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I made this and it was awesome! I took your advice to add fresh basil and parm, it’s definitely delicious. Thanks for the recipe!
This this this this this! 👆
Do you even need me to say anything else? Can I be excused? I have a ton of things to do today, like mostly make more goat cheese polenta.
Also high on the list today – get back to my real life! which includes writing this post where I will go on to gush about the goat cheese polenta and tell you about my ten glorious non-internet days at the cabin and then get back to the topic at hand of POLENTA GOALS. Somehow that all doesn’t really feel like a real life. But hey. Back to it.
So yes indeed! After ten restful days away from my very professional home office (which is actually a hand-me-down desk squeezed into a tiny corner by the window of our guest room which is currently also triple-functioning as Sage’s bedroom – small house probs), I’m back in action at the keyboard, bribing myself to get back in gear with a coffee and fresh banana bread this morning – tis a blogger’s life for me!
And it’s a pretty happy life right now considering that I am coming off of ten days where the most important things I did were: sitting on the dock, going for woodsy runs, binge-reading all the best mind-candy books, making dinner for my family, and of course, completing my one annual wakeboarding run to prove to myself that even though I now make a living by being an internet nerd, I still have a slice of cool-person youth left in me. STILL GOT IT. Also important: over the course of the vacation, I averaged a lovely ten hours of sleep a night and it was pretty much EVERYTHING. I know. File that statement under Ways To Get People To Hate You.
But also making this morning happy is the fact that the memory of these roasted tricolor tomatoes and sautéed garlic spinach on a creamy pillow of goat cheese polenta is still very fresh, very vivid, very much burned into my mind in the best possible way.
How To Make Our Goat Cheese Polenta:
Alright now. What to even say about this dish? It’s so simple and so SUMMER to me.
Fresh, juicy tomatoes, vibrant green spinach, and a creamy goat cheese polenta – maybe topped off with some Parm and fresh basil from my very own little garden? I dunno. I like to dream big.
We made a few versions of this before settling on this one – and you need to know this: don’t skip the spinach. Since you’ll sauté the spinach with the garlic, it has tons of must must must have flavor. And without it, the overall combination will be yummy but not WOWS yummy for people like use who need that roasty-garlic-depth packed into every bite.
It’s no surprise to anyone that I looked forward to the leftovers every single day until they were gone, and this is evidenced by my lovingly photographed plastic container of polenta and tomatoes and spinach at the end of this post. Plastic food storage container photos? I’m not above that. I packed it all up post-cooking and it looked so pretty smiling back at me from the container with all its rainbow tomato beauty – I just couldn’t not.
It’s not meatless Monday but it’s going to be a meatless win for dinner tonight in our house involving dangerous amounts of creamy goat cheese polenta.
Tomatoes, garlic, spinach, goat cheese –> readysetgo.
Roasted Tomatoes with Goat Cheese Polenta
- Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
Description
Roasted Tomatoes with Goat Cheese Polenta! Fresh, juicy tomatoes, vibrant green spinach, and a creamy goat cheese polenta!
Ingredients
- 3 cups cherry tomatoes (or small tomatoes – tricolor or heirloom are super pretty!)
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 cups spinach
- 3 cups water
- 1 cup corn grits or polenta (I used Bob’s Red Mill – you can buy it on Amazon here)
- 4 ounces goat cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Wash the tomatoes, place on a baking sheet, and pat dry. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Roast for 10 minutes, gently turn the tomatoes, and repeat until the tomatoes are browned, about 30 minutes. I turned the heat up to 450 at the end to get more browning action.
- Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a large heavy pan. Add the garlic and saute gently until fragrant, but do not brown – browned garlic tastes bitter and gross. When the garlic is smelling awesome, add the spinach and turn off the heat. You should be able to just keep stirring the spinach around for a minute and it will wilt and reduce in size. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. Wipe out the pan with a paper towel.
- In the same pan, bring the water to a boil. Add the polenta and whisk until smooth. Simmer for 15 minutes or so until the polenta has thickened. Add the goat cheese and the salt and stir until smooth. Taste and adjust as necessary. Serve the polenta immediately with the tomatoes and the spinach.
Notes
The polenta thickens and hardens as it starts cooling – but for this recipe, I liked the polenta soft, so if you need to loosen it up a bit, just add some water or milk and whisk until smooth.
You CAN make polenta just using cornmeal – you can follow the directions in this recipe if you’re doing that. But I will say that I liked using the actual polenta corn grits this time – I felt like the consistency was better.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Category: Dinner
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: polenta recipe, tomatoes and goat cheese, corn grits recipe, healthy dinner
Disclaimer: This post contains an affiliate link for the Bob’s Red Mill Polenta in the recipe! Treat yoself.
One More Thing!
This recipe is part of our easy Italian-inspired recipes page. Check it out!
Made this for dinner tonight and it was just wonderful! Recipe is great, although I started out with half the garlic since I was using minced garlic instead of fresh. This one is definitely in the rotation now!
What can I substitute for the goat cheese?
