Polenta Cornbread
What do you do when it's frigid outside, and you want to eat that leftover chili you had the foresight to stick in the freezer, but you have no cornbread mix or cornmeal, and you literally just got back from the grocery store and refuse to go back again? You improvise. And if you're Italian, that means you break out the polenta.
I had a little help with this recipe. I started by scouring the internet to first see if it was even possible to make cornbread without cornmeal. Then, I moved on to looking for recipes for cornbread that explicitly mention using polenta. (You guys, I really didn't want to go to the store again). I changed things up from the recipes I found to make this suit my tastes, and this is where we landed!
I was really pleasantly surprised by how well this turned out, both in flavor and in texture – the latter of which is half the joy of good cornbread. It's just crumbly enough, but doesn't totally fall apart in your hand, and you get that little crunch from the polenta/meal here and there.
The difference between polenta and cornmeal is minimal – it mostly comes down to the size of the grind. But instant polenta works as a great substitute for cornmeal in a dish like this! With instant polenta, the grains are a bit smaller and pre-processed, so they still give you that corn flavor without making the texture overly grainy. I actually love the texture of this so much that I might start using polenta whenever I want to make cornbread. It feels a little truer to my Italian roots!
POLENTA CORNBREAD
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Bake Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients
1½ cups instant polenta
½ cup flour
3 t baking powder
⅓ cup sugar
1 heaping t salt
⅓ cup canola or vegetable oil
1½ T honey
2/3 cup milk
2 eggs
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 F, and generously grease or spray (using oil) a 9" cast iron pan.
In a medium bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. In a larger bowl, mix all the wet ingredients until they're well-incorporated. Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until your batter is smooth. It will be a little thick!
Pour the batter into your well-greased cast iron pan, smooth it out, and bake for about 20 minutes. Start checking it after ~17 minutes to see if it's done. The edges will be a medium golden brown.
Top with a generous amount of butter, or honey, or both!
Note: This is a slightly sweet cornbread, so if that's not your taste, I'd recommend leaving out the honey. You can even substitute out the canola oil for olive oil to really commit to the savory route, or include some jalapeños to give it a kick.
Happy Eating,
Natalie