An Introduction to Grits


I was about six years old when I first experienced the power of grits. There was nothing particularly nostalgic about the moment. It was not one life-altering, memory-striking bite. It did not occur while I was standing at my grandmother’s knee while she stirred the pot.

My experience, on the contrary, involved grits as a weapon of mass murder.

We were living in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where, like most other families in our neighborhood, we had a box of instant grits in the pantry. But at least half my family was just not that into them. Occasionally, on weekend mornings, my mother would pull out the box. My sister and I watched, grossed out, giggling, as the piles of white goo solidified, uneaten, on our plates. Meanwhile, my dad slathered butter, salt, and pepper onto his pile and forked them up enthusiastically.

My dad, Kelly, who grew up in Miami, first ate grits while working a part-time job at a small department store in his hometown when he was in college. The store sat above a café, and before he’d head up to his post in the athletics department, where he would set to work assembling bicycles in time to fulfill a crush of Christmas orders, he would stop by the café to fuel up on an employee-discounted breakfast.

This was during the 1960s, a time when most of the grits to be found were produced and packaged by large, industrial cereal makers, like the Quaker Oats Company or Jim Dandy. The varieties ranged from old-fashioned to quick to instant—all were inexpensive and sustaining. Fuel in a box. At this particular Miami department store café, the grits were likely quick or instant—and for my father, they were a lip-smacking source of deep, belly-filling pleasure.

Later, his full-time career as an engineer with DuPont eventually brought our family to Spartanburg. And it was there, in our two-story blue colonial, that we faced a daily onslaught of one of the South’s worst perils: pernicious and vile marching red ants. A menace to our house as both a nuisance and an aesthetic mar, these fiery insects were also a physical threat, their bite stinging and welt-producing, with a venom that unleashed an irritating itch for days. Massive and alien-like, the rust-colored red ants of Spartanburg were as muscled and numbered as the Greeks marching on Troy. As they paraded up and down our patio, creating two-lane highways for themselves, they bustled in endless numbers toward the entrance of our screened-in patio, where they had forged some well-worn path to an invisible but steady supply of food.

Dad loathed the red ants. My sister, Shannon, and I would find him standing, hands on hips or fingers scratching forehead, brow furrowed behind thick, rectangular glasses, at the edge of the patio examining the ground for an end to the ant line. It was a fruitless search. He couldn’t determine where these ants were headed or what hidden parcels of food they were attracted to. It was just a long, steady column of drones, mounting a full-frontal attack on nothing in particular, breaching the walls of our unguarded home.

One day, motivated by some unknown discovery, Dad grabbed the cardboard container of instant grits from the pantry shelf and marched outside. We trailed close behind, wondering where in Dad’s defense plan the grits came into play. With us watching, Dad leaned over and shook out a trail of grits, drawing a meticulous line of white particles between himself and the ants. A wicked smile lit up his face. He stood straight and looked toward us, his six- and eight-year-old girls.

“Now we wait,” he announced, and disappeared inside the house. Shannon and I went back to our Barbies and forgot all about it. A few hours later, we heard him open the patio door and step outside.

“Girls!” he shouted. “Come see.” Out we scurried as Dad looked proudly down at the patio where the line of ants had once crawled. The ant line was no longer mobile, nor robust. I kneeled down for a closer look and saw the scars of a battlefield.

Ant bodies lay littered left and right. Severed legs and antennae lay ravaged. Many of the tiny body parts were embedded directly into white clumps of the grits, like tiny ant-flecked pieces of popcorn.

My father, dropper of the grit bomb, beamed. As we examined the carnage, he gleefully explained: Whatever life-giving liquid that existed within the ants’ bodies, had, upon coming in contact with the instant cereal product, puffed the grits up, stretching their bodies outward until—boom. This would not have occurred were the grits not industrially modified to expand when they hit liquid. Instant grits were the key. Mission accomplished.

I imagined how shocked the ants were with that first encounter eating grits—consuming without thought, and then, moments later, poof! An explosion from the inside out. And yet the ants continued eating, even as the bodies of their comrades morphed into whitish blobs all around them. Surely, ants have no brains, my six-year-old mind said. Surely, if they did, they would have learned. But these were just drones. Machines following orders. Insects following natural law. Until death by instant grits.

After the carnage had been swept away, the ants would eventually return, causing Dad to haul out the box of instant grits once again.

