Crits.

They sure are cold

I rolled a critical! ‘Cause I made . . . ‘cause I made crits. Stay tuned to find out if it’s good or bad but no one is allowed to BET

---

CRITS

By: Hallie Koontz

Hallie
Are there grits?

Kyle
Um, there are crits. They’re called crits.

Hallie
He’ll give a skeptical look at that and ask the waiter:

Hallie (as Hopper)
What are crits? Are they significantly different than grits?

Kyle (as Waiter)
Well no, they, uh, they’re just grits, but you know, like everything in this café, they’re just not cooked. They’re cold grits. They’re crits!

Hallie
Alright. He’ll just order the crits, because everything else looks bad.

-Ep. 23: Questionable Measures, Part 5

I made crits. I didn’t want to, but I did.

The first ingredient in crits is: grits. So I got me a cute grit mix because if I have to eat grits they’re going to be, like, a quality ingredient.

There's no formal product placement agreement but Charleston Favorites can pay me if they want to

And I’m gonna be real with you, folks. I did look up grit recipes, and I intended to combine the soaking/prep methods from these two:

Southern-Style Grits

Grit Cakes

But then I saw there were directions on the back of the bag that taught me how to use these. So I just . . . I followed those.

Did you know you have to clean grits like you do rice? I knew about soaking them, but this one has you rinse and drain the chaff a total of threeeeeeeee times. I did that with one hand while taking pictures, heroically, and then added the rinsed grits to boiling water.

The grits floating in water, my super good straining method, and what I was left with after doing that three times total.

The next step is to let it simmer, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes. So I did that.

I used my cute little Dutch oven today. It’s very good. No relation to Dutch Van Der Linde, who can go to hell.

At 30 minutes the grits hadn’t quite soaked up all the water yet, so I added 5 more minutes.

And then I added another 5 minutes.

It was at this point, 40 minutes into the simmer, that I realized I was supposed to be “stirring frequently.” I had been playing Overwatch.

So I stirred and set it for another 5.

But the consistency still just felt . . . liquidy. Like I know that’s what grits are, but my plan was to let them cool into a somewhat appealing kind of corncake, so I wanted them as thick as possible. Another 5 they goooooooo

At this point I finally decided it was as good as it was gonna get. Now it was time for my super secret plan that’s so good nobody else has ever thought of it:

PARMESAN CHEESE. A FULL HAND’S WORTH OF PARMESAN CHEESE WITH A HALLIE HAND FOR SCALE.

Imagine adding cheese to grits. No one’s ever done this before. I’m BRILLIANT.

OK, see, I’d skipped the dairy parts of the other recipes because those were finishing touches to a thing that was warm. But I’m making CRITS and they have to be COLD, and I don’t hate myself enough to eat congealed milk in that form.

But cheese: cheese is a solid. Surely that would give the grits some structure so that when it cooled it would be like. A biscuit. Or something.

So I added that in.

And then I decided it wasn't enough so I added another handful. (A real handful, as in, it fit in my palm; it wasn't an amount the size of my hand).

And then I scooped some up and let them solidify into little medallions.

So like . . . the thing about biscuits . . . is that they have some kind of bread in them . . . so when they’re a cooled and solid thing . . . they’re still . . .I dunno . . . appealing.

They look like soggy Ruffles and I don’t like it. (Ruffles/Lays also doesn’t pay me product placement but I wouldn’t say no.)

These are not. Which I guess was the assignment? I really waffled between making something I wouldn’t hate eating and doing the Bad Recipe we joked about in that episode. Like. These sure do slide straight onto the plate and they sure are cold. I really thought they’d be room temperature but they chilled allllll on their own.

I took one bite and threw them away.

I thought about baking them to get them more solid before I let them cool, or doing a frying kind of thing like in that Grit Cakes recipe, but then I was like - I’d be doing another heating thing just to let them cool again? Maybe that would have worked? This is going to keep me up at night. A corncake with cheese should be GOOD why isn’t this GOOD it should be GOO-

The Actual Recipe

Prep Time: Like 10 min, which counts boiling the water while you’re doing the cleaning/rinsing stuff
Cook Time: 50 minutes or less
Servings: 4, but probably more like 0.25 because that’s when you’ll decide you’re better than this
Calories per serving: Roughly 110 but ideally 0

Ingredients

• Grits - 1 cup (~150 g)

• Water - 3 cups (~709 mL)

• Salt/pepper to taste (I forgot to add this but it wouldn’t have saved them)

• Parmesan cheese (one Hallie’s Hand-worth)

Directions

1. Prepare the grits, probably according to package directions, but if not:

   1. Soak them in water, drain the top floating parts and the chaff off, and repeat twice, for a total of threeeeeeeeeee rinses

2. After you have your soaked grits, add them to a pot of boiling water. Stir them in and let them simmer for 30-40 minutes.

3. Add 5 minutes to the timer.

4. Add 5 minutes to the timer again.

5. Add another 5 minutes and debate whether this is really what you want to go for.

6. Grate some parmesan cheese during any one of these steps and mix it into the cooked (?) grits.

7. Separate out tiny little medallions to let cool and set on a baking sheet.

8. Throw them away.