The late Southern chef extraordinaire Bill Neal was a master at making grits chic in the 80’s. His signature dish, Shrimp & Grits, was made famous when Craig Claiborne praised it in the NY Times. The following is from Bill’s Good Old Grits Cookbook:
“The Indians who met the first Virginia colonists offered the newcomers steaming bowls of cracked grains of maize cooked into a kind of stew. They called it * ustatahamen*, thought to be the source of today’s term “hominy”. The word “grits” came in with the settlers. Grits originally meant the bran and chaff that was left over from grinding Old World grains. By the sixteenth century, grits had come to mean any coarsely ground grain, especially oats.”
Of course, to a Southerner, grits means corn. Today, it’s not made with lye soaked hominy, even though the Quaker Oats package still uses the term.
The best grits are stone ground grits. After grinding, the grain is sifted; the larger pieces are “grits”, and the smaller siftings are meal. Processing this way preserves the oily germ and the starchy endosperm, resulting in superior flavor and nutritional value. Unfortunately, they don’t keep well, so are hard to come by on the grocery shelf.
Again, from Bill Neal:
“In the supermarket, you are likely to encounter standard-or old fashioned-grits, quick grits, and instant grits. During the milling quick grits are lightly steamed and lightly compressed so as to fracture the particles. The result is that quick grits cook in two to five minutes instead of the thirty to forty recommended for standard grits. Concerning instant grits, the less said, the better. Let’s put it this way: If you like instant coffee, you’re ready for instant grits.”
Uke: Stone ground grits are a totally different texture and realm of flavor than polenta. The two fine Southern gourmet cooks I’ve worked for do use polenta as a substitute, though, due to the volume and quick cooking times. Just make sure to cook it to a fluffy consistency, or it’s what is politely referred to as Mush.
If ya want some Real Grits, a mill about five miles from my house still does stone ground (organic, even) grits. They’re delicious, and I’d be more than happy to ship ya some.