Oh-My, Grits Breakfasts

Breakfast 1
If you enjoy grits but have never had the real deal, stone ground, whole kernel variety, you are missing out on a real treat.  We have a few bags of them in the freezer (these came from White's Mill in Abington, VA) but rarely make them due to the 60-90 minutes of near constant stirring required to cook them properly.  Bev said she wanted some and suggested the crock pot so I went online and surprisingly found this recipe that cooks them all night to be hot and ready by breakfast time.

Crock Pot Grits from Spicy Southern Kitchen 

Ingredients:

1½ cups stone ground grits

6 cups water

1½ -2 teaspoons salt (2 t. of Kosher salt made ours a little too salty)

4-6 tablespoons butter, cut into 1 tablespoon-sized pieces

½ cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Lightly spray inside of a 6-quart crock pot with cooking spray.*

2. Stir together grits, salt and water in the crock pot. Cover and cook on LOW for 7-8 hours.

3. Remove lid. Scatter butter on top. Use a whisk to stir the grits until they are an even consistency and the butter has melted.

4. Sprinkle cheese on top and add pepper to taste.

*- Do not fail to do this or they will be stuck to the pot as ours were.

For our this meal, I just had a bowl of grits topped with a couple of fried eggs – some crumbled sausage or bacon would have also worked well – I think of grits like pasta, rice, pizza dough, etc as a blank canvas to get creative with.  I failed to get a shot but they looked like this pic from the web.

They were delicious and are very different than the regular or quick grits as they have more corn flavor, are much coarser, and actually have a little chew to them.

 

Breakfast 2
When I was growing up, one of my favorite things to eat was fried cornmeal mush (polenta in Italian) which I thought was a delicacy but is really poor folks food as it is just cornmeal cooked in water and put in a pan to set up for slicing and frying.  As it turned out, we had just enough leftover grits for two small pans so after cooling and wrapping in plastic they spent the night in the fridge.

The next morning I sliced and fried them in a little bacon grease to a golden brown – the brown streaks are from the stuff that had stuck to the pot.  Sometimes they have a little too much moisture and want to fall apart in the pan but this can be fixed by dusting with flour – these were just right.

Bev had a hunk of ham out so I cut off a slice and just nuked it to warm (didn’t want another dirty pan) and cooked a couple of sunny side up eggs to get this meal.

It was outstanding and a great way to begin another very cold day here in the SOUTH.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

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