Grits

Spring greens are an excellent source of vitamins A and C, which makes them all the better to eat after a long winter. Tender arugula or baby spinach enrich the corn, making a perfect accompaniment to chili, grilled steak, or a vegetarian main dish.

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.

Grits are a true thing of beauty when properly cooked. Unfortunately, instant grits can never come close. If you’re really pressed for time, wait for a pleasant Sunday morning when you can afford those few extra minutes. Your patience will be rewarded.

We’re not too modest to say that we’ve perfected the quintessential Southern bowl of supercreamy grits. Try this for breakfast with fried eggs and ham or serve it with Sautéed Shrimp with Bacon and Mushrooms (page 67) or Sweet and Spicy Pork (page 128).

I don’t know any chef who travels with his own grits except Scott Peacock. And you can understand why. Once you have tasted those Southern stone-ground grits, it is hard to settle for less. But I hope he will forgive me for offering here a recipe for ordinary supermarket grits. They cook in 20 minutes, and I have borrowed Scott’s method of cooking them partially in milk, which makes them so much creamier. This way, at least you may get so hooked on grits that you’ll send away for the grittier stone- ground variety and give over part of a Sunday afternoon to stirring them as they cook slowly for a long time, the longer the better. Either way, grits are good with so many things—shrimp, chicken, game, pork, ham. I always make extra so that I can have some fried grits for breakfast the next day. Avoid instant grits and look for the old-fashioned ones.

Chances are, if you grew up in the South, you have eaten your fair share of grits. You’ve probably eaten your share of shrimp, too. It’s no wonder that these two Southern staples come together in one of the best dishes of all time. Crystal grew up eating grits almost every morning and had always considered them a breakfast dish—until the day she was served shrimp and grits for dinner. That was when her obsession began. Instead of seeking help, Crystal continued to make shrimp and grits on her stove top, working and reworking the dish to find the perfect recipe. Her work definitely paid off. Here is her winning combo of smoked Gouda cheese grits and Cajun spiced shrimp, topped off with an herbed tomato mixture. Perfection indeed.

Grits get a bad rap, man. Most of the time grits are watery and served with greasy eggs in a diner. Grits can be so much more! By using good-quality coarsely ground grits and cooking them right, you can easily elevate this Southern staple. Serve with Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder with Pickled Onions (page 162).

Carolina Gold rice “grits” from Anson Mills are short, uneven pieces of rice that have been broken during the threshing process. They cook up creamier than long-grain white rice, which can be substituted in this recipe: pulse it in batches in a spice mill or clean coffee grinder for 5 seconds to create the same effect.

If you can’t grill the radicchio, just sear it on the stovetop in a cast-iron pan over medium-high heat until it is caramelized and tender.

For a simple supper, we can’t imagine adding anything to this dish other than sliced tomatoes, zydeco music, and a little two-step.

Pat: I’m a grits man. Have been my whole life. And it always surprises me when I travel to different parts of the country and taste grits that they are not sweet. In coffee shops and home kitchens throughout Memphis, we stir in sugar to make them sweet. Then we crumble a few sausage patties and stir those in, too. I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for something hot, sweet, and salty. My aunt Leona from Detroit stirs chopped poached eggs into her sausage and grits! To me, that seems like the ultimate grit combo. Top it with a dash or two of hot sauce, and you can’t find a better feel-good breakfast for a Southern boy.

Grits, butter, and cheese have a highly symbiotic relationship. Similar to polenta, grits are simply ground dried corn that is rehydrated and reheated with milk, water, or broth and flavored with cheese, butter, salt, and pepper—and sometimes some other very good things. While I’ve been known to serve grits with black truffles, the traditional additions can pile up the fat and calories fast. Using low-fat cheese and extra-lean turkey bacon and omitting the butter reduced the fat grams from 46.7 to 7.4 and cut the calories by half.

Grits are one of the most iconic Southern foods around—so, being a red-blooded Northern boy, I thought I'd mess with them. I'm not totally unqualified, since grits aren't all that different from Italian dishes like risotto and polenta—but when I started thinking about how to brighten them up and make them a little more lively, I ended up over in the American Southwest. Go figure. Cooking time and liquid-to-grits ratios will be different depending on the type of grits you use, so make sure you check the directions on the box for that. These amounts are for Anson Mills Carolina Whole Hominy Quick Grits, which I like a lot.

Shrimp are a great go-to for lowfat protein. Opt for those farmed in the United States: Foreign farms use potentially harmful antibiotics and chemicals.

These cheesy grits are the perfect base for Veal Grillades or almost anything else.

This dish is a true Southern delight, our riff on Louisiana-style spicy shrimp combined with cheesy grits just the way we make ’em at The Lady & Sons. It’s amazing how easy this is to whip up. Make it for your family, and they’ll swear you spent all day tied to the stove.

In the South, grits are served every way from here to Sunday and are as sacred as good manners and sweet tea. The mildness and gritty, nurturing texture render them an idyllic backdrop for shrimp, tomatoes, sausage—you name it! I love the way the pungency of horseradish plays along with the grits, the smoky heat of roasted poblano peppers, and the sweetness of red onions in this versatile and easy-to-prepare side dish. Roasting is a great way to cut back a bit on any pepper's pungency while stepping up its sweetness.

Grits are often made with water, but the addition of whole milk—not to mention thick-cut bacon and fried eggs—turns a workhorse into a thoroughbred.

Only use fresh corn in season for this recipe. As soon as corn is harvested, the sugar in the kernel begins to convert to starch and the corn begins to lose its sweetness. To store corn, leave on the husks and store it loosely wrapped in damp paper towels inside a paper bag. Refrigerate and use it within twenty-four hours. My friend, chef Marvin Woods, introduced me to the technique of grating the onion on a box grater instead of finely chopping it. When the onion is grated, it almost melts into the grits, adding a layer of onion flavor without any noticeable onion texture (always present with chopped onion, regardless of how fine the pieces). It also adds a bit more moisture to the grits than chopped onion does.

"Grits love salt," says Peacock, and his creamy-white, almost milky grits, with yellow and black flecks of coarsely ground corn, demonstrate that it's not saltiness he's after, just perfectly balanced seasoning. Grits usually function as an accompaniment, like polenta or rice, but it's certainly easy to imagine eating a bowl of these on their own, with no more than a pat of butter.

Pork and beef are the usual suspects when it comes to ribs, but the rich, bold flavor of lamb is a perfect match for this tangy Tex-Mex marmalade glaze. Grits cooked with a generous amount of Cheddar and Parmigiano-Reggiano round out the meal.

In New England, native corn made its way into many dishes that had formerly been made with English "corns" like oats, wheat, and rice. Adaptations of English porridge and rice pudding recipes were particularly well suited to maize. This particular corn dish is sweetened with sugar and enriched with milk. The variation given at the end is a more deluxe version based on 17th-century rice pudding recipes.