Grits with Corn Cob Stock

When I was a kid, I adored corn on the cob.

Okay, I still adore it. But when I was a kid, I'd eat the corn off the cob, then I'd roll the cob around in the leftover butter on the plate, and I'd suck on the cob like I was still eating corn off it it, but just sort of hoovering out the last bits of flavor.

Fine. Okay. I might still do that. When no one is looking.

I mean, really, do I have to admit all my bad habits?

The point I'm wanting to make is that there's a lot of good flavor in that cob. You can't eat it ... but you can use it.

Recently, I had the book Up South in my hands thanks to a cookbook exchange group I belong to, and one of the recommendations was to make "corn stock" from corn cobs and then use that stock to make grits. I didn't try it at the time because there was no fresh corn around.

It's still not close to corn season here, but there was fresh corn at one of the local grocery stores, so I figured I'd try this corn stock thing. I didn't follow the recipe in the book (it's since been passed to the next person in the group) but I figured it couldn't be all that hard to extract flavor from some cobs.

I don't know if it matters if you use raw or cooked cobs that you've cut the kernels off of. I had two of each. But it might be kind of ... not great if you used cobs that people gnawed the corn off of. Or just not great to think that you did that.

I also included a few of the inner green leaves from the corn. My mom always used a few of them when she boiled corn on the cob, so I figured I'd toss a few into my stock as well. If you think that's weird, just leave 'em out.

Grits with Fresh Corn Stock

4 corn cobs (after the kernels are removed)
4 inner light green corn leaves from cobs (optional)
4 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup grits (not instant)

Put the corn cobs and corn leaves in your pressure cooker (I used my Instant Pot) and set to high pressure. Cook for 10 minutes, then let the pressure reduce naturally for at least 10 minutes before venting the remaining pressure.

Remove the cobs and the leaves. You're likely to have some bits of corn floating in the water. That's perfectly fine.

Add the salt and butter, then add the grits while whisking.

When the grits are added, put the lid on and set the Instant Pot to the Porridge setting, with a time of 20 minutes. If you don't have an Instant Pot, just set it for high pressure for 20 minutes. When the time is up, let it reduce pressure naturally for at least 10 minutes or up to 30 minutes if you get distracted. The longer you leave it, the softer and creamier the grits will be since they keep cooking during this time.

Vent any remaining pressure and remove the lid. The grits might look a little watery, but as you stir them, they'll thicken up. If you don't serve right away, they'll get even thicker, so you might need to add a bit of water if you're not quite ready for them.

If you have leftovers, refrigerate them. When you reheat you'll need to add water for sure.

Polenta with Shishito Peppers and Cheddar

I might have mentioned - like a billion times now - that I really like polenta. And grits.

So this time around, I decided to throw some peppers into polenta. I had just gotten a rather large bag of shishito peppers from Frieda's Specialty Produce, and I had a tube of their polenta as well.

It seemed like fate.

Their polenta is shelf-stable at room temperature, which is great if you want to stock up. It's meant for slicing and frying, but I like soft polenta a lot, so that's usually the direction I go with it.

This recipe is super-easy, and the results are really tasty, The flavor actually reminded me just a little bit of tamales, but not so much that you couldn't serve this with any other cuisine. Or, for me, just a bowl of polenta for breakfast.

Polenta with Shishito Peppers and Cheddar

12 shishito peppers
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1-pound tube prepared polenta
1 cup water
1/2 cup half-and-half
4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
Salt and pepper, to taste

Remove the stems and seeds from the shishito peppers and dice. Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the peppers until they're fragrant and a little bit softer. Set aside.

Remove the polenta from the tube and cut or break it into pieces. Add to a saucepan along with the water. Heat on medium, stirring, then whisking, the polenta until all the pieces are broken up and the polenta is smooth.

Add the half-and-half, cheese, and peppers. Continue cooking and stirring until the cheese is melted in. If the polenta is too soft for your taste, continue cooking until it thickens to your liking. If it's too thick for your taste, add more water or half-and-half.

Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, to taste.

Serve hot.

I receive food items regularly from Frieda's Specialty Produce at no cost to me. You can find their products at your local grocery store.

Slow Cooker Buttermilk Polenta - or is it grits? You Decide

When I was a kid, grits were the tiny rocks at the bottom of the bird cage. I was quite surprised when I heard that some people actually ate grits.

Really? Rocks???? Wouldn't that be bad for your teeth?

But then I found out the edible grits weren't boiled rocks, and that in fact, they were made from corn.

Once I found out that I wasn't going to be eating rocks, I was willing to try grits, which led me to polenta. They're closely related. For some recipes, it might be the end use that tells you whether you've got grits or polenta. If it's Italian, it's polenta. If it's Southern American, it's grits.

While the corn used for grits in Italy for polenta is different from the corn used for American grits, the packages of coarsely ground corn I normally buy are labeled for use as either grits or corn. And I'm fine with that. While I'd love to have regular access to the special Italian corn, I'm pretty happy with the grits/polenta that I buy at the grocery store.

