Do you enjoy grits?

[satx78247]

My 2 problems with menudo are:
1. There are TWO sorts: REALLY GOOD & REALLY BAD.
and
2.The BEST menudo in metropolitan San Antonio is only served on the weekends until 1700.
(I cannot figure out why hardly anyplace makes menudo during the weekdays & NONE of those have GOOD menudo.)

yours, satx

 

[Nativearizonan]

I'm not sure how a discussion on grits got turned to menudo.

I like grits, but I also like fried potatoes. If I'm eating somewhere that they know how to make good grits, I usually order them, but I'm cautious about getting them in a lot of places.

When I was living in SC, liver pudding was the oddest thing I would regularly see on the menu for breakfast. Of course they probably would have thought menudo, or gut soup as I call it, would be a strange thing to eat.

 

[tenngun]

Wow, manudo cooked thick then stir in some grits, maybe wrap it in a pudding cloth and boil for a few hours....hillbilly haggis :haha:

 

[tenngun]

May my Scott's ancestors forgive me, the ghost of Bobby burns may star haunting me :haha:

 

[satx78247]

RotflmRao.

yours, satx

 

[Treestalker]

Wow Tenngun I believe you have hit on something! As a lover of good menudo and grits, I owe it to you to experiment! My ancestors from Old Alba might roll in their graves! :shocked2: Thanks, George

 

[satx78247]

I'm pleased to report that as of 0217 hours CDT, 22MAR16 that THREE FOURTHS of poll respondents have enough good taste to enjoy grits.
(CHUCKLE)

To those readers who are other than Southrons: A former professor of Foods & Nutrition at TEXAS WOMAN'S UNIVERSITY once said that the foods we like best & cling to for life are our "cradle food" that our mothers/grandmothers/etc. fed us before age 8.
I suspect that grits is one of those "cradle foods" that remind us of home/family/happier times.

yours, satx

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Grits are really just plain old corn meal in which the particles are slightly larger. Take two tablespoons of cornmeal and mix in a pot with cold water- into a paste. Slowly heat to a low boil and watch closely as you will have to keep adding a little water. You only boil a minute or two, basically until all the water is absorbed. "Hasty Pudding" "Polenta" all the same stuff.

No They Are Not :nono:

Grits, are properly Hominy Grits, and are made from ground hominy. Hominy is dried corn that has been treated with a alkaline, normally lye, which attacks and softens the husk, which is then removed.

Corn meal, is ground Whole Corn (today made from a flint variety), including the husk. It is true that boiled corn meal is Hasty Pudding, and Corn Meal Mush, and that if done as the Italians do it, Polenta, but it is different in flavor and color because it has the husk still in it.

IF you take the dried, flint corn and dry roast it, you make Parched Corn, which may be chewed whole, OR you can grind that up and make Rockahominy, aka Pinole, which was a very excellent trail food from all accounts written about it.

East of the Mississippi, Hominy was dried, and then reboiled when needed, and this process takes about 45 minutes to an hour. In the early 19th century, from what I've been able to find, dried hominy was ground to reduce the cooking time. It was one of the first "fast foods".

Out in the Southwest, and farther South from that, the Indians had been grinding down hominy into flour, today called Masa Flour, since before contact with the Spanish. It makes great tortillas

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Hominy is dried corn that has been treated with a alkaline, normally lye

The process of treating corn with an alkali is known as nixtamalization. Lye might be used today in industrial food production, but I do believe that Lime water was used traditionally.

 

[George]

In the east, I believe lye was used to make hominy. That tradition lasted until well into the 20th century, my father helped his mother make hominy in eastern Kentucky in the 1920s. They used lye made from wood ash in an ash hopper.

The same is true of the Hidatsa Indians in mid-19th century. They used wood ash, but simply made a solution of lye by leeching wood ash, then adding it to the corn. The Shawnee did the same, but they put ash into the same kettle with the corn.

I seem to recall that the use of lime was a south-of-the order or southwestern method which does the same thing.

