You Don't Need To Spend An Hour Cooking Polenta: How To Do It Faster

Polenta is a creamy, savory, and comforting cornmeal foundation that's often topped with proteins, veggies, and sauces. While most polenta recipes, like this simple polenta, are a one-pot dish with a few ingredients, they require constant stirring and long cooking times. But, you don't need to spend an hour cooking polenta; cut cooking times in half with the help of baking soda.

Baking soda is an alkaline ingredient that reacts with the cell walls of corn in the polenta, breaking them down to speed up the cooking process. Once the barrier has broken, hot water can quickly infiltrate and gelatinize corn's starches into a creamy pot of polenta. To use baking soda as a softening agent, simply add a teaspoon in with the salt and polenta as you pour them into the boiling water, whisking to combine. Then you'll turn the heat to low and cover the polenta for five minutes. Give the pot a quick whisk before covering the polenta and letting it cook for an additional 25 minutes. At the end of the cooking period, you'll have clump-free, tender, and creamy polenta in half the time of a traditional recipe. Plus, it's a hands-off method that will allow you to focus your efforts on other dishes.

Want to make your polenta even more creamy and flavorful? Finish it off with parmesan, fresh cracked pepper, and a tablespoon of butter. Another decadent duo to enrich your polenta would be a spoonful of mascarpone and a drizzle of high-quality extra virgin olive oil.

Not only is baking soda the secret to quick-cooking polenta, its powers also extend to other one-pot dishes, baked goods, and even cleaning solutions. The cell walls of veggies, legumes, alliums, and fruit are also made of the same components as corn. So, if you're cooking a pot of dried beans from scratch, a teaspoon of baking soda will likewise cut cooking times significantly and ensure luxuriously pillowy, tender beans. Add a teaspoon of baking soda to the cooking stock for this classic broccoli cheddar soup for the creamiest results. Baking soda will also soften onions and garlic, so you could add a pinch to a pan of caramelized onions to reduce cooking times.

As its name implies, baking soda is also an important leavening agent for all kinds of baked goods, from bread to cake. Unlike baking powder, baking soda needs to be paired with an acidic ingredient to work its magic. So, it would work well in a buttermilk cornbread recipe or an olive oil cake with lemon juice and yogurt. We also use baking soda in this recipe for olive oil polenta cakes.

Baking soda's alkalinity presents a world of possibilities to help clean your kitchen. You can make your own all-purpose cleaner with vinegar, water, and a couple tablespoons of baking soda. A paste of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide will dissolve food stains on pots, pans, and baking trays.