Garlic Cheddar Cheese Grits Recipe

Hi, I’m Betty. Welcome to Betty’s Kitchen. We’re going to make Garlic Cheddar Cheese Grits. This is my one of family’s favorite and it’s always shows that the holiday table. And if you think grits are only for breakfast then you probably not had garlic cheese grits. They’re hearty and you have them with any meal if any on tray it will go fun just about anything eating lunch or dinner or even breakfast you could choose.

What I’m starting with is quick grits, so you can buy the regular grits and put grits and actually to put grits, I have four cups of water that are coming to a bowl right now and I’m going to soak it. We need about one teaspoon of salt. We definitely like to cook the quick grits in salted boiling water. So I’m waiting just a second to that be nice and bubbly and we think it’s there now. So what I’m going to is pour a strip cayenne and then keep stirring occasionally. I want them to get up a good start, so let’s get that salts around, it’s in the bottom and you see we have some nice bubbly water and we’re ready to insert this.

Now, then it may have a tendency to clump if you don’t separate them but they will separate nicely. You’re going to cook this for three to five minutes. So let me just stir this occasionally, keep an eye on it and I’ll be back to show the rest of the casserole. My grits are done. You can see they’re bubbling and that the texture that you would find in the restaurant if you ordered them or if you make them at home for breakfast, that’s not what you’ll get and those might be served with butter along with your scrambled eggs and toast, whatever, but we’re going to do a much different treatment. I’m bringing it over to my rack space and just continue to stir it around so it doesn’t clump or anything. It’s very smooth and there aren’t any lots here.

Upon adding will be one quarter pound of butter, you can use margarine that’s fine. So I got one stick and that is a quarter of pound because this whole is four sticks and that is a one pound box and this— including that one whole stick of butter in there and that’s going to have to melt and incorporate into that so let me try to just chunk it a little bit with this rubbery spoon and that will progress it along a little bit but this are very hot, so it’s not big deal. Those are going to melt down, you can see very easily and it’s very delicious look already.

I’m going to add sharp cheddar cheese. I have eight ounces here which is half pound and it tells right here that its two cups for us, so if you have a larger container shredding cheddar just measure up two cups and add all that in. Very cheesy! Now you want to stir all this completely and you’ll see that the heat of the cooked grits is going to melt the cheese as well as the butter which we don’t really have to worry about being stick anymore I don’t think because it’s just I'm little lumps— a few more stirs, it will be gone.

Now, the next thing is a little tricky because I have two well beaten eggs and I want to them in here. What you can do is add them very quick and store because you don’t to cook. It’s very common to take some of the hot mixture out and mix that around with your egg to heat up this egg mixture and then quite end and very quickly incorporate that. But what you really or not trying to do is to cook the egg with the heated grits. You want to mix in the egg thoroughly and you can see they’re already in lumps starting to cooked egg pieces or it’s nothing pulling around in there but this does take a little bit of trickery to get it done properly and you have to pay attention to what you’ve done, you had to know that your goal here is to get that egg incorporated into your mixture completely and spread overly through but not have it cook in pieces because that’s not what we want in this casserole.

Now, the following to additions that we have, we have milk, just a quarter of a cup and I use skim milk, it doesn’t matter which kind. Add in and we’ll be stirring that in and then our very last addition is going to be garlic because you see it’s going to be garlic cheddar cheese grits. I always use this canned garlic because I use this so often. It’s just in a little jar and this cheddar is about finish. I’m going to use two teaspoon of course and I have another regular measuring spoon is such the teaspoon and I’m just going to finish up my jar here because it’s convenient. If I were using fresh garlic I will use clove and I would messed it very finely and insert that into my mixture. I don’t really want to add the water here that will come in the bottom. This has come for the freezer and then microwave just the morning actually.

So I finished up my garlic and I’ll serve it on a new jar later on. You need to get that and incorporate it and what— you’re going for here is a very delicate hint of garlic. You do not want to make this so strong in garlic that you don’t realize that its cheese flavored or that you have a nice textured grits mixture.

At this point, let’s put some oil and our baking pan. I mean oven proof dish something like Pirate’s dish about eight of a ten. This one is kind of different size but it could be round or this one is oblong, square, whatever, it’s just to be able to hold this amount. So spray this lightly with some cooking spray. I'm using canola oil in this spray and then pour this in. It can be easier and it’s going to make a casserole that everyone I know loves. It’s not much trouble to do and yet it does have huge impact on people because it’s just bursting with flavor.

So let’s take this around to the oven. I have an oven which is preheated to 425. It actually takes the pretty high heat on that. And it will cook probably half hour, maybe even longer so I’m going to watch that and tell you how we cooked. So, I'm placing it towards the center of the oven about halfway back and then close in the door and I will back in about a half hour.

I’ve been watching my garlic cheddar cheese grits casserole very carefully and it’s been just about 20 minutes and its nice and brown. I don’t think it can take any longer so I’m going to go ahead and get it out the oven. That 425 degrees of heat probably should be 400, so I think when I round out the recipe I’ll change 400 and then you can definitely made it for 20 minutes and going to tell you, you might leave it for 25 depending on how it looks but it should be nice and brown like this but it shouldn’t be drying at all. So I didn’t leave in there to let it dry up.

When you serve it just deep into it actually to let it sit a bit but I’m going to go ahead and show you this nice more of a textures. See what that looks like? It’s just golden and juicy and it will be the best type of grits that you have ever eaten. And if have a tendency to think that you don’t like grits, try it in this way. I think you’ll like it. Those crusty edges are the best so— I don’t think I'll take a bite of this because this is scolding hot. But trust me, I've had these hundreds times. Well, probably a thousand times in my life but this is a wonderful recipe that I think you’ll want to try.