Spence

 

[crockett]

They had a chapter in one of the Foxfire books on how to make your own wood ash lye and then take off the hulls and then wash off the lye.
I mentioned the corn meal because it is pretty close- for those in England that can't buy grits- gives them a basic idea.
I noticed a few mention restaurant grits. I agree, usually ghastly stuff that is like glue. You have to cook them at home- IMHO.
Question on the grits-corn meal issue. I have no idea why but if you cook some grits and then wash out the pot- there really does seem to be sort of a "glue" clinging to the sides of the pot. When I boil corn meal it washes out more easily. I have bounced back and forth enough times that it seems more than just my imagination.
And, I never thought about it before but does the hull have added vitamins and minerals? Is it more healthful to eat boiled cornmeal versus grits?

 

[George]

I have no idea why but if you cook some grits and then wash out the pot- there really does seem to be sort of a "glue" clinging to the sides of the pot. When I boil corn meal it washes out more easily. I have bounced back and forth enough times that it seems more than just my imagination.

The process of making hominy, nixtamalization, changes the protein in corn. You can make a dough of masa, which is ground hominy and used to make tortillas, but you can't make dough out of cornmeal. It's that sticky protein part you are finding in your pot.

Many people get confused about grits if they aren't from the south. Grits is a form of ground corn, alright, and if you cook that kind of grits, you get mush. Southern grits are not just ground corn, but ground hominy...hominy grits... a very different thing.

Spence

 

[Sean Gadhar]

You should have made the yea line gray :haha:

Alright that one took me a minute :hmm:

Slow witted though I am I did get it :grin:

Now I'm too fat to be cooking such for myself, but when the boys were still at home I would make some Spicy Hot shrimp, put them in the bottom of the bowl cover with grits so it looked like a bowl of plan grits. then when you dug in all that red sauce & shrimp would be waiting.....The boys would have a friend over just to watch the kid's face as he first thought dinner was a bowl of plan grits & then as he found the shrimp :grin: Good times with grits :rotf:

 

[tenngun]

Ripe corn, made in to corn meal or grits or masa has a rich corn flavor. So some one who never had grits can get a taste via hasty pudding or fried mush. Gator, rabbit, frog legs rattlesnake taste a little like chicken. Or deer elk beef buffalo have a simular flavor, not the same but on a line. Polenta is as close to grits as beef is to buff. I would bet people who don't like grits dosnt like tamales or hoe cakes either.

 

[coloradoclyde]

In the east, I believe lye was used to make hominy. That tradition lasted until well into the 20th century, my father helped his mother make hominy in eastern Kentucky in the 1920s. They used lye made from wood ash in an ash hopper.

The same is true of the Hidatsa Indians in mid-19th century. They used wood ash, but simply made a solution of lye by leeching wood ash, then adding it to the corn. The Shawnee did the same, but they put ash into the same kettle with the corn.

I seem to recall that the use of lime was a south-of-the order or southwestern method which does the same thing.

Spence

I was hoping someone might correct me with period references, but what I really wonder is; Has anyone actually eaten hominy made using wood ashes or wood ash lye?

The reason I ask is....
I have made soap using wood ash lye and the lye always has a distinct tannic type odor, that I can only assume would negatively flavor the corn.... :idunno:

 

[George]

I haven't eaten homemade hominy. Every description I've read of the procedure stresses a lot of rinsing to get the lye or ashes off. I suppose that also concerns the taste. Commercial hominy has a unique taste, but I never thought of it as being like lye.

Spence

 

[George]

Gator, rabbit, frog legs rattlesnake taste a little like chicken.

I was looking for a cartoon for you which I recently saw, tenngun, but can't locate it. It showed two Neanderthals at a fire, one is roasting a chicken on a stick. He says to his buddy, "I don't know what it's called, but it tastes like everything."

Spence

 

[tenngun]

I've seen that :haha:

 

[TNGhost]

My 2 problems with menudo are:
1. There are TWO sorts: REALLY GOOD & REALLY BAD.
and
2.The BEST menudo in metropolitan San Antonio is only served on the weekends until 1700.
(I cannot figure out why hardly anyplace makes menudo during the weekdays & NONE of those have GOOD menudo.)

yours, satx

'Twas the same in New Mexico, only on the weekends, very good or very bad. I was told the weekend thing stemmed from tradition, partially due to "menudo para crudo". It was and is routinely relied upon, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, as a hangover remedy.

For those who don't get the connection to grits, one of the key ingredients of menudo, besides tripe, are unground hominy kernals.

 

[Woods Dweller]

I am having grits for dinner tonight. Anyone like instant grits? I ordered grits up north many years ago and they brought me cream of wheat.