Shrimp and Grits - Cutting and Frying the Grits

Dan Lichens: Hi, I am Dan at FireFlies Restaurant in Alexandria and today we are making shrimp and grits. In this clip we are going to be cutting our grits that we have already made and pan frying them for the final dish.

So we have the grits in the pan and they have set up really well and we are going to just cut them into squares and the serving size will be about six ounces of grits per person. So because we have cooked most of the moisture out of the grits and replaced it with butter, heavy cream and cheese, they are nice and firm, but they are still moist so you want to be careful cutting the grits at this stage of the game but they will hold their shape. We left the olive oil on the bottom of the pan, this should come out nice and cleanly and we use a spatula. We have preheated a cast iron pan in our pizza oven. Now you can do this on a stove at home or you can do it the same way with heating your pans up in the oven because we are going to be finishing cooking everything in our oven here tonight. So I have the pan, it is nice and hot which is important with these cast iron pans or French steel pans because it basically creates a nonstick surface to work with. The metal is very porous so as it heats up, the pores in the metal open and then we put the fat which in this case, is olive oil in the hot pan and it fills all of those holes in the metal which creates a nonstick surface to cook on. So we are going to be very careful with this hot pan and drop our grits in there then place it back in the oven for about five minutes and this will allow the bottom of the cake to get nice and crispy which is our presentation side and the grits will be heated all the way through. So after about five minutes in the oven we are going to pull the grit cakes out and check to make sure they are nice and crispy on the bottom and they have not stuck to our pan at all. So I can pick under there, we will turn them out on to our plate and this will be used as the base for our sauted greens and our shrimp that we are going to do next.