How to Make Fluffy Baked Polenta with Red Sauce

[Music] the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the VFW dates back to 1899 and today there are over 1 point 7 million members and the most popular activity at the VFW well is hanging out at the canteen where they serve local subs and grub and at the VFW Post in Cranston Rhode Island Mike's kitchen is famous for their polenta and we took a trip there to learn how it's made that's right so I have to say I'd never expected to have one of the best italian-american meals of my life at a VFW in Cranston Rhode Island but there it was my club Bazaar has been the chef at Mike's kitchen for over 30 years and one of the true standouts on the menu is the polenta it arrives at the table is a big thick yellow brick coated in red sauce you think this is gonna be a lead sinker but then you cut into it and it's light and fluffy get a little sweetness from the cornmeal a little tangy news from the cheese and it's just some of the most amazing point that I've ever had so here in front of you I have two products one is labeled polenta and the other is simply labeled cornmeal now if you touch both of them you can see that the polenta is much coarser than the cornmeal what we found through testing is that we wanted the finer grind on the corn milks that absorb more moisture during cooking and was better able to hold that brick shape that we were after to be more like Mike so we're going to make polenta not use polenta all right okay so let's start cooking I have four tablespoons of butter that I've melted down and two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil okay to that I'm going to add two smashed garlic cloves and we're just gonna lightly toast those cloves and get it nice and brown and we just want to really perfume the oil almost give it like a garlic kiss and I know she using butter and olive oil and why is that we like the flavor of the combination of fats okay this will cook for about four minutes until nicely toasted and infuses that oil mixture and you smash the garlic rather than mince it because if you mince the garlic it would release more flavor right it'll be a little bit too sharp and a little too aggressive for this dish just a kiss okay okay Joey you could see that the garlic is nicely browned it's no good yeah and so we're just going to remove that and you just save this for later I eat that get alone on your couch or ward off vampires and now we're going to add seven cups of water one and a half teaspoons of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper we'll just bring this mixture to a boil before we whisk in the cornmeal water is boiling so we can go ahead and slowly whisk in the cornmeal it's important to add this cornmeal in a slow steady stream because you don't want it to clump up whisking constantly I'm just gonna kind of shake it in I'm actually surprised at how fragrant that water smells I mean with the garlic and the pepper and a little bit of that butter you can really smell it welcome to flavor country we have this all Whiston and we can turn the heat up and bring it to a boil and that happens pretty quickly okay and now we can reduce the heat to medium-low we won't let this simmer for about 20 minutes during that time the moisture will drive off and it will get thicker and the polenta will get tender but you definitely want to stay here and stir this every few minutes because it does have a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pot all right joy you can see that the points is thickened up nicely mm-hmm so we're ready to go ahead and kill the heat and we could stir in one and a half cups of grated pecorino cheese again to be like Mike we had to add an ample amount of cheese and we wanted the sharpness of the cheese to really come through and then we're also going to stir in a quarter cup of half-and-half now we'll just whisk those two in until combined oh now that's looking good you know Julia when we first had this polenta Mike's kitchen we assumed we swore that there were eggs in it because it was so light and fluffy okay so we actually called the restaurant and said hey I've got a food allergy to eggs hardcore journalism yeah these are the lengths we go yes Brian did you use a different voice - yeah change my voice when I go in there I wear disguise instead it was safe so these are the links we go to to figure out a recipe all right we're ready to go ahead and drop it into this 8-inch square baking pan that we've greased lightly so Joey if you want to scrape it while I hold sure all right no pull into left behind no lumps either no lumps good job Howie arms done all done great okay so we'll let this chill on the counter we're about two hours to come to room two then we're dropping the refrigerator for about three hours to chill fully because he wanted to set up like a nice thick brick while the point is chilling we could turn our attention to the sauce and the sauce in Mike's kitchen is very smooth slightly thick and a little bit sweet really compliments to pull into well like most sauces we're going to start with onions as the base we're gonna heat up one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil from medium heat and when that's nice and shimmering we're going to do something a little bit unusual we're going to add one onion that's only been halved not diced we're gonna add that cut side down in the oil and we're gonna cook that until it's nicely Brown which takes about four minutes this is just going to impart a little bit of caramelization from the onion but again like the polenta with the garlic we're not trying to overwhelm the sauce with onion flavor while the onion continues to brown we're gonna turn our attention to the other sauce ingredients and for this sauce we're using two canned tomato products the first is can tomato sauce which is great because it comes with its own blend of spices and herbs it has a nice flavor however alone it was too assertive so we needed to thin it out with something so we decided to puree 1 can of whole peeled tomatoes so we'll add this to the blender that's a small camp 14-ounce can write 14 and a half ounce can and we'll just puree this for about 30 seconds okay so that tomatoes are nicely pureed to turn our attention back to the onions and I want to show you how nicely brown they are oh yeah okay now we can go ahead and add all of our tomato products the tomato sauce you want to grab a blender there that's a hot pot the pureed tomatoes and next we're going to add 1/2 cup of grated pecorino cheese same cheese that we have in the polenta to that I'm going to add one and a half tablespoons of sugar now this is kind of unusual for us is we typically don't add sugar to tomato sauces but again like my kids tomato sauce is a little bit sweet and it actually really works well with the polenta here so all right I'm gonna trust you 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder and three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the reason why we add the oil here at the end is because we really want to taste it and we're going to give that a stir just to incorporate all those ingredients and then we'll bring it up to a boil then reduce the heat to medium-low let it simmer until it thickens up nicely and the flavors meld and that takes about 15 minutes [Music] okay Julia here we have our chill pill enta I want to touch it - oh it's pretty hard yeah very solid so if you remove this plastic and we're going to turn it out onto our cutting knife we need to cut it into six equal portions if Willa okay family need to cut this into our 6 equal portions we'll start off by splitting it once down the middle and give that a 90-degree turn and they'll go into thirds here you could use a ruler if you wanted to but I am super stubborn I refused to okay we could just transfer the polenta to a greased piece of parchment paper so that is a portion size right right and you are more than welcome to have two of you don't think that's enough no way when you called it a brick earlier now I see what you're talking about okay so we're going to blast this in a 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes just to heat it all the way through [Music] okay Julia here we go well they held their shape which is impressive and that's the most important part of the rest of it because a lot of times you bake polenta and they sort of sorted into groups on the platter it turns into a big pile of cement mm-hmm not the brick okay so can I portion somehow for you please is this enough here what is good for me yeah and then at Mike's they like sauce they do huh I like a lot a sauce ooh my fork kind of just glided right through it mmm that is so good it's one of my favorites oh wow taste the tankyness of the cheese yeah it's so fluffy that is something so to make this Cranston VFW style polenta start with regular cornmeal and cook it in water lightly seasoned with butter olive oil kits of garlic at a decent amount of pecorino romano along with a little half-and-half and let it set up in the fridge for at least three hours finally slice the Flint into bricks and bake it for half an hour and serve with a simple yet slightly sweet tomato sauce and there you have it from Cook's Country a new recipe for fluffy baked polenta you can find this recipe all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website cookscountry.com this is delicious thanks for watching cooks country from America's Test Kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say I now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 43,434

Rating: 4.9162302 out of 5

Keywords: polenta, baked polenta recipe, polenta with red sauce, cook's country baked polenta, baked polenta with red sauce, cook's country polenta with red sauce, polenta recipes, fluffy polenta with red sauce recipe, recipe, how to make baked polenta, how to make polenta, red sauce, recipes, cook's country

Id: kO9P89V9_qY

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2019