Monday, December 22, 2008

More on Grits: Nassau Style


Kassie says:

This is (unknown to me until, like, when I tried looked for the recipe for Julia) a recipe particular to my home town. This is our family recipe for it. If I could find the one the old ladies at First Methodist had, I would share that one with you because it's legendary.

Where I come from we eat white grits, I'm sure if you wanted to do it with yellow grits, you could adapt it (I like stone ground grits myself, so I wouldn't blame you if you did).
  • Bacon--this is to taste, do you really like bacon? Then cook a lot of bacon (from a half pound to a pound),
  • 1 onion
  • 1 green pepper (lots of people hate green pepper, so figure this bit out--if you hate it, try to substitute a colored pepper!)
  • 1 cup of ham (or, as above, however much you want) [we always had home baked ham laying around or at least in the freezer, so I assume the taste will vary greatly depending on the kind of ham you use. I would never buy that shrink wrapped ham slab that I've seen at the grocery--what is that thing FOR? anyway, a lot of people have ham at the holidays and wonder what to do with all of it--freeze the shit and thaw it out for tastiness later)
  • 1 smaller can of tomatoes (not the big honking one, the normal to vegetables sized one) OR 1 can Rotel (do it this way, for real)
  • garlic (this you will have to determine yourself as I have no idea how much you personally like garlic) from 1 clove to three
  • 3/4-1 cup uncooked grits

Cook the bacon. Chop the stuff that needs it. Drain bacon and set aside. Drain most of the bacon grease off. Cook the onion and bell pepper in the bacon grease. When the onion looks done enough, dump in tomatoes (with juice), garlic (I cut up whole canned tomatoes with a kitchen knife, my Aunt Nora mushed them with her fingers), and ham. Cook that down while you cook the grits according to the package directions. When the grits are creamy (I pity people who don't already know how to cook grits on the stove because I'm not about to explain that right now), dump in the tomato-ham mixture.

Douse this with hot sauce, stir, crumble bacon over the top when you dish it up. (I'm sure we could find a way to add cheese and at least one more pork product if we tried, but it's great as is, trust me).

Julia says: SO DELICIOUS. When I made it in the picture above, I ended up spooning the tomato-ham mixture on top. My cat almost ripped my face off to get at it.

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