I tried grits for the first time

When I was first accepted to Emory University, there were a lot of comments about how the South differed from the North, about different places I had to go and experience for myself, different climates I would feel, but one constantly repeated topic of interest was food.

My friends would strongly recommend (and eventually shepherd me) to Chick-fil-A with a “Oh my goooooood, I’ve heard their chicken sandwiches are amazing.” They’d push for Steak and Shake and acknowledge how slow service could and would get but talk about how worth it it would be in  the end. But one constant food that my friends mentioned was grits.

“Have you ever had grits?” When I shook my head, they would shrug and say, “It’s okay, I guess. But it’s best down South- it’s like one of their trademarks, dude, you gotta try it.

But it was one of those foods I never really got around to trying. On my third day at Emory, I wiped the sleep out of my eyes in the school cafeteria as I grabbed a tray and trudged over to the lines. Seeing the soup station was vacant, I trudged over to see a sign labelled grits standing guard outside a stainless steel pot.

“Don’t eat them.”

Jumping out of my stupor, I turned to see my friend staring at me, her arms crossed.

“If you’re gonna eat grits, you gotta eat the right ones.” Dragging me away from the pot, she grumbled something about how the DUC couldn’t even make grits right and about how it was gross. Time passed and as I settled into my routine, thoughts of new unexplored frontiers of Southern food dropped out of my head until one fateful night.

It was 3 am on a cool June night, and I was stretching all the stiffness out of my body as I took a break from calculus. As I padded into the kitchen for a snack, my eyes fell upon a package of grits sitting on a shelf in the open cupboard.

“Eh, why not?” I shrugged. Grabbing salt, I pulled the package and some silverware out and got ready to try a Southern staple.

As I poured water in the pot and brought it to a boil, I scooped out some grits from the package. It looked like rice to me. I stuck my finger into the package and swirled it around a bit. The kernels felt a bit smaller than regular rice kernels but it certainly had the same texture as the rice. As I spooned it into the pot, I felt myself intrigued as to what distinctive taste the cereal might have.

Adding just a dash of salt as instructed, I waited until it was ready before I spooned it all into the bowl. Walking over to the kitchen table, I looked my work over.

It looked like glop. Felt like glop as I stirred it about before I took my first bite.

When I was little, my grandmother cooked up this fish porridge for the family whenever we came to visit. It was absolutely delicious. I could sense the fish flavor infused in the rice with the soy sauce and whatever vegetables ended up in there. The grits were… kind of like that. I could taste the sea salt on the hot cereal. But I couldn’t taste much else.

Holy crap. This Southern staple didn’t feel too much like a staple so much as a blank (perhaps slightly seasoned) slate.

Well, that felt like a waste of time and of my taste buds, I mused as I stepped back into the kitchen. Dropping my bowl into the sink, I threw open the cupboard again for something else and happened upon some more grits.

I stared at the grits for a second- and honestly, I was on the verge of slamming the door shut on them before I relented. These cheesy grits had better give me some flavor that I was missing from its paler counterpart. Ripping open the packet, my nose curdled at the decadent smell of the instant cheese. It reminded me of the powder one would sprinkle onto instant mac and cheese.

Boiling water and adding the powder in again, I finally spooned my second serving into my bowl and went to take a picture for the record when I ran into a certain wrinkle.

The macaroni-reminiscent cereal’s color almost exactly matched that of my bright yellow bowl. I snapped a few photos praying that the distinction would appear in the final product.

Sitting down, I noted the once-again gloppy consistency and stuck a bit into my mouth. It once again shrugged in indifference. These grits tasted like a second-rate macaroni and cheese. It forced me to conclude that the grits probably had about the same taste as water or air- nothing at all. Overall, I wasn’t impressed. If I wanted some unique flavors, I’d probably go eat some real food.