Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists… — Lewis  Grizzard

I am a self-admitted picky eater. Specifically, I don’t care for vegetables. In fact, with very few exceptions (white acre peas/green beans) I pretty much don’t eat vegetables at all. I don’t know of anyone who ate vegetables for long periods in their life who didn’t eventually die, and that’s good enough for me. 

I am pretty much a meatatarian. I feel I am saving the vegetables for vegetarians. It’s the least I can do to help out. 

With that said, there is one non-meat item that I can just about eat my body weight in: grits. I love a big steaming bowl of buttered and salted grits about as much as I love anything (wife excluded). I can make a meal out of them by themselves. 

As a matter of fact, you give me a big steaming bowl of cheese grits with a piece of grilled grouper and a couple of sweet hushpuppies and some fresh brewed sweet tea and you’d have my last meal request before my state-funded execution (you know, if I was getting executed, which as far as I know of I am not). 

So let’s talk grits for a moment, shall we? I want to be clear – just as Mr. Grizzard so eloquently effused with the quote to start our discussion above, instant grits are not grits. I don’t know what they are, but they are not grits. They are more like a mush with little chunky pieces of unidentifiable stuff in it that collectively taste like wet kitty litter more than they do real grits.

Because he said it much better than I can, I’ll quote Mr. Grizzard again: the idiot who invented instant grits also invented frozen fried chicken and they ought to lock him up before he tries to freeze-dry collards. 

Now, the unschooled always want to know where grits come from. I just tell them that all self-respecting Southerners know grit trees grow right beside snipe-hunting fields, then give them a couple of bags and wish them good luck hunting both.

To be perfectly clear here, when I speak of real grits I am talking about home-ground stone-ground grits – the kind you have to cook for at least half an hour before they are even remotely edible. 

To go one step further, real grits cannot have sugar put in them. I mean, come on. There is blasphemy and then there is downright sacrilege. If you have to put sugar on your grits, then just go ahead and trade your Southerner card in and go get you some Cream of Wheat. Putting sugar on grits is akin to putting salt on frosted flakes or a Baptist being seen in the wine aisle at the grocery store. Some things just aren’t supposed to go together. 

Up in South Carolina they have stone ground yellow grits, and they are very good. My friend Bill Marshall sent me a bag of them some time back and I went through them so fast I found some more online and ordered them. 

But the best grits I’ve found are from right down the road in Lakeland, Georgia. Called “Gayla’s Grits” after the young lady who mastered them (and who just happens to be my cousin), these white corn grits have all the corny flavor of those yellow grits but cook smoother and in a much quicker span of time. They are creamy, thick, and downright tasty all by themselves. 

We’ve started a tradition around our house on weekends with a big ol’ traditional breakfast that includes homemade link smoked sausage, cat head biscuits (with real butter and mayhaw jelly and/or a cane syrup sop), and a big ol’ pot of bacon ranch cheese grits. 

As I tell my kids, you put a bowl of those grits up on top of your head and your tongue will knock your brain out trying to get to them. 

You want to know the secret to cooking real grits? Here you go: for every cup of real grits you need three cups of water – not two. Boil the water, and when it’s good and agitated put your grits in, stir, and immediately drop your heat down to barely simmering. Stir again, put a top on the pot (the steam helps cook them), and stir scraping from the bottom up every five minutes or so. 

You do that, and in about 30 minutes you’ll have great grits. Add salt, butter and cheese to taste. 

A warning: watery grits have caused divorces and cold grits have been accepted as a legitimate defense in homicide cases. Either case with instant grits and I don’t even want to consider the consequences. Don’t say you weren’t warned. 

Finally, if you want to know how serious southerners can be about their grits, consider the words of the hit song from the ’90’s called “She Can’t Fix Grits” (seriously):

People, let me tell you ’bout this girl I got.

Her attitude is cool and her love is hot.

She brings me breakfast ev’ry morning in my bed,

Fluffs up the pillows layin’ under my head.

 

CHORUS: Everybody says that I ought to be happy.

Still I’m unsatisfied.

My crazy little woman makes me go into fits

But I’m gonna have to leave her ’cause she can’t fix grits.

Have a gritty weekend, y’all.