There weren’t a lot of grits in my world after that. I would occasionally encounter them at my sleepaway summer camp in the mountains. Camp food being camp food, you ate what looked edible. I remember piling the butter, salt, and pepper onto the white blob, like I’d seen Dad do, in hopes that they would cover up whatever blob-ish flavor the grits might impart, as well as whatever lingering memory of ant carnage remained. Still, all I tasted was a bland, slimy substance that held no trace of corn flavor. Just butter-flavored mush.

Soon, we moved away from Spartanburg and up north to Cleveland, Ohio. Grits and me parted ways for a while.

* * *

Since those steamy Spartanburg days, I’ve seen grits in all forms. The mounds of congealed white, that instant anomaly, were merely a blip on what would become a journey toward understanding what is actually a complex yet comforting dish. I’ve since learned that not all grits are created equal. There is, in fact, a pretty significant difference between the mass-produced instant, quick, or flavored grits that many, many people (especially in the South) purchase at the grocery store, and the growing segment of artisanal (or handmade) grits, labeled “stone-ground,” “cold-milled,” or sometimes “water-milled” available today.

The designations are significant in that they not only tell you how the corn is ground, but also indicate how much the corn is manipulated pre- and post-grinding, and also how much flavor they might exude.

Stepping up the ladder of marketing terms, for example, you’ll find fewer and fewer “enhancements” made to the corn to produce grits. So instant grits are usually made from mass-produced GMO corn that’s been degerminated, bleached, fed through steel rollers to crush the kernels (stripping out most of the natural corn flavor), and combined with chemically produced vitamins and minerals, which provide the chemical composition the grits need to “cook” immediately after coming in contact with liquid, as well as the proper nutritional content required to appease the FDA’s labeling laws, and the preservatives to keep the product shelf stable for long periods of time. The patent created by the food engineers who make instant grits includes “polysaccharide gum, and an emulsifier selected from the group polyoxyethylene sorbitan monostearate, polyoxyethylene sorbitan mono-oleate, glyceryl monostearate, and a mixture of monoglycerides and diglycerides of edible fats, oils, and fat-forming fatty acids.” Which—to me, anyway—reads as painfully as swallowing a mouthful of those instant grits I ate as a kid.

Quick grits are manufactured in a similar fashion to instant grits, but the granules are coarser, and while they do have a similar chemical composition for preservatives and nutrition, they’re altered slightly so that instead of cooking instantly, they are “fully cooked” in about five minutes.

At the other end of the spectrum, stone-ground grits, which are often an artisanal or small-batch product these days, are typically dried kernels of corn that are ground between two stones, instead of being pushed through steel roller mills. (Stones produce less heat than steel, thereby retaining more flavor in the final product.) After being crushed between stones, the corn is sifted to remove the germ (but not always) before being bagged—no nutritional additives or flavor enhancers are used. (I use the term bagged intentionally because most artisanal grits found these days are sold in paper or cloth bags rather than boxes.)

The term “cold milling” adds another step to the process, since the corn kernels are chilled and then milled at colder temperatures, which further helps retain the natural flavor of the corn. Both methods—cold milling and stone grinding—usually result in grits far more flavorful than those that are industrially produced.

Some Southerners also toss around the term hominy grits—these are mostly seen on menus or in recipes, and predominately in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, specifically around Charleston. But it’s a confusing and oftentimes misused term. Hominy is made with a processing technique called nixtamalization, wherein corn kernels are soaked in a solution of water and lye—long ago it was wood or plant ash—to remove the outer skin of the kernel. That nixtamalized product, called hominy, can be dried and then ground, making a product called hominy grits. But that process isn’t commonly used these days, especially for commercially produced grits. (We’ll get into where and when hominy grits are produced a little further along.) For primer purposes, it’s good to note that both grits and hominy can be considered “grits.” But only hominy can be hominy. Follow?

Yet another point of confusion simmers around the similarities and differences between grits and polenta. Theoretically, grits and polenta are the same thing: ground corn cooked into a porridge. But, technically, polenta and grits differ in several ways, including in the type of corn used to produce the ground product, as well as in the way they have traditionally been milled. Grits are typically produced using dent corn, while polenta is traditionally produced from flint corn. These two varieties differ in their hardness—flint kernels are firmer and rounded on top; dent kernels are softer and have a shallow dent in the top of the kernel. It was flint corns sourced from the Caribbean that Italians started cultivating, grinding, and cooking into porridge around 1500. And although the dish was originally a simple cornmeal mush that could be made from any corn milled to any coarseness, the Italians eventually improved and defined polenta through a technique called reduction milling, where the kernels are ground into large granules and then passed through the mill another time, and then another—the slow process produces less heat than standard single-process milling, and the reduction in heat helps maintain the flint corn’s flavor and allows a miller to get the coarseness down to precisely the granule size they want. And, because flint kernels are firmer than dent, cooked polenta firms up into a sturdier porridge with a more defined toothiness than grits.1 Today, very few producers outside of Italy stick to these guidelines—which only adds further confusion to the differentiation between the two products.

