As I mentioned before, when I was a child, my grandmother would make a delicious corn-meal porridge which always warmed my body and soul. She would put a small circle of sweetened condensed milk in the middle and serve it hot on the stove. I felt nostalgic, so I searched for recipes to create my childhood delight.

This recipe is a combination of two recipes I found online, The Perfect Trinidadian Cornmeal Porridge by Debra L.B. and Instant Pot Jamaican Cornmeal Porridge Recipe by Tanya. Both recipes called for copious amounts of sweetened condensed milk, but the dish was too sweet and very high in carbohydrates, about 77 g per serving. As a person with diabetes, that's just too many carbohydrates for any one meal. I typically eat about half that amount of carbohydrates.

After some experimentation, I lowered the carbohydrate count by using almond milk and reducing the sweetened condensed milk to just a tablespoon.

British Caribbean Cornmeal Porridge

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• two bay leaves
• one cinnamon stick
• ¹⁄₂ tsp. ground cardamom
• ¹⁄₂ tsp. ground ginger
• ¹⁄₂ tsp. ground nutmeg
• ¹⁄₄ tsp. salt
• ¹⁄₂ cup fine yellow cornmeal
• 1 ¹⁄₂ cups almond milk
• ¹⁄₄ tsp. butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp. Sweetened condensed milk

Instructions

1. Set Instant Pot to saute mode
2. Add half the water with the yellow cornmeal and whip to get rid of clumps
3. Combine spices, half the water, and almond milk in the instant pot and saute for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the cornmeal and water mixture from step 2 to the Instant Pot.
5. Set the Instant Pot to manual mode with a cook time of 10 minutes.
6. When the porridge is cooked, release the valve and empty the contents of the instant pot into a bowl.
7. Add the vanilla extract and sweetened condensed milk to the middle of the porridge.
8. Sprinkle the ground cinnamon.

Nutrition Information (approximate)

• Fibre: 2.8g
• Fat: 4.38g
• Carbs: 34.75g
• Protein: 4.25g

Submitted for the 100DaysToOffload project.

Author:Khürt Williams

A human who works in information security and enjoys photography, Formula 1 and craft ale.