Spring Onion Pimiento Cheese Grits

The week after MawMaw Shirley's birthday and I am carrying "don't cry, cook" like a second heartbeat. The words have reorganized something inside me — not the grief (the grief is always there, the anticipatory grief that lives alongside the present-tense love) but the response to it. I cooked every night this week. Not because anyone was hungry. Because the cooking is the processing and the processing needs to happen or the grief will sit unprocessed and unprocessed grief is the kind that poisons you slowly. MawMaw Shirley knows this. She has been processing for eighty-two years. The pot is her therapist. The stove is her office. The roux is the session.

Monday: jambalaya. The tradition. Tuesday: chicken and dumplings, MawMaw Shirley's flat version, because the making of her recipe felt like conversation with her, the dough under my hands a proxy for her hands, the broth absorbing the dumplings the way love absorbs grief — not eliminating it, holding it. Wednesday: baked chicken, Mama's version, the midweek standard, the reliability of routine when everything else feels uncertain. Thursday: a new recipe — Thai peanut noodles, something MawMaw Shirley has never made and would view with the suspicion she reserves for non-Louisiana cuisine, but which I made because I am twenty-one and the world is big and sometimes the cooking is about going somewhere new, even if MawMaw Shirley would not come with me to Thailand.

Friday: red beans and rice. The canonical. The $3.47. The recipe that started the blog and that will outlast the blog and that will be made in whatever kitchen I occupy for the rest of my life. Red beans on Friday. Always. Because MawMaw Shirley's mother made them on Friday, and MawMaw Shirley made them on Friday, and Mama makes them on Friday, and I make them on Friday, and someday, if I am lucky, if the plan holds, if the future unfolds the way MawMaw Shirley says it will — and she has never been wrong — my children will make them on Friday, and the Friday beans will connect every generation, a chain of dried beans and holy trinity and patience that stretches from the past into the future, from Baker to wherever, from MawMaw Shirley to me to the person I have not yet met who will learn to stir because I taught them.

Red beans on Friday is the chain that holds everything together — but Saturday morning, when the week’s processing has done its work and I am still standing, I need something that speaks MawMaw Shirley’s language without being her exact recipe, something Southern to its core but mine in the making. Spring Onion Pimiento Cheese Grits are that dish: grits are the South, pimiento cheese is the South, and together they are the kind of warm, unshowy comfort that doesn’t ask anything of you except to sit down and eat. MawMaw Shirley would approve. She might even ask for the recipe.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 cup stone-ground grits
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 oz cream cheese, softened and cubed
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, freshly shredded
1 jar (4 oz) diced pimientos, drained
4 spring onions, thinly sliced (whites and greens separated)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Instructions

Simmer the broth. Bring chicken broth to a gentle boil in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Add 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.
Cook the grits. Slowly whisk in the stone-ground grits, reducing heat to low immediately. Cook uncovered, stirring frequently, for 20–25 minutes until grits are thick, creamy, and no longer gritty. If they tighten too much, stir in the milk a little at a time to loosen.
Bloom the aromatics. While the grits cook, melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a small skillet over medium heat. Add the spring onion whites and cook 2–3 minutes until softened and fragrant. Set aside.
Build the cheese base. Remove the grits from heat. Stir in the remaining 1 tablespoon butter, cream cheese cubes, and shredded cheddar, stirring until fully melted and smooth.
Add the character. Fold in the drained pimientos, sautéed spring onion whites, garlic powder, smoked paprika, black pepper, and cayenne if using. Taste and adjust salt.
Serve and finish. Spoon into bowls and top generously with the reserved spring onion greens. Serve immediately while hot and creamy.

Nutrition (per serving)

Spring Onion Pimiento Cheese Grits — The South in Every Stir