It’s not the season for okra. Buying vegetables in season has never been anything that mattered to me. I love okra any time I can get it. I crave it fried. However, I also enjoy it pickled or in a gumbo or a stew. But, don’t give me “snotty okra.” I don’t want it boiled all by itself. Okra when it is boiled gets mucilaginous (snotty) and it isn’t very appetizing to me.
For some reason, okra seems to be a Southern Regional dish. I guess because it grows in hot weather. Okra is said to have originated in Africa. Some people say it came to the United States in the 1700s with the French colonists in Louisiana. Others say that African slaves brought the seeds with them. Friends from the North don’t seem to know what okra is. I like to serve it to them to watch their reactions.
Several years ago, a neighbor of mine dropped by on a day that I was frying okra I had grown in my garden. I offered her a taste and her eyes rolled back in her head with ecstasy. She borrowed a bowl and took some fried okra home to her family. All summer, if she heard I was frying okra, she would come tapping at my door with a bowl in her hand.
The next summer, she planted okra in her own garden and waited excitedly for her first crop. One day, I told her I had fried my first batch of okra from my summer produce. She got a stricken look on her face and moaned, “Mine isn’t ready yet!”
I stepped in her garden to take a look. There were okra pods as long as my forearm on her plants. I said, “What are you talking about, gal? You’ve left these on the plant so long that they’ve turned into swords! You could kill somebody with those. You have to cut the okra when they are short and tender.”
“Oh,” she replied. “I thought they weren’t ready yet, because the skin hadn’t turned black.”
Bless her heart. All she knew about okra is the kind you find in the store. It sits on the shelf and gets old and turns black. Good tender okra is bright green and short. If you have never raised it in your garden, and didn’t grow up eating it, you might not know that either. Don’t be ashamed about that.
And, don’t think that if you have eaten fried okra at a restaurant that you have really had fried okra. Most Southern cooks don’t batter the okra. Usually it’s mixed with cornmeal and fried in grease. My brother and I both contend that it has to be fried until it’s burned on the edges.
Because I cook like my Mamaw (you don’t measure, you just put in a handful of this and a pinch of that until it “looks and tastes right”), I had to prepare a batch of okra, then take it apart and measure it, so that I could tell you how to cook it. I have done painstaking research for you, and will be ashamed of you if you don’t go fry some okra today. If you are a vegetarian, you will have to figure out your own recipe. I can’t help you.
FRIED OKRA
You will need:
2 ½ cups of okra, sliced. Cut off the knob on the stem end and the tip before slicing. They are edible, but they aren’t pretty and the stem end is tough.
2 Tablespoons of cornmeal
1 Tablespoon of flour
4 Tablespoons of diced onion
Salt and pepper to taste (I can’t put in enough pepper)
Mix all of that together in a bowl until the okra is coated with the meal and flour.
Drag out that cast iron skillet. I told you how to season it properly just a few days ago. You don’t technically have to use a cast iron skillet, but the okra will taste better if you do.
Pre-heat the pan for a few seconds, then fry 7-8 strips of good fatty bacon (the Good Lord gave us bacon grease, and we are supposed to use it). Once the bacon is done, take it out of the pan and drain it, then crumble it.
Tumble the okra mixture slowly into the hot bacon grease and stir the okra until it is all coated with grease. If it doesn’t all get coated, you don’t have enough grease. This part is a science that is difficult to explain. You don’t want it too greasy (if there is such a thing) but you can’t fry it if it is dry. You might have to add a touch of grease or oil. It really depends on the bacon.
Fry the okra on medium heat, stirring frequently, until the meal turns brown. Then, cook it a little longer. Again, my brother and I think it tastes best slightly burned. But, you might not want to try that the first time. When you consider it done (which may take 15 minutes), take it out of the pan and serve it with the crumbled bacon on top.
This will serve four people as a side dish…or one person like me.
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Ketchup or No?
Why would you ruin good bacon grease with ketchup?
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