All products featured on Bon Appétit are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
I look at shelf-stable tubes of polenta and only see the paths not taken toward deliciousness. They showcase the exact opposite of what usually goes into great polenta: coarsely ground cornmeal for maximum texture, incorporating butter or other dairy from the start, plenty of salt, and finishing it, in most cases, with a decent amount of cheese like Parmesan.
Yet senior test kitchen editor Jesse Szewczyk recently took one of those pallid lumps and coaxed utter brilliance from it. His Salt-and-Pepper Shrimp With Crispy Polenta riffs on classic Cantonese Salt-and-Pepper Shrimp, a dish of crispy fried crustaceans in a highly aromatic coating of salt, black pepper, Sichuan peppercorn, and sugar.
Jesse’s version adds in store-bought precooked polenta that’s cut into cubes and crisped in a generous amount of oil, engineering a crackly, frizzly shell around each nubbin. Combined with lacy-crunchy pan-fried shrimp, and showered in a piquant mixture of peppercorns, salt, and sugar, the dish sets taste buds ablaze. Your brain can barely keep pace with the rapid unfurling of sensations across the palate: salty then sweet, sharp then numbing, crisp and tender.
The mild, slightly molten heart of each bite of polenta is just the neutral, cooling foil the outer shells need, bringing balance and a bit of a reprieve from the wonderful intensity that surrounds them. Suddenly, I am looking at store-bought polenta with newfound respect and imagining other iconic dishes where it might fit in: Mapo Polenta? General Tso’s Polenta? A posole hack? Some kind of topping for tamale pie? Hey Jesse, are you reading this?
Postscript: Due to Kelsey being the incredibly astute and incisive editor she is, she unearthed this gem from 1999. It turns out that great minds do think alike, and we are all just standing on the shoulders of culinary giants.
