St. Augustine Grits

📝 Notes: Also known as: Datil Dust Grits · Miz Kathi's Pimento Grits The concept: Classic: Southern cheese grits. Vectors: Substitution (house pimento cheese replaces plain cheddar in the grits base) + Terroir swap (datil pepper replaces generic cayenne for heat). Two already-trained pantry components become one new side with zero new SKUs beyond the pepper itself. Hero ingredient: Datil pepper — St. Augustine's own pepper varietal, fruity-hot rather than flat-hot like cayenne. Components: House Pimento Cheese — use existing house recipe as-is; do not build a special small batch. Plating: Scoop 4 oz into ramekin or plate quenelle-style. Garnish with extra datil mince or smoked paprika dust and chive. Pro upgrade: finish with a datil-brown-butter drizzle (brown 2 oz butter, bloom 1 tsp datil mince off heat) for an upsell version. Prep efficiency: cook grits base ahead and hold; fold in pimento cheese and datil only at pass in small batches. Cross-utilization: uses two existing pantry items — cheese grits base and pimento cheese — zero new equipment. Datil pepper also feeds Datil Hoppin' John and Datil Creamed Corn. Failure modes: adding pimento cheese over direct heat breaks the emulsion — always fold off heat. Scaling: At 4x: taste and adjust datil up only ~3x, not 4x — heat compounds faster than volume. At 10x: cook grits in two pots — a single pot this size loses too much heat to steam-jacket evenly.