Cooking should be a happy, creative process. It is where art
meets science in its most delightful form. Please accept these recipes as a starting point to a joyful exercise and not a rigid process. Some of these, such as Papa Sleepy Shrimp & Grits are family recipes, some shared by good friends and others from historical sources. Hopefully all of these and yours will create a story arising from the joy of sharing good food with family and friends. If you would like to share any of your recipes and stories with our grits, we would be happy to share them with your permission. We want to know of the fun and joy this food brings to your life. That is our purpose.
After many years of civilization and cooking, there are very few original recipes anymore. Any resemblance to any published recipes is purely incidental and not intentional. This volume will be updated with new recipes often, so check it when you purchase your Papa Sleepy Grits!
Cooking Instructions
Papa Sleepy Grits: Grits generally are cooked with a 4 to 1 ratio of liquid to dry grits. Stone Ground grits take longer than quick grits to cook. Generally, at least 45 minutes from the time your water boils. Stone ground grits are not fast food, just excellent food. Start by boiling 3 parts water, salt and a generous pat of butter. Once the grits are added to the boiling water, stir for at least a minute and revisit at intervals to stir some more to prevent lumps from forming. As the grits cook and thicken, some folks just add additional water to thin the grits as needed, but we are fans of whole milk or half and half for this purpose. Some folks even use cream. Also, if you are feeling adventuresome, try adding a little gruyere cheese for delightful additional flavor. Stone Ground Heirloom Grits have much more wholesome flavor naturally than quick grits. It is best to try some with butter and salt first and then decide on additions.
PAPA SLEEPY SHRIMP & GRITS
Prepare grits as noted above in cooking instructions, but you may use pepperjack cheese
with jalapeno pepper bits instead of gruyere. Starting the grits well ahead is no problem.
For the shrimp pour enough olive oil in a large skillet to cover the bottom and slowly cook the onions for about 15 minutes. Add garlic, julienned country ham, fresh peppers (seeded and chopped), Worcestershire sauce, red pepper and cook for 5-10 minutes more. Add mushrooms, white wine and sherry to taste and continue cooking until mushrooms are softened. Taste and adjust ingredients, salt and pepper as needed. Just before serving stir in peeled shrimp and allow them to slowly cook without over cooking.
Serve over Papa Sleepy Grits with people you love!
(This pairs well with a dry white wine)
Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Garlic, ½ bulb or more minced
Country Ham (1/3 pound, julienned)
Two red onions chopped.
One yellow onion chopped.
1 bunch green onions chopped.
Mushrooms 1 pound or more sliced
½ cup white wine, fragrant, medium to dry
2 t sherry or more to taste, dry
2 t Worcestershire sauce or more to taste
Fresh tabasco or serrano pepper seeded and chopped.
2 to three pounds peeled medium shrimp as desired.
PAPA SLEEPY FRIED GRITS CAKES
Save your leftover grits in the refrigerator overnight. Roll portions of the refrigerated grits in seasoned eggs and then fry them for a quick and delicious breakfast treat. Many folks cook grits and then spread them into a rectangular dish about ¾ to 1” thick and then refrigerate. After consolidating, the grits cakes can then be cut into rectangular or round portions and fried. Before frying some folks sprinkle flour
on them as well as seasonings of choice. They can be fried in vegetable oil or my personal favorite, bacon drippings! Be innovative in their use from this point. This is an excellent way to eat the leftover shrimp fixin’s from Papa Sleepy Shrimp & Grits. They can also be covered with various grated or sliced cheeses.
The grits cakes can be used as a base for “Grits Benedict” in place of an English muffin. It makes an excellent gluten free replacement for biscuits and English muffins. I come from a family of hunters and fishermen, so days frequently start well before dawn with only a cup of coffee. Simply put a fried egg and
a sausage paddy on the grits cake, wrap and save for a delicious breakfast in the blind or boat.
If ever there was a versatile use of grits, this is it! Growing up, we often fed the leftover grits to the bird dogs the following day, but now, much to their regret, (I know this because my dogs told me) this has become a staple for many family dinners and dinner parties as well as now being featured in many trendy restaurants. Our dear friends Angela &Buggy Pate save their leftover grits in the refrigerator overnight. They roll portions of the refrigerated grits in seasoned eggs and then fry them for a quick and delicious breakfast treat. Many folks cook grits and then spread them into a rectangular dish about ¾ to 1” thick and then refrigerate. After consolidating, the grits cakes can then be cut into rectangular or round portions and fried. Before frying some folks sprinkle flour on them as well as seasonings of choice. They can be fried in vegetable oil or my personal favorite, bacon drippings! Be innovative in their use from this point. This is an excellent way to eat the leftover shrimp fixin’s from Papa Sleepy Shrimp & Grits.
They can also be covered with various grated or sliced cheeses. The grits cakes can be used as a base for “Grits Benedict” in place of an English muffin. It makes an excellent gluten free
replacement for biscuits and English muffins. I come from a family of hunters and fishermen, so days frequently start well before dawn with only a cup of coffee. Simply put a fried egg and
a sausage paddy on the grits cake, wrap and save for a delicious breakfast in the blind or boat.
I am going to take just a minute here in case there are folks reading about grits for the first time. We are surely glad y’all have arrived, but need to be sure y’all understand the primary use of grits for everyone from the south is with eggs and pork for breakfast. Grits are wonderful with fried or scrambled eggs accompanied with sausage, country ham or bacon. Throw in a little red eye gravy as well for one of God’s most delightful blessings.
Hey, your cardiologist has to make a living too!
PAPA SLEEPY GRITS & FISH
Prepare grits as noted above in cooking instructions, but you may use pepperjack cheese with jalapeno pepper bits insteadof gruyere. Starting the grits well ahead is no problem.
