1. To make wet polenta: put water and salt in a pan and bring to boil. Pour in polenta and stir well. Use 5 parts water to 1 part polenta.
2. Bring mixture to boil and cook for 5-10min, stirring every so often to make sure polenta doesn’t catch or go lumpy. Be careful when polenta is boiling as it can bubble volcanically and spit. The polenta is ready when texture becomes creamy. Season well with salt and pepper. You can add cheese, cream or butter to give it a richer flavour, if you like.
3. To make fried polenta slices, use basic method to make wet version but use 1 part polenta to 4 parts water.
4. Grease a roasting tin with a little oil and add polenta. Wet back of a spoon and spread polenta evenly.
5. The polenta will firm up once completely cold. Turn tray upside down on a board to release polenta. Cut into equal sized slices.
6. Heat a frying pan over a high heat and drizzle in some oil.
7. Lay polenta slices, a couple at a time, into pan and cook for roughly 3min, until undersides are lightly browned. Flip over and brown on other side.
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Oak chopping board, Lakeland. White China bistro bowl, White China tea plate, White ceramic bistro plate, Sophie Conran. Easy Induction frying pan (20cm), Montreux saucepan (2 litres, 18cm), Kuhn Rikon UK. Classic glass bowl (1 litre), Classic glass measure jug (1 litre), Classic rectangular non-stick metal roasters, Pyrex. Loft 24-piece dinner set, Pro chef’s knife, Zwilling J.A. Henckels. Wooden spoon, glass ramekin, oil pourer, palette knife, chef's own.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
