where grits come from?

Like many food writers, Erin Byers Murray enjoys taking a deep dive into learning the history and nuances of specific ingredients. For her first book, Shucked, Murray chronicled the year that she spent working on a New England oyster farm; her second book, Grits: A Cultural and Culinary Journey Through The South, however, led her on an unexpected cultural journey about the simplest of ingredients: ground corn.

"I was used to knowing grits only as something that came in a box from mass producers," Murray says. "I didn't really grow up eating them, so it wasn't necessarily a natural fit as a topic for me."

It was a passing comment from Sean Brock, a James Beard Award-winning Southern chef, that led Murray down the rabbit hole. "I was actually talking to Sean about vegetables, and he happened to float out this idea that grits have terroir" — whereby the local environment in which a food is grown is said to impact its flavor — "and I couldn't stop thinking about that idea and wondered if it could be true."

But as she started sampling small-batch artisanal grits from Southern millers such as Anson Mills, Geechie Boy Mill, Delta Grind and Original Grit Girl, Murray began to understand that this coarsely ground corn has deep roots in many cultures that, perhaps, transcend its flavor characteristics.

"Talking to people about grits started to open up all these conversations about bigger things," says Murray. "I had just recently moved to the South, and it seemed like the people who were reviving grits as a food didn't really match its origins. I was realizing that there was more to this than just following the dish through history."

Interest in grits has been fueled in recent years as farmers have revived heirloom varieties of corn branded with evocative names like Jimmy Red, Pencil Cob, Carolina Gourdseed White and Hopi Blue, but it has not been lost on Murray and others that a food originally cooked in the kitchens of the impoverished has found its champions in recent decades among white male chefs leading fine-dining restaurants.

"The South has always been poor," says Grits cookbook author Virginia Willis, "and so our food is a food born of poverty. Grits is the porridge of poor Southerners."

Alice Randall, a novelist and cookbook author who teaches courses on both soul food and Southern food at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., sees grits as a food specifically associated with the South but not necessarily with a race or even a gender (although they were most commonly cooked by women in earlier history). "Grits are inherently Southern, so they identify as a taste of the South across cultures," she says.

Murray theorizes that grits can be traced back much further than to the kitchens run by African American and white women in the antebellum South.

"For grits, every major pivot point in the story line involves appropriation," writes Murray in her book. "It started with the fateful naming of the bowl of cracked maize." It's said that British colonists arriving in Virginia were presented by Indigenous people with steaming bowls of this maize, a dish that the colonists began referring to as "grist," which later morphed into "grits."

Interviews with Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota who has been preserving and showcasing Indigenous cooking through The Sioux Chef project, and William Thomas, an African American pathologist who worked with Cherokee natives Nancy and Tony Plemmons on their cookbook Cherokee Cooking: From the Mountains and Gardens to the Table, led Murray to wonder how long grits — or some version of them — had been cooked for nourishment.

"The evidence exists," says Murray, "that corn was being milled in 8700 B.C. in Central America. There must have been a dish of ground corn and water cooked over heat. It's a food product that's not just historic — it's ancient."

Randall, of Vanderbilt, likes seeing the rising interest in grits. "The essence of soul food is preserving and evolving at the same time," she says. "What we are seeing in the 21st century with grits is some distillation of that: what we learn by refining and processing, as well as what we learn by going back to milling them in the old ways. It's an ongoing study of the evolution and preservation of a food item."

Even while Murray was delving into the archaeology, technology and agriculture of grits while researching her book, the most consistent theme seemed to be that of nostalgia — and comfort. Murray's conversations with cooks, farmers and millers sparked deep-seated memories. She says: "You can talk about artisanal producers and the evolution of shrimp and grits in fine dining, but when you get down to it, it's about the memory of someone — maybe your mom or your grandma or your uncle — standing at a stove and stirring. It's the definition of slow food."

