Paula Deen's Sausage and Grits
- Alliey
- Jan 28, 2018
- 4 min read
The Book:
We’re back from North Georgia! We had an absolutely great time with our friends Lindsey and Justin. I have to say, if you ever wonder if you really are good friends with someone, spend time with them in a cabin when it is pouring outside. In addition to being great company, they were also fully supportive of my cooking adventures. As mentioned on Friday when I made the oh-so-addicting Sugared Peanuts, here is an update on how dinner went down. We went through the book and decided to cook Paula’s Sausage and Grits for dinner. The hand towel was courtesy of the cabin owners whom Will designed the house for.
Funny story. This recipe calls for 1 pound of ground sausage, and does not specify what kind of sausage to use. Breakfast? Italian? No idea. Maybe if this blog goes viral one day I will meet Paula and have the chance to ask her what she uses in this recipe. Until then, I had to improvise. We took a vote and decided on using breakfast sausage. Not only did that make this delicious, it made the left overs great for breakfast this morning as well.
Anyway, we got the groceries on the way up to the cabin. Here is how I made dinner:
The Lady & Sons Sausage and Grits (Alliey's Version)
Ingredients
1 1/4 cup uncooked grits (non-instant)
1 pound ground sausage
1 vidalia onion, chopped
2 four ounce cans green chilies, chopped
1 stick butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
6-8 dashes Tobasco sauce
1 1/4 teaspoon paprika
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cook grits in 4/2 cups salted water until thick. While that is cooking, brown the sausage. Make sure to break it up into small pieces as you go. Remove the sausage from the pan. Sauté onion in sausage grease. When the onion is about 3/4 of the way done, add the green chilies, just to give them a little color and get them heated through. Return the sausage to the pan and mix all together.
Alliey's tip: If you are like me, and you think the best way to ruin grits is to dry them out, feel free to be a little heavy handed on the water side. I continued to add water to the pot as they continued to thicken, as I didn't want them to dry out in the oven. I think this worked out great, and they would have been to dry otherwise.
Meanwhile, in the grits pot. Once they are thickened, add the eggs, butter, Tobasco, cheddar cheese, and paprika. Mix well. Add the ingredients in the sausage to the grits mixture and mix well. Pour all ingredients into a greased 13x9 casserole dish. Put in the oven for about 45 minutes. The recipe called for an hour, but I pulled our dinner out right at 45 minutes and it was perfect.
Paula says that this recipe can be made up to 2 days ahead of time and freezes extremely well. While I cannot speak with certainty to either one of those facts, I can tell you this was absolutely delicious.
After dinner, we attempted to figure out how we were going to go about making the smores we had purchased earlier at the grocery store. I mean, can you go to the mountains and not have smores? That would be a sin. Because of the aforementioned rain, we had to use creativity to figure out how to avoid this sin. Turns out, you can make some great smores in the oven. Luckily, since I had taken care of dinner Lindsey and Will were all over dessert. And by all over, I mean it was like a scene out of the Great British Baking Show with both of them sitting on the floor watching the oven to make sure that they did not over do the marshmallows.
When Will looked at me and said "I never thought I would be like one of those people you see on the show, sitting on the floor watching the oven," I was half concerned I had made my husband watch too many cooking shows. In my defense, his sister lives with us and loves the show too, leaving him sadly outnumbered. Not to mention I honestly never knew he was paying attention. I should have known better on that last point, a man that smart pays attention to everything whether he is acting like it or not.
At any rate, Lindsey and Will's smores turned out fantastic, and I will always remember that I have a rainy day alternative to smores.
While the food this weekend was absolutely fantastic, I can honestly say I am a little bummed to be moving on to other cookbooks this week. There are soo many recipes in this book that I know to be absolutely fantastic that I haven't had the luxury of trying yet. But, that isn't what this project is about is it? 62 cookbooks by the end of year. I must stay on schedule!!
Also- I know many of "my" Price family members are subscribed to this blog and might be looking forward to pictures of the cabin Will designed. He has several on his phone that I will share later in an updated post, but I don't have access to them right now!! I know - I'm really lame. But, check out this awesome view we woke up to this morning.
That's all for this weekend. Hope you all have a great Sunday and a wonderful start to your week!
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