Pop Quiz:
If you could only eat one thing for the rest of you life what would it be: sweet and creamy breakfast polenta with milk or (oh my gracious heavens) sweet and creamy fried polenta bars with blackberry meyer lemon jam?
No contest. Fried polenta with blackberry jam every day, all day. Let’s do this.
Remember yesterday I told you about Vanilla Brown Sugar Breakfast Polenta? That was just a dirty trick to make you have enough leftover polenta to make the real deal: fried polenta.
A quick heads up: this recipe involves butter and results in an almost French Toast-ish, outta this world breakfast. If you’re not ready for that… completely understandable… you might want to sit this one out. I won’t judge.
Fried Breakfast Polenta
(Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!)
So here’s what you’re gonna do:
1. Whip up a batch of Vanilla Brown Sugar Polenta.
2. Have some for breakfast, rub it on your face… do whatever you wanna do with most of it, but just most of it. Continue to simmer the polenta that you aren’t going to serve for breakfast. This will help more water evaporate from the polenta and help your bars better stick together when they’re cold, sliced and ready for the skillet. I had about 2 cups of cooked, creamy polenta left over after breakfast.
3. Line a loaf pan with plastic wrap. If you’re working with more polenta, you might want to use two loaf pans.
4. Spread the cooled polenta into the lined loaf pan and cover by folding over the overhanging flaps of plastic wrap.
5. Place in the fridge to cool and set overnight.
6. Sleep. Yawn. Wake up smiling, thinking about fried polenta.
7. Remove the chilled plastic wrapped polenta from the loaf pan. Unwrap. You should have a thin (about 1 inch tall) brick of cold polenta.
8. Use a big ol’ knife to cut the polenta into bars or squares… whatever you like.
9. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and a splash of vegetable (or grapeseed) oil in a skillet over medium heat.
10. Place 1/2 cup all-purpose flour in a bowl.
11. Dip the cold polenta bars in the flour, coating all sides.
12. Placed dredged polenta in hot, buttered skillet. I managed about 6 or 8 bars at a time in my skillet.
13. Flip and turn the bars as they begin to brown.
14. Brown all sides. Sometimes that means turning the polenta bars on their heads to cook.
15. Once cooked, remove from hot pan onto an oven proof plate. Place in a very low (tops 200 degrees F) oven to stay warm while you cook the rest of the polenta.
16. Serve with maple syrup, fancy jam or powdered sugar.
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
Mmm mini little french toasty polenta morsels… sounds good to me!
That looks amazing. I am definitely going to try this as soon as I get my hands on some polenta!
I’ve never had the desire to try polenta, but now I do!! Thanks for opening my eyes!
What a dirty, most amazing trick you pulled on us! These polenta breakfast sticks look so delicious. Wow, I’m at a loss for words. Yum: that’s the refrain that’s stuck on repeat in my head.
Oh my, you are the breakfast goddess! This looks unreal.
Oh Joy, you are pure genius. I am running to the local Italian market tomorrow to get some quality polenta so I can have both of these for breakfast this week.
This sounds like the perfect Sunday breakfast
Indeed, I agree, this breakfast sounds superb! Can I come over for breakfast? mmmmmm…
Your polenta looks delicious! I grew up eating polenta as my family is Italian, but we never had it for breakfast. Great idea!
Dreamy. I can only imagine how this would taste with coffee. OK here’s my question: in one of ur posts (i dont remember which) you had a picture of ur french press, but the confusing thing is that it looked like you had added milk (or cream, or whatever) inside the press. In fact you were pressing it down in the picture. The thing is, I add milk in my cup after i pour out the coffee. So how do you make ur coffee? What I would LOVe is if you could do a post about coffee…what u use, how you make it, etc etc. THANK YOU!
I like polenta so much but I never ate it with jam, it’s always with salty things. I din’t know that could be. I must try.
Holy smacks!!!!!
You’ve inspired me to give polenta another chance; I think it’s that butter bath they grill in….
This looks like a perfect breakfast, but anything fried looks good to me!
Dude. I mean… for real. For real?
I love polenta, it’s so versatile.
I usually use flour mixed with powdered cinnamon to coat the polenta; it gives it an even more interesting flavour…
I just went from “polenta-in-the-back-of-my-mind,” to “I-need-fried-polenta-for-breakfast-TOMORROW.” Thanks for sharing, Joy!
this is the second mention of fried polenta I’ve seen in as many weeks…. so I think it’s a sign. thanks!