"I think there are people who will wonder why grits are such a big deal," Willis, the cookbook author, says, "but grits are found all over the South at almost every meal. Even when you go to someone's house when someone dies, there's going to be a cheese grits casserole on the table. I call them 'funeral grits' because it's pure comfort food."

Grits, Murray hopes, will help spur more discussion about how food shapes our culture, as humble ingredients are elevated into expensive dishes even as we come to terms with long-lost, or ignored, origin stories that deserve recognition.

"The real story of the book wasn't just this dish," says Murray, "but how I could look at this place where I lived and get to know its people better simply by talking about grits."

Grits are made from a less sweet, starchy variety of corn, such as dent corn. The corn goes through a type of processing that soaks the dried grains in lye or another alkali for several days, which removes the hard hull; the resulting grain is referred to as hominy. When purchasing grits, you will find hominy as well as white and yellow corn varieties.

Polenta is an Italian version of grits. It's made from cornmeal, so it has a significantly different texture and flavor. It is prepared similarly and can look like grits, which is where the confusion may lie.

There are stone-ground, fast-cooking, and instant varieties of grits. However, read the package carefully to distinguish between grits and cornmeal, which is fine-textured processed corn used like flour, and masa harina, which is the base for tortillas. Though most varieties of grits can be theoretically interchanged with cornmeal, masa, or polenta, you usually get better results when you use the specific type of grain called for in a recipe. Stone-ground grits yield a big flavor and a chunkier bite from the intact germ; finely ground cornmeal, on the other hand, would cook into a smooth, almost watery mush.

It is important you use a certain type of grits for particular styles of recipes. For example, choose a coarse or medium grind for a traditional side dish; you can use stone-ground grits, which take about 45 minutes with constant attention to cook on the stovetop, or quick grits, which cook in about 10 minutes.

A versatile food, grits can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Grits can be made very simply with a pat of butter and a dash of salt or turned into something more elaborate and flavorful. To make grits, boil four to five times the amount of water to grits, add salt to the water, and then cook the grits for about 45 minutes, with near-constant stirring.

For a versatile side dish, simmer grits in generously salted water, chicken stock, or milk until mushy and thick. Naturally mild, grits need a dose of flavor from ingredients such as butter, cream, and cheese; to accompany breakfast, try a recipe for cheese grits. For a more substantial meal, Southerners serve shrimp and grits.

Finished grits should be thick, smooth, and have a mild flavor. Grits tend to taste like what you mix with them, so they are often made with added salt, butter, and cheese. They should not taste raw or "off."

Since grits are often a side dish or base for other meals, it depends on how you substitute them. For breakfast, try cream of wheat or even oatmeal. For heartier fare, try swapping polenta, mashed potatoes, risotto, or roasted veggies.

There are some creative ways to incorporate grits into your recipes along with plenty of traditional Southern recipes featuring grits. Try some of these:

Stone-ground grits may be hard to find in the grocery store, but you can mail order them from a number of online retailers. Chefs and connoisseurs say stone ground has a better corn flavor as well as heartier texture, so it may be worth investing some time searching for them. They are also more nutritional than instant grits. Instant grits can be found in most grocery stores in the cereal or baking aisle. They are sold in bags or boxes and likely cost under $5.

Grits are a type of porridge made from boiled cornmeal. Hominy grits are a type of grits made from hominy – corn that has been treated with an alkali in a process called nixtamalization, with the pericarp (ovary wall) removed. Grits are often served with flavorings[1] as a breakfast dish. Grits can be savory or sweet, with savory seasonings being more common. Grits are similar to other thick maize-based porridges from around the world, such as polenta and mieliepap. The dish originated in the Southern United States but is now available nationwide. Grits are often part of a dinner entrée shrimp and grits, served primarily in the South.[1]

The word "grits" is derived from the Old English word grytt, meaning "coarse meal."[2] In the Charleston, South Carolina, area, cooked hominy grits were primarily referred to as "hominy" until the 1980s.[3][4]