All of that is to say, grits are just corn. Not the sweet eating corn that you find at summer roadside stands, but rather a variety of soft dent corn, which has a high starch content. That starch makes it a product that’s ideal for grinding and boiling down. These corns can be found in a multitude of colors—the most popular are white and yellow, but you can also find blue and red varieties, as well as a rainbow of heirloom varieties, from golden orange to deep purple.

Arguments abound on which color corn produces the “best” grits. In certain parts of the South, yellow corn is also viewed as feed corn—“only good for the animals,” some might say. In those places, white corn grits are the dominant preference. Other parts of the South view white corn as looking too similar to instant, so those areas prefer yellow corn grits. (I say “areas,” but preferences can vary from household to household.) Some say white corn is sweeter; others argue that yellow corn offers more texture. Starch content between different varieties of corn can vary widely, which will affect the cooking time and ultimate flavor of the finished dish. In truth, it all comes down to personal preference.

Grits tend to be a Southern thing. Yes, grits are consumed and found in stores and on menus all over the country and well beyond—the ever-moving “Grits Line,” as food writer and author Ronni Lundy calls it. But in the multistate region that spans from Virginia to Texas, there is a passion and love for grits that is prominent and well-known. Grits are the official prepared food of Georgia. The town of St. George, South Carolina, claims to be the highest per capita consumer of grits in the world. (They have not been challenged on this.) Though the point of origin for grits is not in the South, the region can claim notoriety for the proliferation of the dish.

Not only are they mostly eaten by Southerners, they are beloved by Southerners of every stripe: wealthy, poor, black, white, brown, young, old, big, and small. Grits are an equalizing staple—prepared in every style and class of kitchen. And that tradition has endured for multiple centuries. Not every Southerner favors them, of course. Texturally, they can turn people off. (Especially when poured from a packet and cooked in less than a minute.) But for many, it’s been written that if grits aren’t on the plate, the sun won’t shine.

* * *

Decades after the ant annihilation, I was reintroduced to grits while falling in love with my husband, Dave, who was raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. On my first visit to his hometown, I got to know his mom, Becky, who welcomed me in a number of ways, including the family tradition of a big weekend breakfast. We sat down to plates of eggs, bacon, biscuits, toast, and grits. Seated at Becky’s wide dining room table, I spooned a pile of grits onto my plate, wondering whether these would taste as bland as the ones I remembered from my youth. I sliced a pat of butter from the butter plate and laid it over the grits. The yellow mass melted lazily down the edge of the pile. I added a bit of salt and a grind of pepper and then pushed the tines of my fork through the mix, giving the butter a valley to sink into. I took a bite and felt surprise at the nutty flavor coating my tongue. I felt the individual granules pop against my teeth. More than just corn, I picked up on something earthy but also sweet. I was overcome with how rich and satisfying these grits tasted. The pile didn’t coagulate on my plate, but rather spread slightly, mixing with my scrambled eggs into a sunshine-colored heap. I scooped up another forkful, this time using the corner of a biscuit to push the grits and eggs together. Taking the whole bite down, biscuit and all, I looked at Becky and grinned—not just because I wanted to please her (though I did), but because something so simple, that she had taken time to prepare, had been so deeply pleasing to me.

That reintroduction to grits started me on an odyssey. Since that meal, and those days when instant grits were all I knew, I’ve tasted stone-ground grits pooled in broth with a poached egg on top, and also crisply fried into snack-size cakes; I’ve eaten them mounded in a bowl as a vessel for shrimp; I’ve tried quick grits that coated an entire plate and were scattered with bits of bacon and cheese; I’ve sopped up grits served hot and creamy at a Waffle House. Each offered a new opportunity for texture and color—in some instances a blank canvas upon which brushstrokes of bright flavor had been applied.

