Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - [Homestead] Grits-Polenta, OMG I am confused!<g>

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT gmail.com>
  • To: Homestead List <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Grits-Polenta, OMG I am confused!<g>
  • Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 14:43:39 -0400

Okay, we are part of the 'grit-eating' world, and have never eaten or tasted polenta, per se. It was always my understanding that grits are made from hominy which is made from soaking corn kernels in lye. The hominy is then dried and ground, voila, grits. Polenta, I thought, was more akin to corn meal, just a course ground meal. In Dixie, cornmeal is used in frying, and in making cornbread, which I have always thought would be closer to what polenta would be like than grits.
Now mind you, I grew up eating Quaker instant grits-blasphemy, I know, to some, but common enough for you to know what that is. Now, we mostly use the long cook version, still Quaker, but we like the course ground, long cook grits. I eat grits with butter and sometimes cheese or sausage or bacon. I don't put eggs in them the way dh does, nor ham, nor onions, nor sugar nor milk, nor anything else that I have ever heard of using to flavor grits. I think I am rather simplistic in my grits preferences, but I should also include that I have eaten leftover fried grits and a cheese grit casserole with fried fish.

So here we are in Kroger yesterday (I rarely shop at Kroger anymore, but wanted some organic cherry juice that only they carry) and dh puts a bag of Quaker "yellow corn grits" in the buggy. We later had a discussion about the difference and I told him what I knew about so called hominy grits, and that the lye removed the color, I thought. He went to the web for answers. He looked at Wikipedia? and found a page that suggested that the only difference between yellow grits and white grits was the color of the corn kernel. He found something else that likened the process to the difference between brown rice and white rice, equating yellow grits with brown rice-degerminated. So is this degerming process the whole lye to hominy stage? Have we just dropped the word hominy from hominy grits and just call them grits, or are grits and hominy grits separate things still? Are Quaker instant grits really instant hominy grits? Are Quaker long cook grits really hominy grits since they are white and degermed, even though it doesn't say hominy?

Fast forward to this morning, we prepared the yellow grits as usual. Neither of us liked them. It is not grits. This did not even approximate grits, even with butter and salt/pepper. If this is polenta, I surely don't like it. Half a spoonful was enough for me. But, perhaps if this is polenta, I have cooked it improperly and seasoned it improperly. Dry, except for the color, it looks just like long cook grits in courseness. Do I need to feed this to the chickens or is there a yummy dish I could make and call it polenta? Could it be used like a cornmeal in cornbread with tons of corn and jalepenos?

What the heck??

Bev

--
EarthNSky Farm 34.498N 85.076W
SISU! (Finnish--There is no single word in English that encompasses
all that sisu means, but it combines the following ideas: guts, pep,
determination, stubbornness, perseverance, hardiness, stamina, go, do,
nerve, spunk, pluck, and grit. It's like "Just Do It!" & "Go for It!")






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page