Cold Grits with Milk

Saturday, April 28, 2007
Currently I am having a where-have-you-been-all-my-life moment with the very coarsely ground dried corn that some know as grits and some call polenta. Although I use the same basic recipe as polenta, grits have two qualities that I wanted to highlight in their own post - first, their amazing texture when cooked; second, they love to be prepared in the rice cooker.

Use a 1:4 ratio of grits to water with some salt in your rice cooker, and let them sit for two hours on the keep-warm or congee setting after cooking. My favourite way to eat them right now is cold with milk and dark brown sugar for breakfast.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I was growing up in the south (TN, GA) grits was course ground white corn meal. When I discovered polenta years later, I came to believe that it as course ground yellow corn meal.

Whether others recognize the distinction, I don't know. Yes, I believe there's a different taste.

Also, I generally prepare polenta with something other than water as the cooking liquid; I also add grated parmesan and/or romano at the end of cooking.

Pan fried left over polenta for breakfast with a little honey is good too.

Nice blog. I enjoy your stories.

Pepper said...

Thanks for your comment.

Yes, possibly the white/yellow is a more common distinction - I tried looking online for a real definition of grits but didn't find a consistent one. Maybe some more people will chime in.

I am looking for grits recipes right now to find more things to do with them but so many of them include cheese, which is prohibitively expensive here.

Unknown said...

That looks pretty good! My husband lived in Georgie for a while and wants grits every once in a while, but we've never had them with strawberries.

Sally JPA said...

I've lived my whole life in GA, and I've made grits--stone-ground by small farms in GA--from both yellow and white cornmeal. There is a bit of a difference in taste, but I think they are both authentic.

Good grits are one of my favorite foods. I posted recently on putting vegetables on grits with a bit of truffle oil. Yum.

Sally JPA said...

Oh, and I think that technically the corn globules in polenta may be slightly larger? Maybe? But then, I also think the names are used interchangeably by some companies.