Cheesy Polenta Bowl with Spinach and Tomatoes
A creamy polenta bowl with cheese, spinach and some slow roasted sticky sweet tomatoes.
You’re probably super bored with all your carb ingredients or sides recently. Pasta, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash .. you’ve probably gone through them all and are hitting a roadblock in inspiration.
Look no further as here comes polenta!
What exactly is polenta?
First things first, polenta is a dish made out of the ingredient cornmeal. It’s mainly found in Northern Italy and can be used in a variety of ways including; in sauces, grilled, fried or baked, or in our case a porridge.
Although we’re hesitant to use that word, because let’s be honest, ‘porridge’ has a bad reputation. We can say that it’s not got the same texture at all and if done correctly should result in a rich creamy smooth result. Meaning you can use polenta as a replacement to mash in some cases.
Types of cornmeal
Cornmeal is essentially dried corn kernels that are ground up. This process usually grinds the kernel into three different textures: fine, medium, and coarse. Cornmeal can also be made from different types of corn kernels; white, blue, yellow.
What cornmeal to use when cooking?
Some recipes you may find online don’t actually specify what grind of cornmeal to use. Annoying, we know. In most cases, it’s best to go with medium or fine grind in your grain. But be weary that using a medium grind can sometimes leave some texture in your dish depending on how you cook it. So if you aren’t looking for said texture, opt for a fine grind in your cornmeal.
When coarse cornmeal is used in a dish that has a quicker cooking time on the stove top or in the oven, you may result in a gritty texture. Similar to sand some may say. So if using cornmeal in baking, fine grind is your best bet. Unless you’re making cornbread, you can probably experiment a little here .. but that’s for another post to come.
What kind of corneal for polenta?
For this dish, we like to use coarse cornmeal. This is all about slow cooking. We include our slow roasted tomatoes in the recipe here because they just compliment the cheesy polenta wonderfully. The sweetness in roasting those tomatoes slowly in the oven offsets the richness and creaminess of the polenta.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand, because you’re waiting for those babies to roast away in the oven you have plenty of time to cook your cornmeal. And this is why coarse cornmeal works best. Coarse cornmeal has a fairly long cook time before it starts to lose its grainy bite, and works best with polenta. You’ll find a lot of recipes that call for this.
Gluten & Wheat free
One more bonus we’d just like to add about this recipe, is that it welcomes people with food sensitivities. Cornmeal is free of gluten and wheat, making it safe for people with celiac disease. We’ve included some other benefits and how to adapt this meal easily to suit your dietary needs below.
What to eat with polenta?
This recipe calls for polenta to be the star. Although it is rather indulgent so best to serve as a snack or for lunch. We’ll be honest here, just this alone will most likely not satisfy you enough for dinner.
You can also opt out of adding the cheese (read how to make it vegan with that cheesy taste below) to serve as a mash or base to stews and casseroles.
You can of course keep this vegetarian and top with some of your favourite grilled vegetables. We’ve incorporated baby spinach in our creamy polenta bowl by gently wilting it in at the end with our cheeses. We chose baby spinach in our polenta bowl as that is most commonly found in supermarkets. However, if you do manage to find fresh spinach leaves, these would be preferable. It can massively help elevate this dish and provide another layer of texture that might be needed for this bowl!
Cheesy polenta: choosing your cheese
What’s great about this dish is that it is suitable for people with ibs or those who are lactose intolerant. The cheeses used in this recipe are naturally lower in lactose and so as stated by healthline “can often be tolerated by people with lactose intolerance”.
Of course, if this isn’t a worry for you, you can upgrade your polenta bowl with a good luxurious cheese. Simply replace the amount of cheddar cheese stated in the recipe with your choice of cheese. For softer cheeses, you may want to add a little more (50g or so), this allows the flavour to shine! Why not try:
- Blue cheese – for an intense creamy flavour
- Manchego – for a subtle buttery flavour
- Roquefort – a type of blue cheese but made from sheep’s milk
Vegan polenta bowl
If you’re thinking, ‘ooo this sounds right up my street but what a shame I don’t eat dairy or are vegan’, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. All you have to do is opt out of adding cheese and substitute butter for oil. You’ll still reach a creamy result as that naturally occurs from polenta but adding the oil will help you get there. If you feel like you’re missing out on some of that creaminess the cheese may bring, feel free to add some non dairy milk, this also will help to loosen the polenta a bit.
Vegan Cheesy Polenta Bowl
If you did still want that cheesy taste, look into investing in nutritional yeast. This is vegan friendly and provides a nutty cheesy flavour that we’re aiming for. What’s more nutritional yeast is free of gluten, soy and sugar meaning it’s great for those with food sensitivities.
Start with using 65g of nutritional yeast in your polenta and if you feel like you need to add more for a more cheesy nutty flavour, by all means add it in!
| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | 30-40 minutes |
| Passive Time | 2 hours |
| Servings |
people
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- 100 g coarse cornmeal or polenta
- 700 ml vegetable stock use bouillin powder as an alternative
- 250-300 g baby spinach
- 50 g parmesan
- 60 g cheddar cheese
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 portion slow roasted tomatoes
Ingredients
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- NOTE: Before you start on your polenta, you should have already got your tomatoes on the go in the oven. We recommend starting on your polenta when your tomatoes are just approaching the 3/4 time mark (about 1 hour 30 min of the tomatoes being in the oven).
- Bring a large pan with your stock in to a boil. If using powdered stock, prepare with boiling water in the pan.
- Once your stock is boiling, whisk in your cornmeal or polenta. You need to whisk constantly here to prevent the polenta from turning lumpy.
- Reduce the heat and stir regularly for 30 minutes or so until the polenta has thickened and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan.
- Remove from heat and whisk in the butter, parmesan and cheddar cheese. Fold in the baby spinach leaves.
- Divide the polenta into four bowls and by now your tomatoes should be out of the oven. Top your polenta bowls with some delicious sticky sweet slow roasted tomatoes.
