Full Disclosure: This was initially an attempt to make polenta from scratch, but it didn’t really work out that way. I never really got it to firm up quite the way I wanted to like polenta should. So instead I wound up with a bowl of grits – still delicious, but certainly a different consistency. More on this later.
I decided I wanted to try making polenta, or grits, from scratch mostly to get an idea of how it’s done and for a better understanding of the food I eat. The process is fairly laborious and probably not really something I would do often, though the results were pretty fantastic. I have consistently had a kitchen full of corn for quite some time now, between getting it from my CSA and being unable to resist it at the local markets every week. So I’ve been looking for some creative outlets, and this little experiment here piqued my curiosity.
I will say one of the significant plus sides of a process like this is that you could really store the dried corn kernels for quite some time, provided you keep them in an air-tight container. So if you have a major surplus of corn and won’t be able to eat it all before it goes bad, drying and storing can be a good route to consider.
I did this over two days – the steps included cleaning the corn from the ears, drying the kernels, grinding kernels into a coarse meal, re-hydrating and cooking the meal in a double boiler, and of course eating.
Here’s how I did it.
I started with 6 ears of corn. Even though you’re drying the kernels out, you still want to start with the freshest stuff possible. Harvested within the past 24-48 hours is ideal.
1. Shuck the corn, remove as much silk as possible.
2. Break ears of corn in half for easy cutting; cut kernels off ears.
3. Drop kernels of corn into a large bowl, and with a wet hand run your fingers through the corner to remove any excess silk that you missed – it will stick to your hand. Wash it off and repeat if necessary until all silk is removed.
4. Dry the corn. I did this by spreading it in one layer on a large baking sheet, and leaving it in an oven at 180 F for about 8 hours. If you have a food dehydrator, use it.
5. Remove corn from the oven, it should be thoroughly dried and hardened. At this point, you can move the kernels to an air-tight container to store indefinitely, or in my case just overnight so I could get some sleep.
6. Pound corn in a mortar and pestle until it is a coarse meal – this will take some time and definitely some energy. I may be in the minority on this one but I personally enjoy getting a little workout when I’m playing with my food.
Once you’ve got all your kernels pounded down, you’re ready to actually cook it. You may choose to strain out the finest of the powder to reserve for a cornbread or something, but I didn’t bother. There are many options here for cooking the corn meal – I went with a double boiler because I wanted to cook it for some time to reduce as much as possible, but didn’t want to have to stand over it the entire time either. A slow cooker would probably work well too.
7. Assemble your double boiler – in my case I use the ghetto-rigged method of putting a large metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. This works just fine. If you have an actual double boiler, fantastic.
8. Add 4 cups of water to every 1 cup of corn meal and add to bowl. My 6 ears yielded about 1 cup, so I added 4 cups of water here. I also added 1/2 cup of heavy cream, 1/4 stick of butter, and some salt and pepper.
This may have been where I went wrong. I suspect that I added too much liquid, because after cooking it down for quite some time, it was still very runny. I probably would have had more success with the polenta actually setting if I had either used a bit less liquid (perhaps 3c water instead of 4), or if I had reduced it even longer.
9. Reduce at a simmer over double boiler for 60-90 minutes. Make sure to check your pot so the water doesn’t run out and you don’t scorch it, I had to refill mine once over the duration of the time.
10. If you are making grits, you’re done. Pour it into a bowl and enjoy while nice and warm, or store and re-heat for breakfast. If you are attempting polenta, pour it into a pan and refrigerate overnight. If you’ve got the right consistency, it should set overnight and when you are ready to serve it you can warm it up, or fry it in some oil.
So yeah, as I mentioned it’s quite a process and very time consuming. But the grits I made were some of the best I’ve ever had, and it was certainly cool to actually step through the process myself. I felt like I was channeling the ancestral Puebloans 1,000 years ago (whose homes I visited earlier in the summer) while I was pounding out the meal. Never mind the fact I was watching a soccer match on TV while doing so.
I peppered a bit of cayenne over top of a bowl and it was delicious. My final result gave me about 4 large servings worth of grits.
Between learning these techniques and the shiitake mushroom yield I am expecting soon, I’m thinking a food dehydrator purchase may be in my future sometime. It would certainly have made much shorter work of the process, and it would be really nice to have a stock of home-prepared corn and dried mushrooms to keep in my kitchen cupboards at all times.
Have you ever worked with dehydrating foods?
