Impress your guests at your next holiday party with these crispy polenta fries with roasted garlic aioli! Super simple to make, aioli is a French-inspired sauce made of garlic, mayonnaise and lemon juice.
This post is sponsored by Sprouts Farmers Market for their #SharingHealthyHolidays campaign. All thoughts and opinions about this original recipe are my own.
Wow, Christmas is just three weeks away! The holidays are approaching fast, and it’s the time of year where it gets hard to stick to a healthy lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong, I love pumpkin pie, turkey on Thanksgiving, ham on Christmas, and our family’s delicious homemade green bean casserole. But its a good idea to sprinkle in a few healthier dishes to keep the balance. Today I’ve partnered with Sprouts Farmers Market to share a healthy dish you can serve at a holiday buffet or get-together.
Polenta fries are one of my favorite side dishes or appetizers. They’re SO easy to make and you can season them however you want. They bake up crispy just like a French fries and make the best vehicles for tasty dips. Back in the Spring, I posted the recipe for these Smoky Polenta Fries with BBQ Ketchup. Today, we’re using them as dippers for a delicious roasted garlic aioli sauce!
Aioli is a French/Mediterranean style sauce usually make out of garlic and olive oil, and in some regions, other emulsifiers are used such as egg or mayonnaise. My aioli is closer to a garlic mayonnaise, incorporating lemon juice.
Have you ever bought tubes of polenta before? I LOVE them! Sometimes I slice them into rounds, or to make fries, I cut them into strips as shown in the pictures below. You can make your own polenta with corn meal and broth, but it takes a while for the polenta to cool down and be firm enough to slice into pieces that will actually stick together, so I prefer to buy it already cooled and compressed in these tubes.
I received a cast-iron garlic roaster for my bridal shower, and I used it to make the roasted garlic for this recipe! Usually when I roast garlic, I slice the top of the entire head and drizzle it with olive oil and then wrap it in foil. For the cast iron roaster, you still slice off the head and drizzle with oil, but then you just pop it in the roaster!
Polenta itself is so tasty– I like to just bake the fries with olive oil, salt and pepper and then use them for dipping into sauces like this aioli, ketchup or BBQ sauce! Polenta does have fiber and protein so this makes it a healthier carb option for snacking and side dishes.
Have you ever tried polenta fries? Or aioli?
Be sure to try this recipe out for your next holiday party! Here’s the recipe for Crispy Polenta Fries with Roasted Garlic Aioli:
- 3 heads of garlic
- Olive oil
- 1 cup Sprouts Brand Mayonnaise
- Juice from 1 lemon
- Dash of Worcestershire sauce
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- 1 tube of pre-made polenta
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Slice off the top of the heads of garlic. Drizzle with olive oil and wrap in tin foil. Roast for 35-40 minutes or until the garlic is golden and soft. Keep your oven at 400 degrees F.
- Let the garlic cool, then squeeze out the roasted cloves.
- Add the garlic, mayonnaise, lemon, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to a food processor and blend until smooth. Set in fridge to cool.
- Slice the tube of polenta into thin fries (slice the tube in quarters, then cut the quarters in half, and then slice into thin strips).
- Toss with a little olive oil and place on a baking sheet that’s been sprayed with cooking spray.
- Bake for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for another 15 minutes.
- Serve immediately with the aioli sauce!
Hi! I’m Emily, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and self-taught intuitive chef. I firmly believe that cooking is the simplest and most important step we can take to improve our minds and bodies and build healthier communities. Join me and let’s bring food back to the kitchen!
i love polenta but never made fries out of it. looks really really good :)
I keep buying polenta for some reason and letting it sit forever in my kitchen because I didn’t know what to do with it. This looks easy and good!
YESSSSSSS! I have a tube of polenta in the pantry . . . didn’t know I could do this in the oven!
Yum! These look so tasty! What a great holiday snack idea!
Wow..Love this idea. I’ve used the tubes of Polenta before but never would have thought to make fries with it. Definitely pinning this one to try :)
Polenta is soooo good, probably even better in fry form! These are such an incredible idea!