Easy Imperfect Instant Pot Polenta
For when you just don't have time for all that stirring
A well-stocked refrigerator and freezer help me eat more vegetables. I spend at least one afternoon most weekends cooking things for the week ahead and I’m not usually making fully formed entrees. It’s always components—a pot of beans, blanched greens, roasted vegetables, tofu bites, a grain, salad dressing, and more.
I want to open my refrigerator later in the week and feel like it’s my own private fast-casual restaurant, a veritable Chipotle or DIG suited to my own tastes. This is what makes consistent home-cooked meals realistic for me. I am definitely not making everything I eat from scratch every time I’m hungry.
The grain I made last weekend was polenta. Earlier in my food life, I romanticized polenta, taking pleasure in the traditional method of stirring the bubbling cauldron of ground corn and water with a wooden spoon for the 30 to 45 minutes it takes to become luxurious and creamy.
I don’t know what to tell you: I drank wine back then, dilly-dallied a lot in the kitchen, and prided myself on making polenta the traditional time-sucking way.
Eventually, I switched to the mostly unattended oven method. This works, imperfectly, but it still takes a long time.
More recently, I started making all my polenta in the Instant Pot. This works, imperfectly, but it takes only about 15 minutes from start to finish.
I would actually prefer buying supermarket tubes of polenta, but I live with an environmentalist who cannot abide the plastic packaging. If you have no such household prohibitions and a food budget that allows you to spend a little more for convenience, buy it!
Tubes of supermarket polenta have very few ingredients and are minimally processed compared to most other packaged foods. Plus, a tube of polenta can definitely prevent an unplanned takeout or delivery order. Just add tomato sauce and salad.
Most importantly, ready-made polenta provides an instant foundation for a mountain of vegetables. Consider this newsletter “to be continued” because next week I am going to share a simple recipe for beets seasoned like Italian sausage that, together with their greens and a pile of polenta, makes for a meal worthy of Sunday supper.
Easy Imperfect Instant Pot Polenta
Serves 4, doubles easily, freezes perfectly
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup polenta (160 grams1)
3 cups water2
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
Add the olive oil to the inner pot, and swirl it around to coat the bottom. Add the polenta, water, nutritional yeast, salt, and garlic powder and whisk to combine.
Seal the lid, and cook on high pressure for 10 minutes. Release the pressure and, using pot holders, move the inner pot to a heat-safe surface.
Holding the pot firmly with one potholder, use a wooden spoon to scrape up the stuck bits on the bottom. There will be a lot of them. You’ll need to scrape vigorously! They will be a little brown. Once you’ve gotten most of them, use a whisk to make everything smooth and creamy.
Serve immediately if you like or (my preference) pour it into a small shallow dish of some kind. (I like a ⅛ sheet pan3—these are perfect for this and have endless uses. Consider picking up a few.)
Give it at least two hours in the refrigerator to firm up and become sliceable. Overnight is better. Cut it into portions and freeze for up to 4 weeks.
I am going to give you weights when I find it easier to weigh an ingredient. If you want weights for everything, let me know.
Most other recipes for Instant Pot polenta call for much more water—at least another full cup. I’m sure this is because those other recipe writers just don’t trust you to keep a hold of yourself when you open the pot and there’s some polenta stuck to the bottom. But 4 cups of water makes for soup, not polenta. I believe in you. Remember: When you open the pot nothing has gone wrong. Stir and scrape hard. Or, again, buy a tube of polenta.
I feel compelled to tell you if you buy these or anything I link to I do not get a commission or fee or anything. I’m sharing stuff that I like and use. Do I look like a woman who was ever able to adequately monetize her food writing?
Yes to weights! Thank you!
I want weights for everything! 🏋️♂️