For years, I didn’t take a liking to grits. While my Tennessee-born mom could eat a big bowl of steamy cheddar grits with each meal, any time she did, I shot her strange face and judged the lumpy texture and bland color. Now that I’ve grown up – and so has my palate – I know that a creamy pillow of authentic, stone-ground grits beneath a few plump and juicy grilled prawns is one of the most satisfying meals my soul can wish for. So I began doing my homework on how to make the perfect grits and soon came to discover that this was no small feat. Southern chefs spend months – years, even – perfecting this staple of Southern cuisine: a delicate balance of creaminess, grittiness and thickness. A great version takes hours upon hours to execute. And real, stone-ground grits are pretty hard to come by. This was no quick and easy dinner project.
So when I noticed that Lynn Alley’s new cookbook The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker offered a recipe for slow-cooked grits, I thought I’d found the solution to my problem: I could apparently use the quick-cooking grits available at my neighborhood grocery and could sleep beneath my warm down comforter as my shiny new slow cooker did all the work.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out so well. While the recipe states that you can use instant grits, I so dearly wanted to find the real stuff – but alas, no luck. So I threw a cup of the quick-cooking stuff into the slow cooker with 4 cups of water and a little salt and went to bed, hoping to awake to a beautiful bowl of steamy, creamy grits.
Instead, I woke up to this: a brown, burnt crust that had formed on the perimeter of the slow cooker, a tough crust that had taken shape in the center and a pool of water that joined the two like a moat of doom, mocking my culinary optimism.
After a quick stir and a little seasoning, it was clear that the tough, leathery crust that had formed wasn’t succumbing to the thinner, more watery parts of the dish. Each bite was different, some watery and flavorless, others tough and chewy.
The recipe calls for stirring in some diced green chiles and freshly grated sharp cheddar and then serving the grits alongside a hot cup of coffee. So I did and added an egg fried crisp in olive oil because, to me, breakfast isn’t breakfast without eggs. Of course, I then proceeded to burn my egg, making a mediocre meal that much more disappointing. Guess that’s what I get for turning on the stove before having my first cup of hot, caffeinated liquid gold.
Despite my failure, The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker is still a quality cookbook for home cooks who know that sacrificing meat has nothing to do with sacrificing taste. It’s full of ideas for meals that showcase beans, vegetables and starches in recipes that take inspiration from the flavors of Greece, Italy, even India. And for the busy, working home cook, it’s a good collection of recipes for healthy meals that require very little work (I smell a resolution lasting at least another week!). As for me, my quest for the perfect grits will continue, though next time, I’ll go the extra few miles to get the real stuff.
Slow-Cooked Grits with Chile and Cheese
2 to 4 Servings
Courtesy of Lynn Alley
Grits, a traditional Southern breakfast dish, are often served topped with butter and cheese. They fill hungry bellies and stick to the ribs for many hours. Technically, grits are coarsely ground hominy, and they are white in color, while polenta is ground, dried yellow corn. But in the United States (outside the Deep South), the two are often used interchangeably. It’s best if you can find the stone-ground real thing, but if not, you can use the instant grits that are available in nearly every grocery store or mail-order them from a source that specializes in grains, such as Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon. I recommend using a 2- to 3-quart slow cooker so that your grits don’t dry out overnight. 1 cup grits
½ tsp. salt
4 cups water
1 7-oz. can diced green chiles
1 cup grated sharp cheddar or smoked gouda (or a combination)
• Place the grits, salt and water in the slow cooker insert. Cover and cook on low overnight, about 8 hours.
• In the morning, simply stir in the chiles, adjust the salt to taste, and stir in half the cheese. Spoon up a bowlful for each person, then top with the remaining cheese.
Suggested Beverage: No wine here, but a good, hearty cup of coffee at breakfast time or a Mexican beer at lunch or dinner.
Reprinted with permission from Ten Speed Press How do you prepare grits? Tell us in the comments section below for a chance to win a copy of The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker. We’ll announce the winner in next week’s By the Book column. And now, we’d like to congratulate Vaish whose comment on last week’s By the Book has won him/her a copy of Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking. Vaish, keep an eye out for an email from the Sauce crew.
This article appears in January 2013.