WOW they look so good!
The jam is calling my name. Love this breakfast!
I’d love to figure out how to make the jam from scratch – and fried polenta – for breakfast – OH MY. That sounds fantastic.
that’s just like my mom’s fried “mush”. made with cornmeal, formed in bread loaf pan, and sliced and fried. it’s some tasty stuff all buttered up and covered with thick King’s syrup. mmm mmm!
Hello,
i absolutely LOVE the look of your food.
i was just wondering if it was possible to get the weight of a “stick of butter”?
thanks a lot!! keep up the awesome baking and writing!!
xox.
One stick of butter is 8 TBSP, if that helps.
What a fabulous idea!!!!!!!!!! YUM!
That dish – my grandma / Oma had a set of those – My Mom has then now and I’ll inherit them someday. I’ve never eaten Polenta…..thanks for the ideas.
We can taste it now!!! So many yums!
My mom made this for us when we were kids, only she called it fried mush. I love fried mush/polenta with a little syrup, and my kids also love it! Thanks for the new flavors!
That jam (and you use the right amount!) looks like it would be good on just about anything!
What a great breakfast treat!!
I woke up in a pool of what looked to be blood, but I realized it was blackberry jam. I’m one of those that rubbed it all over his face… the things you make me do Joy…. me love you long time!
That looks sooo good. I haven’t tried polenta before but I sure have been meaning to. This might give me the push I need.
Joy, you ROCK!!!!!! The vanilla brown sugar polenta was to die for! Today I woke up with visions of fried polenta so therefore ran a little longer to appease the guilt of eating something so deliciously sinful. Well, as it turns out I shouldn’t have. My visions of friend polenta soon turned to a messy, horrible nightmare. You see yesterday after having my first taste of heaven I proceeded to make some bread and between this and that I didn’t think twice of the polenta. I figured I would put it away later, after I was done with the baking and cleaning up. BIG MISTAKE! The polenta has solidified and using a spoon to scoop it onto the container, I could already tell It was too late. This morming I took it out and cut it into bars. They were all mushy and fell apart. But I figured I could at least salvage six bars. got them on the pan but when it was time to turn them they fell apart. I ended up with fried polenta mush:( So everyone reading this pls put away your polenta as soon as it has cooled to room temp otherwise you will be eating fried polenta mush like me. One thing that did bring me joy was Joy’s Coffee!! Still enjoying it now. Thanks Joy! Love Ya!!
Thank you for this recipe- I’ll have to try it soon! My grandmother always sings the praises of fried mush, but due to my mother-in-law’s extremely heavy cooking habits I HATE POLENTA. Nevertheless, this sounds amazingly good. You may convert me yet.
I had the same problem as Lidia–woke up with visions of fried polenta, and I couldn’t make my bars stick together! I ended up with a horrible, horrible mess and a slightly floury, warmed version of what I ate yesterday.
What can we do? Freeze the polenta for a few minutes before slicing? Wait two days so it has time to set? Give up?
Fried polenta with jam sounds like a nice breakfast!
Thank you so much for this recipe! I have been trying to convince my cousin to try polenta and thus far she has gotten away without trying it…I think this will be the recipe to change her mind. It looks truly amazing.
Joy,
Like Lidia and Kirsten, my vanilla polenta didn’t stick together in the pan, and I ate friend polenta mush this morning. It tasted really good though, which makes me want to fix this problem.
Probably, there’s too much liquid in the polenta. Do you have any advice as to which point in the recipe we could cut some out?
I’m sorry some of you had trouble with making Fried Polenta mush. That’s totally not cool. The trick with getting the bars to stay together is having less moisture in them. When you cook up a batch of the breakfast polenta, maybe serve yourself up a bowl, and continue simmering the polenta to see to it that more water gets evaporated. When frying them, I very delicately flipped and turned them. A little bit of care and work.. I know, but totally worth it!
Joy, the recipe for Vanilla Brown Sugar Polenta is lost — and it sounds so yummy! Please post it again!
Joy – Yes please post the recipe for Vanilla Brown Sugar Polenta again. I’m not sure breakfast will be the same until I try this… or after I try this.
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