Cornmeal Recipes Please

[nomadmom]

I have a big bag of cornmeal I'd like to use up. What can I make besides tamale pie, cornbread or pancakes (already had our fill of those)?

[Llyra]

I use it instead of breadcrumbs, to stretch ground beef for meatloaf. You can also use it to coat chicken for frying or baking. You can experiment with making corn tortillas. You can also make cornmeal mush, and serve it up with honey or maple syrup, and generous dollops of cream. YUM! If you do that, though, you might find my kids showing up at the door all like .

[is it puppies?]

polenta! it is my fave! there are a lot of different recipes but basically it's thicker cornmeal, and it can be served a number of ways usually as a starchy side. you can find recipes that are as fancy or plain as you like for even just preparing it- using just water or cream or fats and seasonings or even more like a casserole with bits of stuff like ham or mushroom and baked in a dutch oven.
usually we just have a very plain recipe, like cook as cereal but a bit thicker and then bake or fry to make it more solid.
two that we have done are cut in slices and fried in bacon grease, served with bacon and onions (yes not so healthy, but my g-ma used to use plain old lard!) and what we do mostly is serve it dressed as pasta, with a chunky veggie tomato sauce and cheese.
it can also be served as a dessert made with cream and topped with more cream and fruit or such.

[blumooned]

We put it in our pizza crust dough. Sub ~1/3 of the flour for cornmeal. We dust the bottom of the prepared crust in it too - gives it a nice crunchy texture.

[Kelilah]

Green tomatoes are everywhere right now - fry 'em up! Fried green tomatoes are the bee's knees and an excellent way to use cornmeal. If you just use cornmeal and no flour, they'll be super crispy and delicious.

[cristeen]

I loved getting cornmeal mush for breakfast as a kid because i knew the next day's breakfast would be fried cornmeal mush!!

Corn tortillas are not made w standard cornmeal, FYI. They're made w a very finely ground corn flour (masa harina).

Hushpuppies is the other thing that comes to mind.

[nomadmom]

I guess I should have mentioned that I'm vegetarian. Thanks for all the ideas. I make pizza dough regularly, and never would have thought to add cornmeal so that's a good idea.

I've never tried fried green tomatoes or polenta (is it as time-consuming as it seems?), but always read how good they are so maybe I should have a go.

I had thought of corn tortillas, but then looked up a recipe and saw that I'd need masa harina.

The mush sounds good -- will try that. Ooo, hushpuppies! Haven't had those in years. Yum.

Keep the ideas coming. It's a *big* bag of cornmeal!

[is it puppies?]

http://www.recipetrove.com/component...494/Itemid,26/

this polenta recipe looks fairly standard! I would just cool in the pot.

[provocativa]

google spoonbread recipes- it's like custard cornbread. i like the joy of cooking recipe. you can use it to bread and fry anything, just dip in beaten eggs. come to think of it, you can deep fry hard-boiled eggs this way. also indian pudding is a molasses-cornmeal spoonbread (my recipe is from an old LLL cookbook). what about corn dogs? when i was a vegetarian i loved those morningstar farms ones, which are really expensive for a family. i make spoonbread casseroles, too- with sauteed shrooms and spinach, or broccoli, onion, cheese casserole, but with cornbread/polenta instead of rice. you can make cornmeal biscuits, and use part regular flour.