What something is labeled doesn't matter to me as much as what it tastes like, and I like that grocery store stuff. It's tasty, it had nice texture, and you can dress it up any way you like.

This time around, I decided to make a somewhat simple version of polenta, made even more simple by cooking them in my slow cooker. The beauty of using a slow cooker is that you don't need to worry about stirring, so you can set it and forget it for a while.

The downside to using a slow cooker is that they don't heat identically. Some cook at hotter temperatures than others. So the first time you make grits, you may need to adjust the cooking time.

To add a little tang to the polenta, I used buttermilk - but no cheese. And to add some savory flavor, I used Better than Bouillon chicken-flavored base. While I usually have home made soup stock in the freezer, I also keep Better than Bouillon products on hand for the times when I need just a little extra flavor. The great thing is that you get that flavor before you end up with too much salt.

Slow Cooker Buttermilk Polenta

1 cup polenta
4 cups cold water
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon Better than Bouillon chicken flavor
1 cup buttermilk

Put the polenta in your slow cooker and add the water while stirring. Add the butter and Better than Bouillon. Turn the slow cooker to high and cook for 1 1/2 hours or until liquid is gone (but before it starts "frying").

Add the buttermilk and stir to combine. Turn the slow cooker to low and cook for another 30-60 minutes, until the polenta is smooth and creamy, but not soupy.

Serve hot.

You can serve it as a side dish next to just about anything, but lately I've been eating it topped with a chunky tomato sauce.

Creamy Carolina Grits from Inside the Test Kitchen by Tyler Florence

Not that long ago, I cooked some recipes from Tyler Florence's  Real Kitchen, so I was pretty excited to get my paws on his new book, Inside the Test Kitchen.

This new book is more than a book of recipes. It's like a mad scientist wandered into the kitchen and whispered in a few ears.

There are plenty of normal recipes, but there are also some totally wacky ones, like making burger buns by putting the batter into a soda siphon and spraying it into round molds on a griddle.

I want to give that a try, for sure, but I decided to make a more normal recipe first. Because not everyone's got a soda siphon. I wanted to make something that anyone at all could make.

On the short list for immediate cooking were crackers with cheddar and black pepper because I love making crackers; risotto, because I'm a huge fan of rice no matter how it's made, caramelized brussels sprouts with pancetta because it sounded so danged good; and a pretty crazy recipe for cornbread.

But then I saw the recipe for Creamy Carolina Grits. I adore grits.

I made one ingredient change to the recipe - it called for fresh herbs, but I try not to buy fresh herbs in the winter unless I know that I'm absolutely going to use them. Buying one of those little packages, particularly when I need just a little bit, irks me.

But that's fine. I have huge supply of dried herbs and I know how to use them. Ha!

And ... because there are only two of us, and one of us isn't the biggest fan of grits or polenta. I cut the recipe in half. I mean, I could eat this stuff until I burst, but I figured it made more sense to be just a little conservative.

The original amounts are listed below, though.

One thing I really liked about the book itself was the binding. I know that sounds a little weird, but while the book doesn't lie completely flat, it does stay open and mostly flat. Good enough to put it on the counter and cook from without pages flopping around

It's also got an elastic band that can be used as a bookmark, to keep the book closed if you're carrying it around, and to keep it on the right page when it's open.

These grits were super-creamy and rich (no doubt because of the heavy cream) and quite flavorful from the herbs and garlic. They're also not quite as yellow as typical grits made from yellow corn, again because of the addition of that cream.

I'd say that these are special occasion grits, and definitely for dinner instead of breakfast because of the herbs and garlic. Well, I guess if you like garlic for breakfast, go ahead. For me, it's more of a dinner thing.

Creamy Carolina Grits
Adapted from Inside the Test Kitchen by Tyler Florence

2 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 1/2 cups whole milk
2 garlic cloves, smashed
4 fresh thyme springs (I used 1 teaspoon dry)
4 fresh bay leaves (I used dry leaves)
1 cup yellow cornmeal or polenta (I used polenta)
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Put the cream, milk, garlic, thyme, and bay leaves in a heavy bottomed saucepan and heat on medium-low heat until it simmers. Cook for 10 minutes, then remove the herbs and garlic. Since I had used dry herbs, the easiest thing to do was strain it through a fine strainer, then return it to the pan. A few tiny thyme leaves made it through the strainer, but that was okay.

Crank the heat to medium and wait until it comes to a boil, then sprinkle the cornmeal in while whisking to keep the cornmeal from clumping. Once the grits have been added, keep stirring with the whisk or some other implement, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to make sure the cornmeal starch doesn't stick and burn. Since I used a pan with a nonstick interior, there wasn't really a lot of sticking.

Continue cooking until the grits are smooth, but they still have some texture. The longer you cook, the smoother they'll get, but they'll also get thicker, so if they get too thick, add more milk or some water to thin them out.

