To give you an idea of how passionate grits lovers are about grits, just ask them about Cream of Wheat.
"My mother tried to sneak Cream of Wheat [instead of grits] one morning at breakfast, and we weren't having it," says Socar Chatmon-Thomas, one of about 10 women at Hoover's Home Cooking in Austin, Texas, recently who were riled up at the mention of That Other Breakfast Mush, which is made from wheat instead of corn.
The women, part of a group of grits fans called Girls Raised in the South, could have debated among themselves all day the perfect way to eat one of the South's greatest dishes.
If you put out a call to North Carolina grits lovers, you will be overwhelmed by the response. We heard from Mac Brawley, 73, of Cherryville, who insists he enjoyed the best grits ever while vacationing in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the 1950s. It must be that "beach water," Brawley says.
Joanne Grimes, 71, of Angier told how she mailed Quaker quick grits to her daughter's home in Mount Hood, Ore., so she could eat them for breakfast during her visit there this week.
Folks called to tell us about chocolate grits at the Stanly Hall Café in New Bern and grit cakes with tomato gravy at McKoy's Smokehouse and Saloon in Charlotte. They shared stories of their surprise at not being able to find them when they moved away from the South, and the great lengths they went to to ferry them back to their new homes, from England to California.
Some insisted that you should only season grits with butter, salt and pepper. Others called to confess that they add sugar or strawberry jam.
What about polenta?
Grits have been a staple of Southern food for as long as there has been a South, but nearly every culture whose diet include corn eats some kind of cornmeal porridge, which brings us to the polemic p-word.
"Polenta is just a prettier, more sophisticated representation of cornmeal mush," says Toni Tipton-Martin, an Austin journalist and former president of the Southern Foodways Alliance, which studies and celebrates Southern dishes. From a culinary standpoint, yellow cornmeal-based Italian polenta and hominy-based white Southern grits are almost identical, but culturally, they are as distinct as the languages of the cooks who make them.
The lye in which the corn is soaked to make hominy removes some of the distinct corn color, flavor and texture found in creamy polenta, which is often allowed to set so it can be sliced.
But in recent years, the line between polenta and grits has blurred. At restaurants across the country, chefs grew bored with potatoes, pasta and rice accompanying meat or vegetables, so, Tipton-Martin says, they started experimenting with cornmeal grits.
In grocery stores, several commercial brands of yellow cornmeal have both "polenta" and "grits" on the packaging.
So why the sudden celebrity for what has long been considered poor people food?
"Our palates are accustomed to chewy foods ... and cheese allowed [grits] to migrate out of breakfast," Tipton-Martin says. Once breakfast starts to slide into the afternoon, cheese, both sharp [Cheddar] and subtle [goat], transforms grits into a thick, savory brunch side dish.
At breakfast, lunch and dinner, shrimp is the Barney to grits' Andy, but you'll find pork chops, braised ribs and steak with grits as well.
The late Bill Neal of Chapel Hill's Crook's Corner elevated the humble Lowcountry breakfast dish of shrimp and grits to fine Southern cuisine in the 1980s. Now that dish is so ubiquitous that not only does Food Network celebrity chef Bobby Flay offer a recipe but it has appeared on T.G.I. Friday's menu.
Give it some flavor
Sarah Simmons, a Fayetteville native who is working on a book about grits that will be published next year, says grits are a blank canvas, because no matter what you call them or which kind you use, cornmeal granules absorb liquid, fat and flavors better than almost any other grain.
"Grits aren't difficult to make once you get down the ratio," says Simmons.
Want a surly grit to stand up to the braised short ribs you're serving? Flavor it with butter and horseradish. Make a fluffy pillow for grilled shrimp by cooking the grits with garlic and cream. Out of couscous? Slightly undercook the cornmeal in stock instead of milk and your guests might not be able to tell the difference.
One of Simmons' favorite ways of preparing grits is baking them with cream, cheese and any vegetable or other ingredient she has on hand. Simmons says she started experimenting with simple and sophisticated flavor combinations during her first winter after moving from North Carolina to New York when she was craving what she considers the ultimate comfort food.
Her friends turned their noses up at the idea of eating cornmeal mush, so "I started throwing dinner parties specifically to change people's minds about grits," says Simmons, who started the blog ( gritsandmore.blogspot.com) to share her recipes. "This is why I have friends now."
Simmons uses a 3-to-1 ratio of liquid to grits, often using at least one part milk or broth and stirring frequently to thicken. "When I'm making something to impress someone, I'm not going to use skim milk." (For traditional, less creamy and more liquid breakfast grits, use 4 parts water to 1 part grits and don't stir while cooking.)
Thick or thin, with butter or cream, grits are winning over a new generation of fans, even those who don't associate them with the comfort of mom's home cooking.
Staff writer Andrea Weigl contributed to this report.
