Cooking 'Grits'

[Burning Petard]

In my advanced age and doctor induced dietary restrictions, I am exploring foods that I have long rejected for no real reason. Now it is Grits. As I understand it, that is a method of cooking field corn to make it palatable and digestible to humans. I like it as prepared by Waffle House, with lots of butter.

I have tried the stuff at the local grocery store, Quaker Oats brand, without much success. I now have a cloth bag of "Stone Ground Grits" Charleston Favorites brand. Instructions on the bag say rinse the corn (sort of like dried beans) with three changes of water, then cook for about 30 minutes with a ratio of grits/water 1/3. for about 30 minutes. Not rigid instructions, to allow of personal preference on final consistency.

However, a variation is suggested: a mix of 1/2 half part soda water and 1/2 part cream or milk for the last ten minutes of cooking.

Any idea what is 'soda water'? Any other suggestions?

snailgate

[Bicycle Bill]

Hi there, folks, welcome to The Cooking Show!   A lot of you folks been writing in asking us, “How do you cook them damn grits?”
We gonna show you today how you cook them damn grits.

First of all you kinda get those grits down in a shallow sauce pan, kinda get a little water, just about an inch and a halfa water above them grits, get that thing boilin' up good, get a good high rollin' boil going, get that good high rollin' boil, we call that high rollin' boil get that thing goin' good like that, you gonna drain 'em off a little bit, drain 'em off a little bit, get a little steam out there, drain them off a little bit, get 'em down a little bit of moist, a little moist little patties, make a fat little patty, two little fat little moist little patties like that, you put 'em in a hot skillet, good hot skillet, lets the hot grease gets 'em brown on one side, gets 'em brown on the other side, and then THROW 'EM AWAY!   They're no good, folks, you cain't eat them damn grits!



-"BB"-

[Joe Guy]

I remember when I was a young'n I once ate some hominy grits from a can.

Once... I did.

But I think I know what soda water is. It's that water with them bubbles in it.

Sorry, BP. I'm not much help. Maybe somebody with some actual cooking skills will chime in....

[BoSoxGal]

This recipe calls for a pinch of baking soda - that’s the kind of soda they’re talking about I think. https://www.tastingtable.com/1412441/el ... king-soda/

Disclaimer: I have never cooked or eaten grits.

[Burning Petard]

I see now this really does belong here -- it is a lifestyle question. I grew up in an unincorporated area of Jackson County MO. My mother's family were farmers. My father's parents lived 'in town' (Plattsmouth Nebr) but their extended family were famers and it was a farm town, South of the big city, Lincoln. I like to say my ethnicity is 'midwestern farm'. I am a depression baby, but don't remember any of that. I do remember food scarcity and rationing of WWII. In the school lunch program we saw alot of hominy. That is field corn in whole kernels, served hot after long soaking in lye. NOBODY ate it. I also remember corn meal prepared as corn bread and I still really like it. Corn meal mush prepared pretty much as BB described it above. Shaped in to a loaf, sliced and then fried. Served like pancakes, lots of pancake syrup but I still did not like that. It was ok if I was hungry enough

I have no idea what the difference is between 'grits' and corn meal. Grits is made from field corn, allowed to mature in the field, then harvested when the corn has a low moisture content. (If the price of corn drops low enough it becomes an attractive fuel for pellet stoves and works better than the pelletized sawdust usually used) I have had field corn as 'roasting ears" and it is very good, but nearly zero shelf life. Pick it in the field before it matures -- takes experience to judge it right. Must be shucked and cooked immediately. Two hours later and it is horrible. Corn meal? Perhaps it is ground with higher moisture content and then dried, before the hull of the kernel has hardly developed. and become indigestible fiber.

The popular fable for eating the field corn is that one needs one of those giant Iron pots and a special fire proof wagon. Build a fire in the wagon, put the pot on the fire. When the water is boiling, drive the whole thing into the field. Do not pick the corn. Bend the entire corn stock over the wagon and immerse in the boiling pot.

Thank you for your kind concern. Snailgate.

[Bicycle Bill]

I have no idea what the difference is between 'grits' and corn meal. Grits is made from field corn, allowed to mature in the field, then harvested when the corn has a low moisture content.

Not positive myself, but I believe part of the difference lies in how finely ground it is.  Grits, at least the ones I've et, seem to be coarser ground than cornmeal or corn masa.

