A Bowl of Grits

I’m revisiting a few thoughts about a favorite food of every Southerner, first posted a couple of years ago - but I could post this one every day and never get tired of the subject.

It is the strangest thing, but whenever I come off of a long road trip, I just want a good bowl of grits to eat. Southern friends of mine have reported the same quirk. The reason could be something ingrained as children on cold mornings, but who knows, really? For whatever reason, we become adults who crave grits at odd junctures.

And for ten years, on and off, we have regularly visited the subject of grits on Southern Voice, just to allow everyone to check in, weigh in, sing, dance, and argue about where the best ones in the land can be found.

And argue we do. We don’t even agree on what to call them. If you live in Low Country South Carolina, for instance, this picture, above, is a “bowl of hominy”. In other places, of course, these are clearly “grits”. Having grown up in the Piedmont of North Carolina, however, my family split the difference. We called them “hominy grits”. And, bless a few hearts, certain misguided chefs even try to conflate/equate grits with polenta. The two may be cousins, but one-and-the-same they are not.

Now, to completely confuse those of you not from around here, there is also such a thing as hominy - derived from corn - and from which grits are derived - but let’s stay on track.

We like our grits stone-ground, and grown from good, sweet heirloom corn. Having said that, the commonality quickly disappears as we start trying to establish supremacy in all sorts of different categories. Which heirloom variety is the best? Where is the best mill? Yellow grits versus white? The late, great, NASCAR king, Junior Johnson, preferred yellow to white. He told me this in person one morning as we sat around a breakfast table eating a meal he had cooked himself. We also argue about cooking methods (heavy cream, butter, chicken broth?), enhancements (good cheddar cheese, cream cheese, shrimp swimming in any number of different sauces?), and the list goes on. I will say, though, that a few modern chefs are apparently monkeying around with a dish that is not broken and does not need to be fixed. Way too clever by half, they are adding whole kernels of corn to their grits. If I want a bowl of creamed corn, I will have a bowl of creamed corn. That silliness needs to stop.

For what it is worth (and I know my opinion is only one drop in a vast sea of bona fide opinions about grits), here are my three favorites. You can order the first two by clicking anywhere in the orange text. Since the source is Amazon, I may end up getting a tiny residual for the referral, by way of full disclosure - but trust me when I say the amount barely registers on the Richter Scale.

Marsh Hen Mill Stone Ground White Grits, grown and milled on Edisto Island, SC.

Palmetto Farms Stone Ground White Grits, grown and milled in Gallivants Ferry, SC.

Cotton Hills Farm Stone Ground Grits, grown and milled in Chester County, SC.

These are hardly the only good grits I have run across during a lifetime, but they are the ones that please me the most. Truthfully, though, you cannot go very far in the South without having access to a great local gristmill, and that fact alone accounts for a lot of the “favorites” that Southerners love to claim. Professionals are no different. For instance, ask ten different Southern chefs (of the sort who know the difference between grits and creamed corn) where they buy their grits, and you will likely get six or eight different answers - and not one of them will be bad.

There is, however, common ground on one subject - instant grits. We are not in favor, to put it mildly. In fact, everyone’s favorite Southern humorist, the late Lewis Grizzard, said it best many years ago…

“Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists.”

Photo at top of page via the blog, Bake It With Love. She shares a great basic grits recipe, if you’re maybe not from around here and would like to give it a go.