Shrimp and Grits
“Stone-ground white grits cooked slowly with butter and cream, topped with shrimp sautéed in bacon fat with andouille sausage, bell pepper, garlic, and a splash of Tabasco — a Lowcountry South Carolina plate.”
Where it comes from
Shrimp and grits started as a Lowcountry South Carolina fishermen's breakfast — boiled grits with shrimp from the morning haul, eaten on Charleston and Mt. Pleasant docks. The dish stayed local until 1985 when Bill Neal at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill, NC put a refined version on his menu — adding bacon, mushrooms, cheese — and a New York Times piece by Craig Claiborne carried it national. Anson Mills (founded 1998 in Columbia SC) revived stone-ground grits when the dish needed real corn flavor again.
On the plate
First spoon: hot, almost loose grits, thicker than oatmeal but pourable, butter slick on the surface. The grits taste like sweet corn, not just starch. Then the shrimp — pink, snappy, faintly smoky from the bacon and andouille fat. The bell pepper pops vegetal; Tabasco vinegar cuts the cream. Bacon bits crunch. The pan sauce pools at the bottom and you mop it with the last spoonful of grits.
How it works
Stone-ground vs instant grits is the load-bearing variable. Stone-ground retains the corn germ (oils + flavor) and the hull (texture); instant is pre-gelatinized, hull-stripped, dehydrated. The 45-minute simmer hydrates each grain to ~3x its size and gelatinizes starch slowly enough that it stays creamy instead of rubbery. Adding cream and butter at the end (not start) keeps the dairy from breaking and the corn flavor from being muted.
Lowcountry South Carolina dock breakfast until 1985, when Bill Neal at Crook's Corner (Chapel Hill, NC) added bacon and mushrooms and Craig Claiborne wrote it up in the Times. Anson Mills (Columbia SC, 1998) revived stone-ground grits when corn flavor went missing.
Variations
Crook's Corner-style with bacon, mushrooms, sharp cheddar; Lowcountry purist version is grits with shrimp and pan gravy only; New Orleans BBQ shrimp-and-grits adds Worcestershire-butter sauce; Husk (Charleston) plates them with sea-island red peas underneath.
On the Palate
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
6 steps · Show ↓45 min active · 15 min waiting
How it's made
6 steps · Show ↓- 145 min
Bring 1L water and 250ml whole milk to a simmer in a heavy saucepan with 1 tsp salt. Slowly whisk in 200g stone-ground white grits (Anson Mills or Geechie Boy). Reduce heat to low, cover, and stir every 5 minutes for 45 minutes — grits should be plump and creamy, not gritty.
Watch outInstant grits cook in 5 minutes but taste like wallpaper paste — stone-ground takes 45 minutes and tastes like corn.
- 23 min
Off heat, stir in 60g butter and 100ml heavy cream. Cover and keep warm. Adjust salt — grits absorb a lot.
- 36 min
Dice 4 strips of thick-cut bacon and render in a large skillet over medium until crisp, 6 minutes. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon, leave 3 tbsp fat in the pan.
- 410 min
Slice 200g andouille sausage into rounds. Brown in the bacon fat 3 minutes per side. Add 1 diced green bell pepper, 1 diced shallot, 3 minced garlic cloves; cook 4 minutes until softened.
- 53 min
Pat 500g large peeled shrimp dry. Toss with 1 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp cayenne, salt and pepper. Add to skillet, raise heat to high. Cook 90 seconds per side — shrimp should curl into a loose C, not a tight O (overcooked).
Watch outShrimp finish cooking on the plate from residual heat — pull when slightly underdone.
- 62 min
Squeeze in 1/2 lemon, splash 2 tsp Tabasco, scatter 2 tbsp sliced scallions and the reserved bacon. Spoon shrimp and pan sauce over a deep pool of grits in each bowl. Serve immediately.
