I frequently run across recipes in books that require "fine-ground cornmeal", which isn't a classification that exists in the USA (particularly baffling when the cookbook was published in the USA). This leaves me unsure of what to substitute; whether I should be using medium-grind cornmeal, or corn flour. As such, below is a listing of types of cornmeal in the US, as labeled by flour mills*.
- Coarse Ground Cornmeal: usually yellow, otherwise known as Polenta, 1mm large grains used mainly for boiling.
- Medium Ground Cornmeal: usually yellow, a rough grind larger than wheat flour and about the same size as pasta semolina. Used for cornbread.
- Corn Flour: cornmeal, usually yellow, ground to the same consistency as wheat flour.
- Corn Starch: superfine ground husked corn flour, usually white.
So, when a recipe asks me for "fine ground cornmeal", what is it asking for, if no other information is supplied? A US recipe? A British recipe? An Australian Recipe?
I am looking for a generic answer here for each nationality (or region), because I have seen this in multiple recipes, not an answer for a specific recipe.
(* there's also grits and various grades of masa, which aren't relevant for this question)
Best Answer
I'm an American cornbread lover living in the UK, so I have some experience with this. In the UK and commonwealth corn flour = US cornstarch, and in the UK corn meals are coarser then their US counterparts. Coarse polenta is like ball bearings, fine polenta is still too coarse for decent cornbread and fritters. You can get fine corn meal in the UK now, which is slightly finer than your average US cornmeal, but not as fine as US corn flour.
So if I'm in the US using an American recipe that calls for fine corn meal I'd just use regular corn meal, if I'm in the US using a UK recipe and it calls for fine corn meal it would probably mean fine polenta, which is what you generally get in the US.