Home-Ground Grits!

I posted awhile back about grinding cornmeal from the dent corn we grew this summer.  I was unsure of how to grind grits from the corn.  Most things I read said that you needed to grind the corn, then sift it.  The small stuff that goes through is cornmeal, and the big stuff on top is grits.

I tried this.  I wound up with about a cup and a half of cornmeal, and a teaspoon of grits.  I don’t know about your family, but a teaspoon of grits won’t do much for mine!

English Market, Cork, Ireland AKA Foodie Paradise!

Fast forward to Ireland.  We wanted to cook shrimp and grits for our family there, and we discovered the English Market in Cork.  Foodie Paradise.  It was fabulous.  The one and only ingredient they didn’t have was grits.  I did finally manage to find some polenta and some cornmeal in one shop. After looking at the two, I decided that the cornmeal had a coarser grind, so that was the way to go.  Besides, my Irish family wouldn’t know if it tasted like grits or not, right?

Shrimp and Cornmeal Grits

Anyway, they were a little bit creamier than regular grits, but other than that, they cooked up just fine and everyone loved them (or they might have said that to be nice, who knows!)  So that got our wheels turning.  If we cooked up cornmeal and served it as grits, could we not grind it at home and do the same thing?

OK, not the best picture, but you can see that they look like grits (only purple, which makes them more fun!)

So guess what?  We got home and tried it, and it worked just fine!  We ground the corn in the Vitamix and left it a bit coarse (maybe 30 seconds total time) and we cooked it up just like stone ground grits.  (That is for about 30 minutes instead of 5 like you do for quick grits.)  They are creamy and delicious and the kids gobbled them right up, so there!  Problem solved!  Just grind the corn, cook it up, and quit over thinking it!


So are grits a staple in your house?  We eat them multiple times a week here and the kids just flip out for them!