🍤 Shrimp and Grits
Shrimp and grits is a Southern dish of creamy stone-ground corn grits, enriched with butter and cheese, topped with shrimp sautéed in bacon fat with crisp bacon pieces and scallions. The grits are smooth and comforting, the shrimp sweet and briny, and the bacon adds smoke and crunch. It is served for breakfast, brunch or dinner.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 150 g stone-ground grits
- 750 ml water
- 40 g grated cheese
- 20 g butter
- 400 g shrimp, peeled
- 100 g bacon, diced
- 3 scallions, sliced
- Salt, pepper and lemon
Method
- Bring the water to the boil with salt, whisk in the grits and simmer 20–25 minutes, stirring, until thick.
- Stir in the butter and cheese and keep warm.
- Fry the bacon until crisp; remove, leaving a little fat in the pan.
- Sauté the shrimp in the bacon fat 2–3 minutes, add the scallions, bacon and a squeeze of lemon.
- Spoon the shrimp over the grits and serve.
How to make it lighter
- Halve the butter and cheese; the grits stay creamy if you stir often.
- Use less bacon and pour off most of its fat before cooking the shrimp.
- Serve a smaller scoop of grits with more shrimp.
History
Shrimp and grits is a traditional dish of the coastal Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, long eaten there as a simple breakfast. Chefs in the 1980s, notably Bill Neal at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill, helped turn it into a well-known restaurant dish across the American South.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →