A Taste of The South

Shrimp and Grits

My niece is one of our faithful audience members and is constantly submitting recipes for us to try. Since I wasn’t feeling very inspired, I reached out to her for this week’s recipe. She immediately responded by requesting Bobby Flay’s Shrimp and Grits recipe from the Food Network website. Although, I have made polenta many times before I have never made grits. It turns out that polenta is made from yellow corn and grits from finer ground white corn.

Bobby’s recipe called for stone ground grits. Luckily, I had picked some up from the farm we visited over spring break. The recipe stated to boil the grits for 25 minutes. Since these were stone ground grits and not quick cooking grits, I decided to boil them a little longer to make sure they were tender. They ended up taking about an hour before they were ready. Depending on the type of grits you get and how they were processed determines how long they cook. We started on frying up the bacon and cooked the shrimp in its fat. As soon as the grits were tender we added the butter and cheese. Finally, we added the last ingredients to the shrimp. As we plated, the aroma of the shrimp was just divine and couldn’t wait to try them.

This is a very tasty recipe. The shrimp and bacon really added a lot of flavor to the grits. Although, we liked the cheese and butter in the grits, they kind of fell flat unless it was accompanied by some of the shrimp. The shrimp’s flavor was outstanding and really pulled this dish together

However, as great as this dish was, we felt we could take it to another level. Our creative juices started to flow, and we headed back into the kitchen to see what we could come up with. So it’s time for…

This may be a recipe for shrimp and grits, but the inspiration behind this recipe is polenta. My absolute favorite part of a polenta dish is the accompanying sauce. What could be better than having each bite of corn meal smothered in a flavorful sauce? While Bobby’s shrimp and grits were fabulous, the shrimp didn’t have a sauce that would ensure all the flavors came together for every bite.

The idea of shrimp and grits makes us think of the South. There are many Southern options we could have gone with, but we decided on a Cajun style shrimp and grits. This is what we came up with:

Ingredients

• 3 cups whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup stone-ground grits
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 3 tablespoons of Cajun seasoning
• salt
• pepper
• 6 ounces Cajun Andouille sausage, halved and sliced thin
• 1 small onion chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves
• 1 ½ cup of vegetable stock
• 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
• 1/4 cup of sliced scallions
• ¼ cup of parsley
• Juice of one lemon

Instructions:

In a large stockpot bring milk and cream to a low simmer. Add grits and cook on medium low until tender. The timing will depend on the type of grits you have, we cooked ours for a little over an hour. Pat dry shrimp and season with salt, pepper and Cajun seasoning. In a sauté pan, lightly brown the sausage and remove from pan leaving the fat rendered on the pan.

Cook shrimp in the rendered sausage fat on medium high heat just until they turn pink, then remove the shrimp from pan. Lower the heat to medium and add onions to the sauté pan and cook until soft, about 2-3 minutes. Once cooked return the cooked sausage and add the garlic, cook for about 30 seconds just until aromatic. Next, add tomato paste and vegetable stock and allow this to simmer on low for about 10 minutes.

Return the shrimp to the sauce, add parsley and scallions and let cook for at least three minutes. As the grits finish up add butter and cheese. Spoon grits in a bowl and top with shrimp and sauce. Serve immediately.

This recipe brought layers of flavor to the dish. The cream and milk made mouthwatering creamy grits. The Cajun seasoning and Andouille sausage gave it a complexity of flavors the other recipe was lacking. Also, by adding the sauce it insured every bite you took had shrimp and sausage flavor.

We hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did. Don’t forget to let us know how you liked it by leaving a comment below. We look forward to hearing from you.