For the shrimp pour enough olive oil in a large skillet to cover the bottom and slowly cook the onions for about 15 minutes. Add garlic, country ham, fresh peppers (seeded and chopped), Worcestershire sauce, red pepper and cook for 5-10 minutes more.
Add mushrooms, white wine and sherry to taste and continue cooking until mushrooms are softened. Taste and adjust ingredients, salt and pepper as needed. Just before serving stir in peeled shrimp and allow them to slowly cook without over cooking.
Serve over Papa Sleepy Grits with people you love!
(This pairs well with a dry white wine)
PAPA SLEEPY CORNBREAD
The making of cornbread is as old as the corn itself from which it is made. There are many recipes, all of which claim to be original, but at this point there are none. The earliest Native American preparations for corn generally involved not only boiling ground corn, but alternately frying corn batter in deep fat. Later in the deep south, folks working in the field prepared “hoe cakes”. There are many variations of this recipe, but tradition has it that a large hoe, which was used to chop cotton, was cleaned, greased, and heated over coals. A corn batter or corn & flour batter were poured over the heated hoe to cook a “cake” which resembles what most folks who don’t know better would think resembled pancakes. This is one of my personal favorites as it can be prepared with breakfast and used as a redneck taco filled with egg and pork. It can also be used like a traditional pancake and covered with all manner of sweet deliciousness!
I will follow with a few suggestions as to how you might prepare cornbread or hoe cakes. Please keep in mind these are suggestions for starting points for recipes and one should use their imagination in this process. In our family, we always prepare our corn bread in a cast iron skillet that was owned by a most excellent & loving cook, my wife’s mother who was known to our children as Granny.
Basic Cornbread: The ingredients listed below are to be combined dry and then mixed with the wet ingredients. These ingredients are to be poured into a greased, cast-iron pan heated in a 450 degree oven and immediately placed back into the oven for 20 minutes. It is important to have the preheated cast iron pan to facilitate a nice crust on the sides and bottom of the corn bread. Another option is to fry the batter in a frying pan or griddle to create a “hoe cake”.
One final option to consider is adding fresh seeded & chopped peppers to the mix. This provides a nice zippiness to the flavor and works well with hot chili or vegetable soup. Just keep in mind that corn bread arose from the needs of modest working folks as a delicious and nutritious way to fill empty stomachs!
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Ingredients:
Grease cast iron pan & preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2 cups of cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt (vary to taste)
1 large egg
1 & ¼ to 1 &½ cup of buttermilk.
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This should be adjusted to achieve the desired
consistency of the wet mix.
(Although some consider this the use of buttermilk instead of whole milk optional, I do not.)
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Approximately 3 to 4 tablespoons of fat.
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This can be butter, vegetable oil, Crisco or my personal favorite, lard.
(Some consider adding this ingredient(s) heresy.)
(optional) 1 tablespoon of sugar or brown sugar to adjust to your taste. Also can use honey or molasses.
Also, bacon drippings can be used but the amount of salt in the dry ingredients should be adjusted to account for this.
Quail, Grits and Gravy
Along with bird hunting is the wonderful memory of my mother cooking them. To properly dress birds, they must be picked, not skinned. The skin contains a lot of fat and provides much of the delicate flavor of a quail. As a small boy, I would be made to dress the birds while the adults visited and did what adults do. One particularly cold evening, I decided to save time by skinning the quail. Brother was that ever a mistake I will never forget! Needless to say, I did not eat birds that night. My mother would flour & fry them in pork fat (rendered fatback or bacon), make gravy from the drippings and simmer the birds in it until they were tender enough to almost fall apart. On good behavior, I was allowed to munch on crunchy fatback or bacon until dinner was ready. This was served over a big plate of grits for each of us. God had surely provided the bounty of his good earth! My mouth waters just to think of it.
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Ingredients:
Six to eight whole Bobwhite Quail (Manchester Farms if you don’t hunt or have a friend who does)
1 lb of fatback or fatty bacon (vegetable oil if you must)
1 pint of whole milk
1 ½ cup of plain flour
1 small onion finely diced
Salt & Pepper to taste
Dash of Sherry to taste
1 cup of Papa Sleepy Grits Preparation:
1. Render (cook) the fatback or bacon in a large frying pan or roaster. Reserve the fat and munch on the rest until dinner is ready.
2. While cooking the bacon, prepare the Papa Sleepy Grits to recipe and allow to simmer slowly, stirring occasionally. Allow to simmer on low temperature until the birds are ready.
3. Mix 1 cup of flour, salt and pepper in a large bowl
4. Dip the birds in the milk, shake lightly and roll in the seasoned flour
5. Heat the pork fat (oil) to 350 degrees and lightly fry the birds turning as needed, do not overcook. Set the fried birds aside to drain and pour out most of the fat, reserving several tablespoons of drippings in the pan along with leftover bits from the frying in the bottom of the pan.
6. On medium-high heat slowly add the remaining ½ cup of flour a little at the time while stirring constantly to create a light brown roux. Add the onion (optional) and allow it to soften.
7. Reduce the temperature to medium and slowly add about a cup of water, ½ cup at a time, stirring all the time and allow this mixture to thicken. Add left over milk and/or water as needed to obtain a medium thickness gravy. Add additional salt and pepper to taste and dash of sherry (optional) to taste.
8. Once satisfied with the consistency and seasoning of the gravy, add the birds to the gravy, turning to coat the birds on all sides and reduce the temperature to a low simmer. Continue cooking the birds until tender, stirring to insure they do not stick.
9. Serve birds and gravy over Papa Sleepy Grits and celebrate your hunt and fellowship. Very few will ever eat this well! Don’t forget to save some leftovers for your bird dogs, without them you would not have this meal.