This fried cornmeal mush recipe is the perfect Midwest breakfast. Delicious firm cornmeal (or you might call it polenta) is lightly fried in butter and drizzled with maple syrup. It’s so incrediblysimple and totally delicious.
Have you ever heard of mush?
Or what about polenta?
It’s the same thing but where it’s different is in the way it’s prepared and the way it’s eaten.
Growing up in Ohio we always gently fried it in butter and served it with maple syrup for dipping or drizzling.
It was the perfect side dish for dinner, breakfast for dinner, or even a fast and easy dinner for one.
I have always loved it because it’s the perfect pairing of sweet and savory and can be ready in just 20 minutes.
Fried cornmeal mush is cornmeal made into a thick porridge, set up and cooled, sliced, and then lightly pan-fried in butter.
If you don’t like butter you can use bacon fat or your oil of choice.
It’s a very southern and midwest dish that takes me right back home with every single bite!
Looking for a different but similar Southern dish? Try these easy grit cakes!
How is mush different than polenta?
Polenta and cornmeal mush are the same thing but typically served in very different ways.
Oftentimes polenta is made into a thick porridge and then mixed with savory items like herbs, spices, and cheese. Then it’s usually served with roasted tomatoes or topped with cooked meats.
Mush is typically eaten in the fried sliced format and served with a sweet dipping sauce like maple syrup.
It is also common to fry up polenta like mush but instead of serving it with maple syrup, it is instead served with warmed marinara sauce.
Where can I find prepared polenta or mush?
If you’re looking for the preformed logs of polenta you can typically find them in 2 different areas of the grocery store.
The first area is over by the pasta, rice, and gnocchi aisle. It is typically shelf stable so you’ll find it in a plastic roll on the shelf.
If you don’t see it on the shelf it can also sometimes be found over by where you find fresh pasta or egg roll wrappers.
What do I serve with fried cornmeal?
Fried cornmeal mush can be served alone with maple syrup or as a piece to a full breakfast.
Growing up, we would often eat it served alongside sausage or bacon and a few fried eggs.
It’s a great substitute for potatoes, pancakes, French toast, or waffles.
I love serving it with sausage because I love that sweet and savory combination.
What does fried cornmeal taste like?
It tastes very mildly of corn as it’s just dried corn kernels that have been ground into a fine powder.
It’s slightly sweet (naturally from the corn) but overall very mild in flavor.
How do I store fried cornmeal mush?
If you don’t eat all your mush in one sitting it can be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
I usually just reheat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds to warm it back up.
Love this fried cornmeal mush recipe?
Why not try a few of my other tasty breakfast recipes?
Chorizo Cotija Guacamole Toast
Blackberry Lemon Dutch Baby
2 Ingredient Cinnamon Roll Wrapped Sausages
Cranberry Apple Yogurt Parfait
Fried Cornmeal Mush
Author: Brandy O’Neill – Nutmeg Nanny
This fried cornmeal mush recipe is the perfect Midwest breakfast. Delicious firm cornmeal (or you might call it polenta) is lightly fried in butter and drizzled with maple syrup. So incrediblysimple and totally delicious.
Southern-cuisine expert and cookbook author Diana Rattray has created more than 5,000 recipes and articles in her 20 years as a food writer. Cornmeal mush is a Southern favorite—a combination of cornmeal and water or milk, cooked on the stove until it has a creamy consistency.
Commercial mush, sold in bricks in supermarkets — and wonderful for breakfast — has a heavy texture and an assertive corn flavor. Homemade polenta has a creamier, more delicate texture and a noticeably sweeter flavor because of the longer cooking time. Italians say true polenta has a more interesting texture, too.
Mush is a type of cornmeal pudding (or porridge) which is usually boiled in water or milk. It is often allowed to set, or gel into a semisolid, then cut into flat squares or rectangles, and pan fried. Usage is especially common in the eastern and southeastern United States.
Cornmeal mush will keep in the refrigerator for quite some time. I've stretched it for more than a week and it has still be perfect! Store it in an airtight container. I just reheat individual servings in the microwave.
Aside from being delicious, corn mush is also a nutritious dish. Cornmeal is rich in fiber and essential vitamins and minerals, making it a healthy addition to any diet. It is also gluten-free, making it an excellent alternative for those with gluten intolerance.
Call it cornmeal porridge, polenta, grits, cou cou, mamaliga, or l'escaoutoun; these cornmeal mushes are produced and consumed in hundreds of ways in their respective regions. Some are sweet, some are savory, and some are both.
Grits: Grits are a type of cornmeal mush that originated with Native Americans and is still widely consumed across the southern United States today. Grits are most commonly served as breakfast or a side dish to other meals. Similar to cornmeal, grits are made from dried and ground corn but are usually a coarser grind.
What makes polenta different from cornmeal? Polenta and cornmeal are almost exactly the same product, except for one thing: the consistency of the grain. Polenta is much more coarsely ground, which makes the end product less mushy, and it has a little more bite to it than cornmeal.
Corn, cornmeal and cornmeal mush came from the Indigenous people of Mesoamerica, who called it maize. For them, it was both sacred food and daily sustenance. The Mesoamericans were growing, drying and grinding corn for millennia.
Mush is a thick, soft paste. The brown mush in the fridge is some veg soup left over. If you describe something such as a film or book as mush, you mean that it is very sentimental. He calls the film "a trite, sentimental puddle of mush".
It is a refrigerated item with a deliciously creamy texture and outstanding nutritional value. If you are going to heat it, you will first need to transfer MUSH into microwave safe bowl or a pot for the stove, and then you can heat the product in brief increments until it is heated to your liking.
Yes, you should be able to freeze corn meal mush. Just package in amounts that you would use for one meal. Putting freezer paper or wax paper in between slices of mush would enable you to separate those slices to fry more easliy.
The black specks are simply naturally dark pieces of the pericarp (skin) of the corn, where the tip of the kernel attaches to the cob. The color of the specks will vary by crop and year. They are the same as those commonly seen in hard taco shells, corn or tortilla chips, cornmeal, and natural whole corn products.
When it comes to mush, however—made just like grits but with their finer counterpart, cornmeal—it's another story. Mush can be cooked up and fried, but our recipe makes a soft breakfast porridge that has the creamy, beaded texture of cream of wheat and the bright, thrilling taste of heirloom corn.
Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas ('pan tenderloin' in English; compare Panhas), is a traditional mush of fried pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices.
Ready-to-eat oats are different than traditional oatmeal in that they are never cooked. At MUSH, we soak old fashioned oats in almond, coconut, or oat milk. The resulting product is just as easy to digest as traditional oatmeal but is more nutrient dense. We haven't cooked off the vitamins and minerals.
According to the late Professor Don Yoder, the dean of Pennsylvania German folk-life studies, “mush” is an Americanism for “porridge” and the first documented use of the term is in1671.
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