I got a bag.
It says Masa.
Can I make polenta from it, yes or no?!
(Yes, yes, I know about nixtamalized corn and hominy and various coarseness of grinds, which is what all the websites that pop up when you google the question go on and on about. What they don’t tell me is if I’ll end up with nice creamy polenta if I use masa, or if I’ll end up with some doughy lump of ick.)
(The first person to suggest I use the *contents *of the bag, not the bag, gets the squid sicced on 'em.)
I really don’t think it will work.
Nope, won’t work. It will be too doughy. It can be made to do polenta-like tricks, being made into thick patties (sopes), etc., but the texture will be completely different.
Thank you! And…mmmmm…sopes…perfect idea! I’ve had this bag hanging around forever, and want to get it used up. Sopes would be a great way to do that.
Brilliant! We’ve got a bag hanging around, too, because my husband is always planning on getting around to making tamales. Now I have a totally legitimate reason to get rid of it.
UPDATE:
Made polenta again tonight, and as long as I had the oven on anyhow*, I decided to sacrifice 25¢ worth of masa in experimentation. So I made one baking dish of “corn meal” (the sort I normally use) and another of “masa”. Same ingredients and technique otherwise.
Dinner was meat based pasta sauce over soft polenta. Yum.
Results: The masa “polenta” was okay. It was an ugly color, sort of greyish white, and oddly glossy. The biggest difference is that this masa is very finely ground compared to the corn meal. There was no real texture to the polenta; it was like hot school glue, but tasty. It also smelled more like tortillas than polenta, which doesn’t surprise me.
My 8 year old, who doesn’t much care for regular polenta, loved the masa one. She’s excitedly inhaling her “hot mush” and asked me to serve her some tomorrow for lunch cold, so she can play Annie and have “cold mush”. 
After tasting them separately, I decided to do half and half in my bowl, loosely and incompletely stirred them together, and topped with the meat sauce and another sprinkle of parm cheese. Mixed 50/50 with the regular corn meal polenta, I couldn’t have told the difference from fully corn meal polenta. The texture from the corn meal part took over, and the masa portion filled in nicely for volume.
I won’t hesitate to use up what I’ve got as polenta, but I’ll try cooking it half and half with the corn meal for texture.
I’m going to spread the remaining masa polenta onto a cookie sheet and chill it. Tomorrow we’ll cut it into pieces and pan fry it and have shredded chicken and salsa on it. “Sopes”, sort of, but made with precooked “dough”. 
*Oh, hells, yeah, I said oven! I don’t do polenta on the stove! All that stirring and fussing and heat adjusting? pbttth. Oven’s totally the way to go: 2 cups corn meal, 2 quarts water, 2 tsp salt, whisked together in a 9X13 baking pan and baked at 350° for 40 minutes, stirred once after 20 minutes. Pull it out, make sure the water’s gone and the grains are soft, then add 2 tbs of butter, black pepper and a handful of Parmesan cheese (optional).
Oh thanks for this oven recipe, WhyNot. Every time I’ve made polenta it’s been lumpy. Maybe this way I could make smooth polenta.
Use a whisk to stir it for no lumps. (True on the stove or the oven.)
i make polenta at work every day.
you want to use a stock pot or similar, as you’re going to be whisking quite a bit and possibly scrubbing burnt polenta off the pan.
the ratio is 1 part polenta to 4 parts liquid.
at work i do a quart of polenta and a gallon of 2% milk.
heat your milk to 160f (the top of the milk will get foamy looking if you don’t have a thermometer…basically about a minute from boiling over.) add about 50% of the salt you think you will need.
now you can turn down your heat to a more medium flame. with whisk in one hand and polenta in the other, whisk the milk while slowly pouring in the polenta. give a good whisking every minute or so, you must be attentive. when the polenta becomes a more coherent looking mass that starts to bubble up, it’s done, you can kill the heat. you can taste the polenta here to see if it’s cooked enough. if not, just keep whisking over heat until it has the desired texture.
at this point for my restaurant’s recipe i would add about 40% of a one gallon container of mascarpone cheese. whisk the cheese in until incorporated, then taste for salt.
notes: if you do get distracted and the polenta starts to stick (burn) to the bottom of the pot, DO NOT SCRAPE THE BOTTOM OF THE POT AT ALL. The polenta is fine, you just don’t want to incorporate burnt polenta into the rest of the batch.
this recipe results in a creamy polenta, with the consistency of runny mashed potatoes.
It’s a “Hard-knock life” for your daughter. 
Polenta gets lumpy when it’s cooked too fast. Lower the heat and cook slower.