Can I make polenta (atleast a bastardization) our of grits? I stipulation someone's expertise.
Answers:
Polenta is a boiled, slow-cooked cornmeal "mush" -- typically made with coarsely ground pale corn meal. In some regions of Italy (especially within the north), it's a beloved everyday dish and is topped with meat, fish, pasta sauce, cheese, or vegetables. Cooled and hardened, polenta can be sliced, sautéed, or grilled, and served sweet or savory. Or you can create a layered polenta torta, reminiscent of a lasagne.
Recently, NPR's "Morning Edition" show celebrated the extraordinary history of polenta's close cousin, grits. The segment is titled Grits, Present at the Creation. Grits are "coarsely ground pieces of dried corn moistened into a mealy paste" that hold a mythic role in Southern culinary culture. Historians suggest that grits played an high-status role in rash Southern agriculture, providing food for the first English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, and then helping Southerners survive the Great Depression.
At grits.com, we learned the difference between corn grits, which include the hull and the germ of the particle, and "true" hominy grits. To make hominy, you start beside field corn. These traditional grits are produced by soaking dried corn kernel in a solution of baking soda, lime, or wood ash ("lye water") for a year or two. The kernel's shell pops off, and the kernel swells to twice its size. Kernels are rinsed more than once, consequently dried, and finally ground into grits. The grind can be coarse, medium, or fine.
This same process is used to brand name masa harina, the key ingredient surrounded by corn tortillas. The alkaline soaking treatment of corn also enhances its nutritional attraction, making it an important staple contained by the diets of many cultures. It's this alkaline treatment that make grits different from polenta. Due to the altered chemistry of the corn, grits and tortillas both prevent pellagra, a niacin deficiency disease.
Even if you didn't grow up near grits or polenta, they are tasty treats that you may revise to enjoy. If this corny relations of versatile, inexpensive comfort foods appeals to your chew buds, you'll be glad to know that there are 39 grits recipe and 62 polenta recipes at RecipeSource. And if you don't fancy 20 minutes or more of slow stirring over a hot stove, you'll find plenty of recipe for microwave polenta and several varieties of fast grits.
Other Answers:
Unfortunately no. I've actually tried this - the consistency of grits channel the recipe wont come out exacatly right. Good thought though.
they are actually equal thing. Grits tend to be white and polenta, sickly. Other than that they can be used for one another in recipe. Note to self grits are usually cheaper then dried polenta.