Although grits are probably most frequently eaten on their own, topped with butter, or mixed with cheese, they’ve lately been taken into consideration more frequently for their blank canvas appeal, especially by chefs, bloggers, and food magazine editors. Yes, there’s flavor to be found in a pile of grits—but, like rice or pasta, they can also be a base for any number of toppings or items mixed in.

There may no longer be a line defining where grits are eaten, but there most certainly is when it comes to what they are eaten with. Twitter feeds and online comment sections regularly heat up with arguments about whether one should or should not put sugar or other sweeteners in their grits. Deep into the pages of any number of Southern cookbooks, the argument arises over whether one should “gussy up” a pile of grits. The late Edna Lewis, a country cook from Virginia who went on to become a well-known restaurant owner and cookbook author, noted that “People should really leave grits alone.” Decades later, the Charleston-based cookbook authors and brothers Matt and Ted Lee professed their excitement over trying grits laced with a funky Clemson blue cheese in their book The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook.

It was a “gussied up” version of the dish, discovered at Sean Brock’s restaurant Husk Nashville, that further propelled me on my own grits journey. Sean sat at the crest of what had become a tidal wave of “Southern food as trend” that had washed over the food world since he’d opened his New Southern restaurant Husk Charleston in 2010. Announcing that if the ingredient didn’t come from the South, “it’s not coming through the door,” he built himself into a missionary, bent on celebrating and honoring the foods of his native region. Eventually, he opened a second Husk location in Nashville, where the menu focused on the produce and proteins of the upper South. It was there that I was introduced to a dish called A Plate of Southern Vegetables, which was anchored by a bowl of grits.

During an interview in 2015, Sean professed to me that he had an obsession with vegetables—his entire left arm is tattooed with them. I’d called him for a magazine article about how chefs were putting vegetables at the center of the plate; I wanted more details about his Southern vegetable plate. On it, he included four or five components, all vegetable-driven and each crafted with the same treatment he applied to his protein dishes.

The menu item was a storytelling device, Sean explained. “Vegetables and their varieties can be very regionally specific and cooking with ingredients that grow right around you helps tell the story of that region,” he said. Between his two restaurants, one on the coast of South Carolina, the other in landlocked Tennessee, the variety ranged dramatically. “The vegetable plate is a way to explore the area right around us which, at different times of the year, even day by day, is changing all the time,” he said.

The anchor of the plate was a tall, cone-shaped dish containing grits. Soupy in their consistency, thanks to a brothy base, they sat beneath a poached egg drizzled with herb-infused oil. To eat them, you dipped your spoon into the depths of the cone and pulled up a slurping pile of soft grits, a bit of broth, and a sliver of egg.

I asked Sean about grits during the interview and heard a moan of pleasure on the other end of the line. Then a chuckle. “Get me going on grits and I might not stop,” he said. Being on the phone, I couldn’t see his expression, but I could read it. A half smile. A light in his eyes.

“Grits,” he stated, “are the ultimate expression of terroir.”

His comment hung in the air for a minute. My understanding of terroir—how an ingredient takes on the flavor characteristics of the specific place where it is grown—was personal. I’d once worked on an oyster farm and learned the term merroir, a play on the origin word that applies to ingredients raised in the sea. Oysters pull elements from the seawater they filter and take on those characteristics, so influences like algae, water temperature, and even wind direction can affect final flavor. The same rules applied to land-grown ingredients, including wine grapes and apples, which can channel different flavor profiles depending on where they’re grown.

How could grits be a vehicle for terroir? What I had been tasting for years—what most people had been tasting since the mass application of steel roller mills and an industrialized agriculture system—was not corn. From a box, the product that gets mixed with water is so stripped of flavor and so “nutritionally enhanced” with additives that the end result couldn’t possibly be a vehicle for locational characteristics. Yes, all grits are made from corn, that part I understood. But, so far in my lifetime, I hadn’t encountered many examples that could back up Sean’s claim.

His comment rattled me. Then it sat with me. And finally it gnawed at me. I wanted to understand his case. Based on my own experiences, it wasn’t the grits themselves but rather what you put on the grits that gave them flavor. What was it about the corn itself, or even the milling process, that could directly affect the flavor of grits?

With Sean’s words in my head, I set out to better understand how grits are produced, and why they could veer so dramatically from the bland instant grits I knew as a child to something that was bursting with corn flavor. I wanted to know what path grits had taken—where they originated, how they became a mass-produced cereal product, and, finally, what brought them into the hands of a chef like Sean, who’d found a way to recapture their true flavor.


Copyright © 2018 by Erin Byers Murray