I like cornbread, but when I was a child polenta always made me gag if I ate it. Mom kept making it and telling me to "Try it, you'll like it!" every year, year after year. I haven't made or tried it as an adult---wonder what would happen now?

What do you mean by "temper an egg"?

If you add a raw egg to hot ingredients it will scramble. The egg has to be tempered first to be creamy in the hot mixture.

My mother never used the polenta but did use fine ground "mush". She took the leftovers and added cinnamon and sugar and fried it in butter and then added home made sugar syrup and it was a very delicious breakfast.

Yes, but I still don't know what "tempered" means. My thoughts are that it needs to be at room temperature or warm or something like that. Am I right?

try this site for instructions http://www.wikihow.com/Temper-an-Egg It gives you more than one way to do it.

This is what Grma made,but she made a couple pans full at a time,so probably doubled this amount.You want a hot skillet & some ppl dip slices in flour to crisp them. You can add cooked sausage too,just break up in small pieces while cooking,drain....then add to cornmeal before pouring into a loaf pan.Try with maple syrup.....a great breakfast or breakfast for dinner.

https://derdutchman.wordpress.com/20...cornmeal-mush/

I temper by adding hot mixture to the beaten egg a little at a time then add it to all the hot mixture. I learned how to temper eggs by watching my grandmother cook and in my home ec class in high school. In a gourmet cooking class it was one of the first things we learned. I won a whisk for knowing. Every class a student got a cooking utensil for the best of the day. I won again for knowing about ghee and how to make it. I didn't know it was called ghee. I knew it as preserved butter. I lived next to a Mennonite lady in CA for a few years. She taught me a lot about food and how to stock my pantry.

Thanks Onebyone and misseva too. I knew how to do this since I was a teenager, but never called it tempering. We were just shown how to add the egg to hot stuff the right way, and I didn't think there was a name for the process. Now I know.

Wow! That's a lot of info! I've been seeing a lot of recipes with polenta and I always end up with a little left over. My favorite is to add shredded cheese to it and stir until melted and combined with the cornmeal. I'll have to try frying it. Maybe make it into little patties before it hardens.