If You Love Grits, Polenta Deserves a Spot in Your Kitchen: 3 Recipes

If you grew up with a bowl of grits on the table, polenta will feel familiar from the first spoonful. Both start from ground corn and both cook slowly into something creamy, but polenta is made with yellow corn instead of the hominy often used for traditional grits, which gives it its golden color. In Northern Italy it’s a cold-weather staple, served soft straight from the pot or left to set and then sliced. These three recipes show just how many directions it can take.

Taragna Polenta comes from the mountains of Valtellina and the valleys around Bergamo and Brescia, where it’s made with a mix of cornmeal and buckwheat flour. The buckwheat gives it a darker color and an earthy flavor, while cheese melted into the pot makes it rich and stretchy. In the mountains it’s often a meal on its own, though it also holds its own next to braised meats and sausages. It’s the polenta to try if you think you already know what polenta tastes like.

Pro tip: if you can’t find the Alpine cheeses used in Lombardy, a good melting cheese like fontina makes a solid stand-in. Buckwheat flour is easy to find in the baking aisle or online.

Rustic Polenta Crostini turn polenta into something you can pick up with your hands. Once cooked, the polenta sets in a mold until firm, then gets cut into thick slices and grilled until marked and crisp at the edges. Each slice becomes a base for cured meats, cheeses, or vegetables, with three topping ideas to start from. Set them out before dinner and watch them disappear.

Pro tip: short on time? The precooked polenta logs sold in most supermarkets slice and grill beautifully, and leftover polenta works just as well.

Creamy Polenta Soup turns polenta into a velvety soup, made with instant polenta and finished with cream and Parmigiano Reggiano. On top goes the part that makes it memorable: shallots and Brussels sprouts cooked with brown sugar and honey until glossy and caramelized. The contrast between the mellow soup and the sweet, savory vegetables makes every spoonful a little different. It’s a light dinner for a cold night, or a starter that would fit right in on a holiday menu.

Pro tip: make a double batch of the glazed shallots and Brussels sprouts. They’re just as good on their own as a side dish for roasts and holiday dinners.