-"BB"-

[liberty]

In my advanced age and doctor induced dietary restrictions, I am exploring foods that I have long rejected for no real reason. Now it is Grits. As I understand it, that is a method of cooking field corn to make it palatable and digestible to humans. I like it as prepared by Waffle House, with lots of butter.

I have tried the stuff at the local grocery store, Quaker Oats brand, without much success. I now have a cloth bag of "Stone Ground Grits" Charleston Favorites brand. Instructions on the bag say rinse the corn (sort of like dried beans) with three changes of water, then cook for about 30 minutes with a ratio of grits/water 1/3. for about 30 minutes. Not rigid instructions, to allow of personal preference on final consistency.

However, a variation is suggested: a mix of 1/2 half part soda water and 1/2 part cream or milk for the last ten minutes of cooking.

Any idea what is 'soda water'? Any other suggestions?

snailgate

I also have a problem with sugar. I go to the doctor on regular basis and she tells me it's well managed, so I don't have to take any medication. What bothers me is the foods I'm not allowed to eat' I love ice cream, candy. cake but they're all off limits now. In the last year or so, I've been keeping an eye on food labels; it seems that everything has sugar in it. I really love buttermilk, so I was disappointed when I looked on the back of a buttermilk carton and discovered it had 12 grams of sugar; what kind of pervert put sugar in buttermilk? And I know before anybody says it that milk has it's his own sugar called lactose; I'm talking about added sugar.

I am sorry to disappoint you, but grits are carbohydrates and is just as bad as white flour. Corneal is ok it's about the same as whole wheat flour.

Correction; I just checked the label again and it turns out that they're talking about lactose; there is actually no added sugar in buttermilk. I still say trust but verify is my motto and thank God for the FDA.

[Joe Guy]

I really love buttermilk, so I was disappointed when I looked on the back of a buttermilk carton and discovered it had 12 grams of sugar; what kind of pervert put sugar in buttermilk? And I know before anybody says it that milk has it's his own sugar called lactose; I'm talking about added sugar.

There is no added sugar in whole or reduced fat buttermilk.

buttermilk.jpg (77.5 KiB) Viewed 464 times

[BoSoxGal]

Natural dairy sugar is okay because the fat blunts the impact on your blood glucose - same thing with naturally occurring sugars in fruits and vegetables, the fiber blunts the impact and prevents the kind of sugar spikes you get from added and refined sugars and from eating carbs like pasta, rice and bread, glorious bread.

I spent the last year studying nutritional biochemistry and reading all the latest studies and such on prediabetes and diabetes- I have the former and my cousin’s husband has the latter, as does his mother. His father died a couple of years ago of heart disease related to diabetes.

After everything I’ve read I’ve settled on high fat moderate protein low carb diet to get my weight off and get back into a fitness condition. I tried Mediterranean diet the last year and it did improve my cholesterol but did nothing for my blood sugar at all - I had no change from the prediabetic levels I registered in December 2022 when I was tested again in December 2023 - same A1C. Grrrr!!!!

I recently watched the documentary Fat Fiction and I recommend it, it correlates with a lot of the books I’ve read but to be fair a lot of the books I read pushed close to vegan as possible - however the science that’s been fed to the American public since the 1950s is being revealed as very flawed, there is no proven correlation between dietary cholesterol and saturated fat and heart disease - too many other variables at play. It’s well explained in the film by some very reputable doctors including one whose books I read and in whom I have some trust, the endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig. His primary concern is sugar which he points to as the primary culprit in the obesity epidemic because when the bad science had government telling us all to eat low fat, the food manufacturers filled everything with sugar to make it palatable.

Here’s the film free on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TUADs-CK7vI?si=IO8UTyuyXy3_E4cj

So the advice from that front would be, ditch the corn but enjoy the butter. Most folks will hear very different propaganda from their primary care doctors who don’t get any nutrition science education in medical school and who push the same old advice that they’ve been telling patients for 70 years while the obesity and diabetes epidemics have exploded.

[Big RR]

BSG--I imagine that diet will work; the funny thing is, around 30+ years ago, the conventional witness was the opposite--weight loss required a high carb, low fat.protein diet (the general consensus was that a higher blood sugar level would place the body in a condition where is would get rid of excess calories rather than conserving them as fat (a lower level might signal to the body that food is scarce); I really didn't buy the mechanism, but I did lose 70-80 lbs (and kept it off) eating a lot of pasta over around 7 months. I think the best thing to do is to try various diets and stick to what works for you.

