# Self Sufficiency/Living off the Land or Off the Grid > Cooking, Food Storage, & Preserving >  what are REAL grits

## hayshaker

i have some Quaker oats brand grits but it says on the box quick,5min so are these to be construdas INSTANT grits and not real grits, serious cause were talking real country food here and people
take thier grits seriously.i've hear where in oh say mississippi if one were to sit down at a diner
and ask for oh let's say jelly or ketchup for thier grits why george jones would stop playing on the jukebox
every head in the place would cas thier eyes on you someone would mutter damm yanky and the waittress
would bout have a fit. sorry i have a vivid imagination but it does happen i'm sure i've seen all the movies
ya know. so what brand are real grits? please help a poor yankee wannabe southerner.

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## Rick

I don't know why you think instant grits are not "real". Grits are made from ground corn that has to soak up liquid. Instant grits are made from hominy, which is soaked corn. Part of the process has been completed, which is why they are "instant".

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## madmax

ahem.  Real grits are stone ground.  Takes forever to cook and you have to stir constantly.

Cheese, salt, pepper, and butter are allowed.

Instant grits are very quickly distinguished from real grits with one taste.

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## 1stimestar

Instant grits will do in a pinch.  They were the only ones available up here for the first several years I was here.  But you can certainly tell the difference.

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## madmax

When I explained to my very southern wife to be way back when that we ate fried mush up north... she looked sickfaced.  To this day I have not seen mush in the south.

I am a diehard grits fan now,  but wouldn't turn down some mush.

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## crashdive123



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## Fixit

Normal grits are shifted out of corn when it is ground for corn meal. They are the bits that are to course. Hominy grits are grits that are made from hominy that has been redried and ground. As a side the making of hominy increases the available nutrients from the corn . In my opinion yellow has better flavor than white .

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## hunter63

Have had cheesy grits at Christmas time in Louisiana......didn't mind those.
Still won't order grits , but they are served anyway, in a lot of places.....LOL.

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## LowKey

I like making grits when I make baked beans. I hate standing there stirring grits, but you can leave em to soak overnight in the oven on low with the slow cooked baked beans and just finish them off in the morning. I like the chunky white "cracked corn" hominy you get in the dried bean aisle at the grocery store. Yeah, I know. Strange Yankee. I like the mushy type when down south but only in diners. There was a small place downtown from where my dad lived in Florida that had really good breakfast with grits (Chucks in Bushnell.) The stuff you get at the restaurant chains just isn't as good. I use butter and salt only. Maybe a stray dash of pepper if eating with eggs. The instant grits, I used to like em when I was younger but now they are just tasteless. They're ok if you mix up your eggs into em.

Hominy is lye or lime-soaked dried corn rather than just plain dried corn. Grits are the coarser parts kept after grinding hominy for corn flour. The liming of the corn allows the flour to make a dough when water is added. Think tortilla. Regular dried cornmeal doesn't make a good dough when moistened. It just crumbles apart.

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## 1stimestar

> When I explained to my very southern wife to be way back when that we ate fried mush up north... she looked sickfaced.  To this day I have not seen mush in the south.
> 
> I am a diehard grits fan now,  but wouldn't turn down some mush.


Yep, grew up eating corn meal mush for breakfast.

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## LowKey

I really like corn mush made from leftover cornbread, drowned in milk and heated through.

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## hayshaker

ever have cold grits when shaped in a square pan cut into squares and fried in bacon fat yum

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## kyratshooter

Ketchup on grits is a felony south of Louisville.  No kidding, if done in a Waffle House it brings double time with no early release.

Love my grits!  I even like the instant kind.  I made a special trip to Cracker Barrel for Thanksgiving dinner just to get some good grits.  Of course I had to have some country ham and biscuits and gravy to go with it.

One good thing about grits is that if you keep them in your long term store they do not take up much room.  A couple of spoons full cook up to a big serving.

"Hog and Hominy" was what fed our nation through the settlement era, and the hominy they were talking about was hominy grits.

The dried corn was soaked in lye and then dried again and eaten whole, as whole hominy, and ground into the grits we know.  They are not "leftover" anything.  I have ground them myself in the gristmills of several historic sites.

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## Batch

I buy ground corn and ground hominy. I mix them together and bring them to a boil and then turn the stove down to between 3 and 4. I don't stir them constantly. Just everyonce in a while when I check the consistency. Cooks between 15 and 18 minutes. 

I start my sunny side eggs up at around the 12 minute mark, cracked in my cast iron skillet that I cooked the bacon in. About 3 minutes before your grits are ready drop in crumpled bacon and jalapenos. Some fresh ground pepper. Just before you take the grits off the stove put in shredded cheddar.

Put them grits on a plate and put them eggs on top. Quarter up a toasted and buttered onion bagel and place it around the grits.

That my friends is food porn and when them eggs bust a yolk it is a happy ending! As Uncle Robert would say, "Put some of that on top off your head and your tongue will slap your brains out trying to get to it!

My understanding was that the lye killed the germ of the corn kernel so that it wouldn't germinate and sprout. This kept longer.

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## pete lynch

I flavor up those instant or quick grits with sausage crumbles or real crumbled bacon pieces. Pepper and garlic salt also.

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## Fixit

Now in the south even the pizza parlors serve grits. Look up Truelovespizza   It wouldn't let me post the link.

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## Mannlicher

I know it may sound arbitrary, but with grits, some things just work better, and taste better.  I prefer my grits to be white, stone ground.  The best product I have found, is from Alabama, McEwen and Sons.  They have a web site, and sell to the public from that site.  Inexpensive, and without equal in 'the grit eating world'.  Anything less is not 'grits', but may be called an imitation, grit like food product.    :Smile: 
I find, after some 60 years of fixing grits, that they cook best in an enamaled, cast iron pot.  Le Creuset is my preference.   Perfect grits, every time.  And it takes time.  Anything worthwhile takes time.  Simple fact of life.  
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## hayshaker

is jelly allowed on grits or what 'i did it before it was pretty good.
think i'll go to tennesee and order grits & ketchup just to see the reaction, heh heh
just kiddin i don't livr life that dangerous.

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## kyratshooter

Now look what you've done!

After all these months with not a mention you have gone and "flung a cravin' on me!".

Guess I have to get up and go cook grits now.

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## Fixit

hadum for breakfast this morning

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## crashdive123

> 


I just love this scene.

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## edr730

My father told me many times how they made hominy, when he was a boy, by putting a bag of ashes in the water then remove the skins from the corn. I've also heard of others just dumping the ashes in the water after running the ashes through a screen. Today it is almost always made with lime and some will use bicarbonate of soda. When hominy is made the skins always come off. Hominy grits are ground corn first soaked in lye, lime or bicarbonate of soda, skins removed, dried then ground. There are other foods where the corn is soaked in less lye, lime or soda and then used with the skin still intact, but it is not really hominy. I am not sure what corn they make hominy from today, but it has the appearance of the same corn they have used for hundreds of years that is not sweet.  Today they have special names for it. One name I recall is King Kane. It appears to be the same corn as corn nuts are made from. It was the corn of the south certainly in the 30's until whenever sweet corn became popular.

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