Pancetta and Hominy Polenta Recipe
By
Neal Fraser
Email
Chef Neal Fraser gave us this recipe. He suggested topping it with sautéed beef tenderloin, though it’s great with just about anything.
INGREDIENTS
- 2 ounces pancetta or applewood-smoked bacon, large dice
- 1/2 cup half-and-half or whole milk
- 3 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 cup polenta
- 1/3 cup drained canned golden hominy
- 1 cup (about 2 ounces) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
INSTRUCTIONS
- Place pancetta in a medium frying pan and cook over medium heat until it is golden brown and much of the fat has rendered, 8 to 10 minutes; remove cooked pancetta to a plate and set aside.
- Combine cream and chicken broth in a medium saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Slowly add polenta in a thin stream, whisking constantly until it is well incorporated. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring frequently, until polenta is creamy, thick, and no longer raw-tasting, 20 to 25 minutes.
- Mix in hominy, reserved cooked pancetta, and Parmigiano cheese. Just before serving, stir in butter and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
This recipe, while from a trusted source, may not have been tested by the CHOW food
team.
Cooked this per the instructions above. I may have gone another 5 or so minutes. The pancetta was a perfect compliment. It was great.
Don't see why not, though most grits in my experience take closer to four parts liquid than two. The Red Mule grits I mentioned would work I think, but as I said they're not "regular" grits, but more like polenta. If you follow the package instructions on about any other brand for liquid-to-grain ratio it oughta work. Might even be an improvement.
Has any one used regular hominy grits and how would one make it with this recipe??
This sounds delicious. I'm going to risk it for a special dinner in May. Probably I should see how it turns out for me first, huh? These reviews/comments are very helpful. md
I'm sorry, no insult intended but boiling smoked bacon to get the smoke flavor out seems kind of silly. Why not buy unsmoked bacon to begin with? Maybe I'm overlooking something. I don't care what anybody says, I've been making my polenta in the oven now for a while and I would dare anyone to tell the difference. I make it a lot more often now since I switched to this method.
Understating cooking time seems to be all too common with cornmeal recipes, seems to me. The instructions on my bag of Red Mule grits tells me they'll cook in 10-12 minutes, when they actually take about three times that long...and since they're really just a very coarse whole-grain polenta, I would assume that 35-40 minutes is what is really required for this polenta as well. I'm not sure why cooking times aren't being given accurately - do they think we'll be scared off by the prospect of standing over a pot for 40 minutes?
No, I haven't cooked this yet, but I'm about to...and yes, I am going to use pancetta, not bacon. I got some beautiful stuff at Surfas last week.
Has anyone cooked this yet? While the flavor turned out okay, I could not get the polenta to thicken enough. Well after 25 minutes had passed, it still was a bit soupy. Any thoughts here?
Interesting, monkeyerotica - I was thinking of using some smoked, dry-cured jowl bacon I brought back from Tennessee to get MORE smoked flavor in there. To my taste it takes an awful lot of bacony flavor to overpower good strong corn, but to each his or her own...
I'll give this a try. But I can't imagine substituting applesmoked bacon for pancetta. Wouldn't the smoke flavor overpower the rest of the ingredients? I've found that boiling the bacon THEN frying it manages to leach most of the smoke out while retaining much of the bacon flavor. Always up for a new way to do grits.