As far as side dishes go, soft, golden polenta is about as good as it gets. I make it almost every week, so I’ve spent hours of my life stirring and stirring and stirring pots of the stuff. Until recently.

一天晚上，在浸泡燕麦片的燕麦片时，我有一个“尤里卡！”片刻。我可以以相同的方式浸泡传统玉米粥并缩短其冗长的烹饪时间吗？原来我可以！通过在早晨将沸水倒在玉米粥上，然后在工作日让它坐在柜台上，我将烹饪时间缩短到不到15分钟。浸泡过的玉米粥只需要偶尔搅拌，而质地和风味是传统方式煮熟的所有玉米粥 - 用来，丰富且令人满意的牙齿。

Food scientist Harold McGee explains it this way: With grains (like corn), it’s not heat, but rather the absorption of water that determines doneness.

In other words, when you cook grains, water has to penetrate their starchy center before they’re tender enough to eat. Soaking in hot water shortens the time it takes the water to penetrate, and that time is cut even further when you cook the soaked polenta with simmering chicken broth or water, like you do with risotto. So, instead of stirring polenta for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, as Italian tradition dictates, you can have it on your dinner table much, much quicker.

Polenta on a weeknight is now a delicious reality, minimal stirring required.

What exactly is polenta?

这是一个简单的问题，有一个复杂的答案。

让我们从玉米面开始，这是干玉米。It can be fine, medium, or coarse in texture and white, yellow, or blue in color.

Polenta is a type of cornmeal, and so are grits.To confuse matters more, both of those terms also refer to a finished dish. But there are a few key differences:

Grits are traditionally made from dent corn,a softer corn variety with a dent in the top of each kernel (hence its name).

Polenta is typically made from flint corn,a much harder variety than dent corn. Because it comes from harder corn, its granules retain their shape even after long cooking, giving polenta (the dish) a coarser texture and more rustic mouth-feel than grits.

就是说，一些生产商不根据这些定义标记甚至制造其玉米面产品。当我购买玉米粥时，我会寻找鲍勃的红磨坊的“玉米粒，也称为玉米粥”，它们的质地和风味都很棒（如果有些混乱的标签）。Alpina Savoie“玉米粥传统/媒介”是另一个绝佳选择。

避免使用“瞬间”或“快速烹饪”玉米粥，它们不会具有您想要的深玉米味和牙齿质地。