Tastebud Chicago

Bob's Red Mill Corn Grits, our favorite kind

Corn used to be dried for storage. Dry corn lasts a lot longer than watery fresh corn. When you were ready to eat your dried corn, you could take it to the local grist mill and have it ground into corn meal suitable for corn bread, corn mush, stuff like that. As the stone wheel ground the dried corn into meal, heavier pieces would resist the stone. These are “grits.” Keep in mind, when you’re eating grits, you’re eating the really strong part of corn. Awesome.

Grits are making a comeback, I’ve seen articles about them in the New York Times food section, I’ve heard of (but never found) fancy heirloom grits grown from 19th century kernels of corn, I’ve even heard you can get grits at Charlie Trotters, though I can’t afford to find out for myself.

Grits, Hominy, and Polenta

Hominy is corn, corn that’s been “nixtamalized” which means, “soaking in an alkaline solution.” The corn kernels swell up to almost three times their size. Whenever we go to Florida to visit Camri’s Dad we almost always have fried hominy for breakfast. It’s really good. It also can be ground up to make “hominy” grits.

Polenta is really just Italian for grits. They’re exactly the same, just slightly different preparations. The raw material is just chunks of stone ground corn. No real difference. Marketers disagree, but they’re wrong. Polenta == Grits.

Preparing

Grits are simple to prepare, and leave lots of room for interpretation. The basic formula is “one cup of grits to two cups of water, plus salt”. Boil the water, add the grits, turn down to simmer, cover, and wait about ten minutes. Fluff and serve. Polenta, on the other hand, is typically three waters to one grits, with cheese and milk added in the middle, and a lot of stirring. It comes out much creamier, but takes a lot longer to prepare.

Variations

Back to traditional grits, once you get the basic two to one formula down, there’s lots of room for variations. Try adding a bunch of shredded cheese and some milk towards the end, you get cheese grits. Add a bunch of butter and more salt at the end, butter grits. Top either with a few fried eggs (ideally from your well seasoned cast iron skillet.) and you can officially say you’re having a southern breakfast. You can also sweeten the grits with milk and honey for a different style of breakfast, or add chunks of bacon for a good salty breakfast. Grits are a blank canvas folks, if you can dream it, you can do it. Grits are forgiving.