Because I live at high altitude and it's ridiculously dry now that the heat is on in the house, liquid evaporates very quickly. I ended up adding a full cup of water to these grits before they were done cooking.

Needless to say, that's going to vary a lot, so just go by what you see and remember that when they cool, they'll be thicker. So when they're bubbling hot on the stove, that's thinner than they'll be on the plate.

When they're done to your liking, add the butter and parmesan, then taste and add salt and pepper to taste. You can add a little of the salt sooner, but since the cheese is a little salty, use a light hand and adjust at the end.

Serve hot.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Slow Cooker Cheesy Southern Grits

I love grits more than a person should love such a plain, homey dish. Sometimes I even get fancy and call the dish polenta, instead. I like plain grits with a little butter, cheesy grits with extra cream, spicy grits with peppers, grits with mushrooms, tomatoes or herbs... and I like them served as a side, served as breakfast, or served under shrimp, stew or tomato sauce.

Yeah, pretty much any way.

So when I saw a recipe for creamy cheesy grits in the book The Southern Slow Cooker by Kendra Bailey Morris, I knew I had to give it a try. The idea of tossing grits into a slow cooker and letting them cook unattended is pretty appealing.

These grits are supposed to cook for 2-3 hours, but I jump started them a bit by starting them on a higher temperature. I've got a Ninja slow cooker, so it's got a few extra cooking settings that let me crank up the heat fir the beginning of the cooking. Then I turned it down to finish the cooking.

Since the Ninja's interior is nonstick, I didn't bother spraying it with cooking spray. If you've got a slow cooker that has a ceramic insert, maybe you should spray - I don't know if it helps, really. I'd think that it would mix in if you do any stirring. But I don't know. Maybe it's worth doing.

This book suggests adding the grits to the water and letting it sit for 5 minutes before cooking, then skimming off any floating bits of grits. I'd never done that before. Most recipes I have call for whisking grits into hot liquid, so that floaty stuff wouldn't be floating.

So, skim or don't - whatever you think is right.

Creamy Cheesy Grits
Adapted from The Southern Slow Cooker by Kendra Bailey Morris

1 cup chicken broth
3 cups water
1 cup stone ground (not instant) grits
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt (plus more to taste)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (plus more to taste)
1/4 cup cream, half-and-half, or milk
1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

Pour the chicken broth and water into your slow cooker, then whisk in the grits. Add the butter, salt, and pepper and cook on high until the grits are cooked to your liking - figure 2-3 hours.

Add the cream (or milk or half-and-half) and the cheese. Stir and cook another  5 or 10 minutes. If the grits are too thick for your liking, you can add more liquid. If you want them a little thicker, continue cooking with the lid off.

Cheesy Fried Polenta

I love grits. And polenta. Either or both. Love 'em.

I usually make soft polenta, but once in a while I let it chill, then I fry it a bit to brown it. So, when I got silicone mold from Good Cook with spring designs for their Spring Fling promotion, I thought it would be perfect for polenta - the size was just right for a batch of nice, thick squares.

Did I mention that this recipe is really cheesy? You might think I got just a tad carried away, but I don't think so. I like cheese. If you're not that much of a cheese fan, you can cut back.

I served this several different ways - as a simple side dish, and as lunch along with a chunky tomato sauce loaded with vegetables. And, I served it alongside eggs for breakfast.

Some of the designs looked better than others after browning, but no big deal there. No one's really looking for designs on their polenta, so any sort of design is a bonus.

You could also brown the bottom rather than the design side if you wanted to. The designs are easily visible without the browning.

When you're shopping for polenta to cook (as opposed to the already-cooked stuff) look for it in the baking section near the oddball grains. It might be labeled as polenta or as corn grits. You're not looking for the finer cornmeal that you'd use for cornbread.

Cheesy Fried Polenta

6 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups polenta
8 ounces grated mild cheddar cheese

Heat the water to boiling along with the salt. Add the polenta slowly, stirring or whisking as you go so you don't end up with lumps.

Turn down the heat so you have an energetic simmer, stirring as needed to keep it from sticking and burning, unless the polenta is very thick.

Give it a taste and see if you like the consistency. I like it fairly soft - still a teeny bit of chew, but no hard or crunchy bits. If the polenta is very thick, but you'd like to cook it longer to soften it a bit more, then add a bit more water.

When it's juuuust right, start adding the cheese a little bit at a time, stirring it in after each addition. It should all melt int the polenta.

Pour the polenta into the silicone mold. Or, if you don't have a silicone mold, you can use a baking pan or glass baking dish. Smooth the top. An small offset spatula - the type you'd use for icing a cake - works well.

Cover and refrigerate the polenta until it's firm. I usually make it the day before I need it.

When you're ready to serve, unmold the polenta and cut it into serving-sized pieces.

Heat some butter or olive oil (or a mix) in a frying pan. Brown the polenta on one side or both - whatever you like - and until the polenta is warmed through.

Serve warm.

I received the silicone pan from Good Cook at no cost to me.