fridge, cut into six pieces, and place each on on prepared sheet. Bake until heated through and pieces begin to brown on bottom, about 30 minutes. Serve each piece topped with red sauce.
Notes
Cook's Country recommends using Quaker yellow cornmeal, so that's what I do. Cooking time may vary with other cornmeal products.
The original recipe called for Pecorino Romano, but I always use Parmesan since Aldi carries Parmesan wedges!
I use a Danish dough whisk to stir the polenta; it prevents lumps without getting stuck in the thick polenta.
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Yum, this looks great. Been waiting to try it ever since I saw it on Cook's Country on PBS. Glad to see this recipe is successful for "real" people. I had worried after watching it on the show if it would truly become sliceable. I tried a Pinterest recipe the other day and even though I followed the directions exactly, it flopped.
Yep, it definitely is sliceable! I've made it multiple times now and it's always good.
And I hear you about internet recipes...sometimes those beautiful-looking ones from Pinterest aren't reliable.
My husband loves corn pone, made with corn meal, hot water and salt, and slowly cooked in a skillet until it's crispy on the outside. He probably would really like this as well. It's pretty carb heavy, though, as is the corn pone, so this would be a rare treat for us. It does sound good!
Yep, this doesn't have a whole lot of protein. I mean, there's some cheese...but mostly it's corn!
My mother and grandmother made this. I never would try it because of the awful name "cornmeal mush". When it became known as polenta, I tried it and liked it. I like it fried or baked and with cheese.
That looks delish! We don't really eat much cheese at our house since our Asian recipes don't call for them. I'd love to try what you make though since it looks so good in the photos!
There's an alternative to slooooowly adding the cornmeal to the hot water: mix the cornmeal into cold water, then heat the mixture while stirring. While I haven't tried it in this specific recipe, I've done it in many other recipes with success.
FG, does CC say why to use the harder method?
Hmm, they didn't. But now that you mention it, I always do use the cold water method when I make fried mush. Hmm. I'll have to try this next time with this recipe and see if I notice any difference. I doubt I will!
There’s also instant polenta if you don’t want to be stirring and waiting for 30+ minutes. (Usually imported from Italy, it’s a much finer grind and partially precooked so it cooks in 2-3 minutes.). It’s more expensive than plain cornmeal but much cheaper than takeout. We often do Parmesan polenta as a quick takeout alternative.
I think this must be what we get in Canada, because I’ve never had to cook polenta for more than about 5 minutes. And a bag of it is about $3!
Mmm, love polenta. I have made the CC recipe and it turns out well .... however, in the past month, I have discovered a crockpot version which is wonderful! Here's the link: http://www.justalittlebitofbacon.com/slow-cooker-creamy-polenta/ I don't bother with the milk or half and half in the recipe--we like it as is. Whether or not I add cheese is dependent on how I serve it--currently our favorite way to eat it is with a Thai-style chicken recipe. The sauce for the chicken is tomato-ey with peanut butter and it's good drizzled over both the chicken and the polenta. I know you don't care for crockpots, Kristen, but I find I am often in a time crunch around dinnertime and recipes like this help me serve a home-cooked meal without making me crazy! 🙂
Oh, yeah, I think my pressure cooker cookbook has a recipe for polenta! I'll have to look that up.
Re: Pinterest recipes, I tried one for a salted caramel apple cupcake that sounded to die for. I had made the caramel sauce, peeled and shredded apple, and was well into making the cupcake batter when I realized it called for zero liquids. None. The batter was like play dough. I had to add milk until I got something close to a cupcake batter. They tasted great, but I've not trusted Pinterest recipes since then.
How frustrating, JD! I am suspicious of online recipes and only follow food bloggers from whom I've had good success with in the past. I also read the comments to see how the recipe worked out for others. This isn't quite the same situation, but I have also discovered that I need to be careful with knitting instructions--both online as well as ones I have found in books--I am amazed at the number of errors I have found.
Try adding bite size chunks of pepperoni to your sauce! Yummmmm
I love polenta, and this is a good recipe. Try adding chopped fresh rosemary!
Speaking of questioning recipes, I wonder about the onion in the sauce. Who would it matter which way it's cut!?!? (Crosswise or lengthwise) We could all speculate, but it really wouldn't matter! My Italian aunt does crosswise and then uses metal pins to hold it together for easier retrieval. (She also does a couple of other non-negotiable things). She would not consider cutting the other way because "that's how I always do". I prefer to chop it and leave it in!
The only thing I can think about that direction is that the onion would be more likely to hold together that way, for easy removal at the end of the sauce making?
They pull the onion out, the sauce is very smooth and all tomatoes. I saw the CC show, this is a copycat recipe from an AmVets or VFW local .
Followed the recipe while watching the episode on YouTube. Everything was great until I heated it in the oven and it came out as a melted blob of mushy polenta. Fail! No idea why it turned out like that. Maybe it was the fine cornmeal they said to use. Never had that problem when making polenta with course cornmeal using Lidia's recipe. Always kept its shape when baking or frying.
Original recipe calls for pecorino cheese which is romano cheese and more traditional in Italian tomato sauces. Completely different flavor profile. I'm sure parmesan would be delicious as well but just not the same end result.
How much cornmeal? They don’t say on the CC video either.
Hi! If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the post, there's a recipe card, and in it, it says to use 1 1/5 cups of cornmeal. 🙂