As for A1C, exercise usually works much better than diet; but the important thing is to keep track of it; diabetes is insidious and doesn't just go away, even if you lose weight and get in better shape.

ETA: I would not suggest a high carb diet as a life style choice; it worked on losing weight but, you are correct, the fats are preferable to sugar, especially refined sugar. Moderation is best. Sadly, things like cholesterol are much more a consequence of heredity than diet (or even exercise).

[BoSoxGal]

Yes, I think you are right that activity is the critical factor - the last several years when I was suffering neurological issues misdiagnosed as rrMS and later discovered to be caused by a chronic deficiency of vitamin B1 caused by a now resolved absorption disorder, I became very sedentary 1) because I couldn't balance properly, experienced severe sarcopenia from the absence of B1 and fell repeatedly, suffering a number of bone fractures (I have strong bones/no osteoporosis, but they do break!), and 2) because I took up hospice caregiving which occasionally involved some very light housework but mostly involved a lot of sitting bedside or chairside with very sedentary dying clients.

I've just started working with early grades school kids at the YMCA before/after school program and am expecting to begin teaching in the public schools in the fall, hopefully with kindergartners or other early grades - so anticipate being on my feet and moving around all day long as I am at the YMCA, where I am always moving around from kid group to kid group providing affirmations and intervention on problematic behavior before it escalates to meltdowns.

Being overweight as I am now means everything hurts now that I'm moving a lot again, but it hurts less if I keep my diet clean as far as no sugar and seed oils so that's helping. I'm doing kettlebell workouts at home to rebuild my muscle strength now that I have B1 on board and can actually build muscle again. I'm planning to use my free Y membership to get in the pool and start swimming laps a few times a week, and maybe take a yoga class too. Also on the agenda some daily longer walks with my buddy Riley as soon as we get back into the 40s here. I've definitely recognized that a lot of the pain older folks experience is from not moving their bodies - we really are built to move and modern society is not good for us in that so much of it involves sitting for extended periods of time.

[liberty]

I really love buttermilk, so I was disappointed when I looked on the back of a buttermilk carton and discovered it had 12 grams of sugar; what kind of pervert put sugar in buttermilk? And I know before anybody says it that milk has it's his own sugar called lactose; I'm talking about added sugar.

There is no added sugar in whole or reduced fat buttermilk.



buttermilk.jpg

What do they mean by reduced fat buttermilk; isn't all buttermilk reduced fat by having a butter removed? Whole milk is churned to remove the butter doesn't that mean that buttermilk is reduced in fat since it no longer has the butter in it?

[Burning Petard]

I too love buttermilk -- but I want the old-fashioned kind. Every carton of 'Buttermilk' I see in the store has the word 'cultured' on it. That means it is some variation on milk with chemicals added to make it taste like what some panel of taste-tasters declared tasted like the real thing. That cultured stuff does not even leave streaks on the inside of the glass.

Even went to a local 'organic' dairy farm that sold in their own store ice cream, butter, and milk they said they did not have it. They sold it off as waste to a food recycler who processed it with other stuff for animal feed. The modern sanitation and FDA requirements for human consumption stuff was too much trouble to save the real butter milk.

snailgate.

[Joe Guy]

What do they mean by reduced fat buttermilk; isn't all buttermilk reduced fat by having a butter removed? Whole milk is churned to remove the butter doesn't that mean that buttermilk is reduced in fat since it no longer has the butter in it?

I wonder why it's not called butterless milk?

[Big RR]

BP--doesn't buttermilk need to be fermented? My recollection is that it's the liquid left over after butter is removed through churning; the liquid was then fermented (traditionally at room temperature, presumably using traditional bacteria. Is there a difference between how it is fermented (cultured) in the commercial buttermilk now sold? FWIW, I never liked buttermilk, so I couldn't tell the difference, but is there a taste difference? If there is, I would presume it may be dies to the degree of fermenting (and the resultant level of lactic acid produced, which gives the acidic taste) and how much casein precipitates and is removed (which may be why the streaking is reduced).

[Long Run]

[BoSoxGal]

I haven't watched that movie in a very, very long time. It's time to watch it again, soon!