The dish originated with the Native American Muscogee tribe using a corn similar to hominy.[5] American colonists learned to make the dish from the Native Americans, and it quickly became an American staple.[6]

At that time, the hominy for grits was ground on a stone mill. The ground hominy was passed through screens, the finer sifted material used as grit meal, and the coarser as grits.[7]

Three-quarters of the grits sold in the U.S. are bought in the South, in an area stretching from Lower Texas to Washington, D.C., that is sometimes called the "grits belt."[8] The state of Georgia declared grits to be its official prepared food in 2002.[9] A similar bill was introduced in South Carolina to name it the official state food,[10] but it did not advance.[11] Nevertheless, South Carolina still has an entire chapter of legislation dealing exclusively with corn meal and grits.[12] State law in South Carolina requires grits and rice meal to be enriched, similar to the requirement for flour.[12]

Grits may be either yellow or white, depending on the color of the corn used. The most common version in supermarkets is "quick" grits, which have the germ and hull removed. Whole kernel grits are sometimes called "speckled".[13]

Grits are prepared by mixing water or milk and cornmeal and stirring them over heat.[14][15] Whole grain grits require much longer to become soft than "quick grits."

Grits are eaten with a wide variety of foods, such as eggs and bacon, fried catfish, shrimp, salmon croquettes, or country ham.[16]

Shrimp and grits is a traditional dish in the coastal communities in the South Carolina Lowcountry and Georgia's Lower Coastal Plain.[17]

Solidified cooked grits can be sliced and fried in vegetable oil, butter, or bacon grease, or they can first be breaded in beaten egg and bread crumbs.[18]

Grits are made from dent corn, which has a softer and starchier kernel than other corn varieties. The mature kernels are processed to remove the outer hull, dried, and then ground into smaller bits.

The most basic—and perhaps most common—way to prepare grits is to boil them, then combine them with butter and milk. However, the Southern staple is often "dressed up" with cheeses, spices, sauces, meats, seafoods (shrimp and grits, anyone?), and veggies.

If grits are just ground corn kernels, then what the heck is polenta? Well, it's basically Italian grits. The difference is that grits are made from white corn (or hominy), while polenta is made from yellow corn. In a pinch, you can substitute polenta for grits and vice versa—just be aware that polenta has a coarser texture, so your results will be slightly affected.

Cream of wheat, meanwhile, is made from ground kernels of wheat. It looks slightly similar to grits and is typically prepared in a similar way. The textures of the two food products are quite different when cooked, though. True to their names, cream of wheat is creamy and grits are, well, gritty.

Yes and no. Stone-ground grits are the healthiest option because corn kernels are ground whole, so you reap the benefits of every part of the corn.

They're also typically less processed (which means they are more perishable). Since other types of grits are ground with the hull and germ removed, they lose the fiber- and iron-rich outer skin and embryo. All that's left is the starchy center.

Another factor to consider is what you're adding to your grits. While grits in their simplest form aren't necessarily bad for you, many people add tons of butter and cheese. Loaded with fatty additions, grits are delicious — but probably not the healthiest choice.

Since grits are not made from grain, barley, or rye, they are gluten-free.

But you need to carefully read the labels before buying—many popular grits brands are not considered gluten-free because of the possibility of cross-contamination.

Since corn is considered a great source of carbohydrates, grits aren't ideal for people following the ketogenic diet.

Before grits were topped with shrimp and served at fancy Southern restaurants, Native Americans ate "rockahomine" (mashed corn).

Colonists who settled in Jamestown, Virginia renamed the dish "hominy."

Cheap, filling, and easy to make, grits quickly became a staple in American diets — particularly in the American South.

Remember the ratio 4:1 when cooking grits. This means you should use four cups of water for every cup of grits.

Grits are made from ground corn, typically from less sweet, starchy varieties often referred to as dent corn. Grits can be made from either yellow or white corn and are often labeled accordingly.