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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT gmail.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Grits-Polenta, OMG I am confused!<g>
  • Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 21:07:07 -0400

Yeah, I do remember James giving a tutorial, but I hate searching the archives.
I'm thinking that modern marketing has just dropped the word hominy.

We don't have the bag the grits came in any longer. I don't want to dig through the trash to find it. It came in a small bag, like dried beans.

Any suggestions for using the remaining 'yellow grits'?

On 10/17/2010 6:41 PM, Marie Mcharry wrote:
I've had grits, cornmeal, and polenta. Grits are white and made from hominy.
Cornmeal is usually yellow unless made from white corn; it's corn kernels
ground to various degrees of fineness. Polenta is fine-ground cornmeal.

And then there's masa, which is used for tortillas. It's made from
lime-treated corn kernels that are then ground. I'm not clear how it differs
from grits except that it's finer ground. I buy mine from Wally World, so I
don't know about making it. I think James explained the process here a couple
of years ago.

This is all I know on the issue. Regarding the yellow grits: check to see if
lime is an ingredient. If not, what you have is cornmeal.


On Oct 17, 2010, at 1:43 PM, EarthNSky<erthnsky AT gmail.com> wrote:
E
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 sinc
e they are white and degermed, even though it
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