Cook Cereals in Golden Corn Broth
Portland, Oregon, the city I live in, is obsessed with southern food. I mean, I understand. Southern food is good, but many restaurateurs who prepare it find it difficult to resist the urge to “lift” it, which completely misses the essence of the cuisine. (I once found a whole sprig of rosemary in my sausage gravy, if you can believe it.)
Much of the southern cuisine is already optimized: designed to taste good without the need for expensive ingredients. So, imagine my surprise when I found myself cooking cereals in different broths, trying to make them “better.” The whole point of cereal is that it tastes like corn, and stewing it in ham broth (good broth) obscured the flavor of the corn, which was downright disrespectful to the cereal, my family and me.
But then I remembered a box of corn cobs – a golden spoon made from used cobs. It has always been a good base for a vegetarian ramen broth, but I think making the corn grits even more cornier is her true and highest calling because there is no such thing as “too much” corn flavor. (You don’t “lift up” the cereal, you honor it by extracting as much flavor as possible from the bones of their ancestors.) The corncob broth recipe can be found here , but it’s really just a matter of boiling (or pressure cooking) the seedless cobs before until the water acquires a pleasant golden hue, and then straining the cobs.
Then just cook the cereal the way you normally cook it – I cooked mine in the Instant Pot – replacing the water with cob broth. I wouldn’t call them “sublime” because that word sucks. But I would call cereals cooked in corn seed broth “fortified” (and then smother them with cheese).