You could try feta!
LOVED this, but made the polenta in an Instant Pot ( 6 min pressure, natural release, stir stir stir) and used five, yes FIVE parts broth to one part (Golden Pheasant) polenta. Oh boy was this ever good (and easy)
My wife and I have been making this recipe for years. The first time we tried making polenta on the stove and it was a little tough. Now we always make our polenta in the oven in a 2 quart pyrex casserole type dish. We add 1 cup of polenta or corn meal, 1 – 15 oz can of low sodium chicken broth, and 2 cups of water and stir well. With the lid on the baking dish, we put the polenta and liquids into the oven at 250 F for 40 minutes, stir well and another 60 minutes. It comes out great. Then you can melt the goat cheese in it and do the rest of the recipe as described. I feel the oven polenta is great for creamy or firm polenta. For firm, just let it cool in the refrigerator for a few hours or over night.
So good! I had some leftover coconut braised collards so added those instead of spinach. Roasted tomatoes with garlic and onions to get their flavors. So yummy and easy!
Hej Kristin, do you mind to tell me where to find this awesome speckled bowl? 🙂
Hi! Lindsay’s father-in-law made it!
What could you substitute for the goat cheese? We are dairy free in our household.
Great question! We haven’t tried this, but we think that a plant based sour cream or cream cheese would be great!
I can only find the tube of pre-cooked polenta at the store. In fact, we have it in our house and I have all the other ingredients, but wonder if it would still work using the tubed polenta…?!
Yes absolutely! You can reconstitute polenta by heating it up with milk in a saucepan on the stove if you want the porridge-like consistency. You could also slice the tubed polenta and pan fry it!
I’ve just made the polenta here and paired it with all sorts of yummy things – I love the idea to add goat cheese. Thank you!
Always on the lookout for more polenta recipes! This one looks great, thanks for sharing! 🙂
This is one of my favorite recipes!
I’m wondering if there is a trick to making polenta smooth rather than clumpy.
If the polenta is clumpy, it may help to pour it in little by little, and whisk after each pour to incorporate it!
Delicious.
I loved it. My toddler ate it… well he didn’t love the spinach but that is a thing right now.
I gladly ate his spinach.
I will definitely be adding this to our regular rotation!
Making this tonight, however, I desperately need to know where you purchased those bowls!! Thank you!
Made this tonight but instead of polenta I roasted 1 head of cauliflower, little chicken stock and the goat cheese and puréed. It was so creamy and perfect touch! Delicious 😋
So happy you liked the recipe, Miranda! Love the cauliflower swap!
When you say goat cheese… do you mean something more like a camembert or a chevre, or more of a hard cheese? There are so many types of goat cheese I don’t know what you mean? Thanks in advance!
Like chevre. 😉
Can any of this be made ahead of time?
We’d really recommend serving this immediately rather than prepping this one.
This was so delicious and so simple to prepare! The only change I would make would be to use 4 cups of water when preparing the polenta. I also ended up adding milk to thin the polenta after it had cooked. The goat cheese was lovely in the polenta—yum! I served the polenta and veggies with grilled chicken. Thank you for sharing this recipe—I’ll be preparing it again!
Yum! Thanks for sharing, Bethann!
The bowl that this meal is in is beautiful! Where is it from?
The bowl is actually made by Lindsay’s father-in-law. You can check out his online shop here: http://www.larryostrompottery.com/
Hi! This sounds like a delicious use for my bounty of tomatoes this year! I am looking forward to making it tomorrow!
Can you please tell me where I can find bowls like the one in your presentation? I keep seeing it on other blogs, etc., have searched and searched and cannot find a source. I would appreciate it because the “earthiness” leaps right off the page when food is served in that bowl! Good job!
I’m excited to try this recipe tonight! I do have a quick nutrition question – I’ve added the recipe into My Fitness Pal (using Bob’s Red Mill Polenta) and keep getting closer to 320 calories per serving, about 100 more per serving than what is listed. Any idea for why mine might be so much higher? The only other ingredients that really pack any kind of calories are the EVOO and the Goat Cheese, both of which I’m using a Safeway brand.
Thanks!
This recipe is gorgeous! I love the bright colors of the tricolor heirloom tomatoes, and I added some mushrooms to the sauteed garlic and spinach for just a little more veggies. I used a tube of polenta that I thinned up by dicing and simmering in chicken broth because I couldn’t find the polenta grits, and it was delicious with the goat cheese stirred in! Everything worked super well together and was beautifully colorful and filling, will 100% make again.
I love this polenta! It’s so creamy and delicious. I topped it with red wine mushrooms and it was divine.
I used grits instead of polenta because I couldn’t find polenta in WF. The creamiest most savory grits I have ever eaten. So good!
This has become a go-to vegetarian recipe for us! SO quick for a weekday dinner, and so savoury that we don’t miss the meat at all. If my son’s vegan GF is over, I leave the cheese out of the polenta and the non-vegans just put it on top.
I dislike goat cheese. Can you please recommend another cheese for this recipe?