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Earlier in this thread, someone stated that grits were "just polenta". This is untrue, though there are of course similarities between the dishes. The big difference is that the dish known as "grits" in the American south, historically and traditionally, is not made with corn grits but rather with hominy grits. In my view this is not just a piece of trivia to be pedantic about on the internet. Remember that southern cooking -- again, historically -- is more a cuisine of poverty and deprivation than of wealth and choice. Hominy, in case you're unfamiliar, is maize which has been processed by boiling in an alkalai solution. Commonly lime, but sometimes lye. This process was discovered by the Aztecs, and is known as nixtamalization because "nixtamal" is the Nahuatl word for hominy. And where southerners ground hominy to the fineness of grits and made a porridge, Mesoamericans ground it finer to produce something else you probably know and love: masa. So why would you do this to corn? Two big, useful reasons. One is: Wikipedia posted:...the alkalinity helps the dissolution of hemicellulose, the major glue-like component of the maize cell walls, and loosens the hulls from the kernels and softens the maize. Some of the corn oil is broken down into emulsifying agents (monoglycerides and diglycerides), while bonding of the maize proteins to each other is also facilitated. The divalent calcium in lime acts as a cross-linking agent for protein and polysaccharide acidic side chains.[3] As a result, while cornmeal made from untreated ground maize is unable by itself to form a dough on addition of water, the chemical changes in masa allow dough formation. quote:The nixtamalization process was very important in the early Mesoamerican diet, as unprocessed maize is deficient in free niacin. A population that depends on untreated maize as a staple food risks malnourishment and is more likely to develop deficiency diseases such as pellagra, niacin deficiency, or kwashiorkor, the absence of certain amino acids that maize is deficient in. Maize cooked with lime or other alkali provided niacin to Mesoamericans. Beans provided the otherwise missing amino acids required to balance maize for complete protein. Today, in the era of industrialized baking, where B vitamin complex is sprayed onto every wheat product, the average American isn't doesn't have to worry about niacin deficiency. But as someone who enjoys history and views food as probably the least lovely and most shareable thing about my southern cultural inheritance, I'm sad that not many people (even in the south) seem to know this.
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Aug 13, 2020 17:27
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 02:22 |
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