Ok, kinda the movie. My friend’s wife was watching this last night and I started to wonder if it was an actual dish people make. After seeing boiled peanuts in Georgia, nothing would surprise me.
So, with 3 tomato plants and cold as hell temps, I have about 749 big green tomatoes. I’m only averaging about 2 per day that are ripe enough to pick.
Anyone know if this is a legit snack? If so, can you recommend a way to make them? I’d prefer a more pedestrian recipe that is most likely to please a broad group of people. i.e. no $200/oz specialty herbs included.
749 BIG tomatoes on 3 plants. I raised a damned nice garden this year but I couldn’t even come close to say that I had 250 tomatoes on a single plant.
Yes lotsa folks eat fried green tomatoes.
Frying tomatoes is like most any other vegetable. Slice em and batter 'em then drop em in the grease.
Some people like a cornmeal batter. Some woth flour and some half and half.
I usually will use a water and cornstarch batter. It’s light and crispy. Add a little garlic salt to some corn starch in a bowl, maybe a bit of lemon pepper but not much. The batter needs just a enough water to make it about the consistency of Elmer’s glue. How much depends on how many of course. It’s pretty simple.
A boiler or skillet w/ some clean oil at med. heat for a few minutes. Until the batter is golden and crispy.
A side of bacon/ranch dressing is a good dip to put with it. I use this batter or a variation of it on most all the veggies that I fry up. mm-mm that’s good stuff
Why cornstarch? I find that both flour and/or cornmeal have a tendency to be greasy or it’ll cook but not let the veggies cook. It’s great on onion rings.
t-keela, I’ll give this one a try tomorrow. And thanks for an easy recipe to start with. If you head back this way, can you tell me what they taste like? I’m planning on doing this anyway, just wondering what to expect. Oh, and I loathe Ranch dressing and anything that tastes like sour cream. So any other dips you would recommend? Or is the batter enough to just eat them plain?
I forgot we swapped or transitioned to a new host and the boards won’t be shutting down at 3:30 anymore.
Squash isn’t exactly right either. Plus it also depends on the tomato. I like 'em pretty good but a few is usually enough for me because I’ll have zucchini, squash, okra and eggplant…that’s it, it’s kinda like eggplant with a bite.
I’ve cooked up huge stainless steel trays of veggies cooked this way at BBQ’s and fish fries etc…
A couple of boxes of cornstarch a vouple of big mixing bowls and a small Lowreys garlic salt…some water and a couple of dutch ovens and it’s on. I’ve got a big propane cooker when I get serious. The kind some people try to fry turkeys with. To hell w/ that but it’s bad ass when frying fish and fries or garden produce.
Oh, wow they’re great! They are similar in texture to fried eggplant, if you have eaten that. Of course, they are slightly sour and a bit acidic. Imagine, perhaps, a slice of fried eggplant with lemon.
The standard recipe I’ve always used wasn’t really a batter, just an eggwash to dip the slices in and then a roll in either plain flour or a mixture of flour and cornmeal (seasoned with salt and pepper). Fry them in a generous amount of veg. oil over medium low heat until they are golden brown.
Eat alone or as a side dish.
I’ve never really eaten them with any kind of sauce or dressing but I suppose a little hot sauce would go well.
Another way to use up those green tomatoes is to pickle them. We have the same problem and I just put up 8 jars of pickles yesterday. They are delicious, the best pickles ever! This batch was a kind of hot mixed pickle- lots of green tomatoes, some large sliced cukes, jalapenos, habaneros, hungarian hots, cauliflower and a couple of garlic cloves per jar.
Enjoy the Fried Green Tomatoes! They are a lot better than they sound.
Off to bed to ponder this all. One more question I thought of. I have 2 cast-iron skillets and a “Fry-Baby” deep fryer. Any opinion on which would be better to use?
Back tomorrow to let everyone know how the first batch went.
There are recipes in the back of Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (the wonderful book from which the suckie movie was adapted). According to Flagg’s recipes, you slice the tomatoes, dredge them in cornmeal, salt and pepper, fry them in bacon drippings and eat. This is the plain and simple version. If you want to get fancier, Flagg also includes a recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes with Milk Gravy. In this version, you dip the tomatoes in beaten egg, then dredge in dry bread crumbs and fry in bacon fat. After the tomatoes are brown on both sides, remove them from the pan and use the remaining bacon fat to make a simple milk gravy (couple of tablespoons flour; 1 cup of milk; salt and papper to taste). This is the meal that Evelyn brought to Mrs. Threadgoode in the nursing home – fried green tomatoes with milk gravy and bacon on the side.
I had some for lunch yesterday. It was called a “Tower of Green Tomatoes” and was a stack of alternating fried green tomatoes and sweet potato puree. Not bad.
Don’t fry all of them. If I may, I’d like to convince you to try pickling some. If it works out, I would also like to request a jar of them for myself. A co-worker made some and gave me a small jar to try. It lasted all of 3 minutes. She has failed to pick up on my hints (not too subtle ones, at that) for a bigger jar next time.
Around here they’re often served with a sweet red pepper remoulade sort of sauce. Extremely tasty. (No, sorry, I haven’t got a recipe handy.) They would also be good with anything you dip, say, an onion ring in - that slightly spicy orange stuff they serve with Blooming Onions would be good.
In town here there’s a restaurant that does up a fried green tomato napoleon with this blue crap dip/saladish stuff between tomato layers… ooh, it’s good. And I think pickled peppers on top. Not to be missed.
Fried green tomatoes are wonderful if done well. I’ve received many a compliment on mine, if I do say so myself. I typically use the fritter batter recipe in The Joy of Cooking (which, sadly, I do not have here at work with me). I like them garnished with malt vinegar best.
You have to eat them right away, too, just like you would with french fries or tempura. Don’t let them sit out and get soggy.
Fried green tomatoes are indeed the food of the gods. They are delicious as a side dish with some traditional southern fare – baked ham, greens, fried squash. . . sounds like lunch at my Grandmother’s house!
They are also great in a BLT. Toasted bread, thick sliced bacon, crisp lettuce, and fried green tomatoes. Top with plenty of mayonnaise and salt and pepper. With a side order of Rolaids.
I thought about that kind of dip. Specifically the southwestern ranch dip offered at Buffalo Wild Wings. Anyone know how to make a close copy of that sauce?
I’ll start frying in a couple hours and report back. Thanks for all the advice.
OK, using extra virgin olive oil in a cast iron I tried 2 methods.
1st was cornstarch and water (thick paste) but didn’t batter it well enough.
2nd was an egg wash with flour that gave it a better batter as far as crispiness.
Both were ok. They were a bit different tasting than I expected, in that they really didn’t taste like anything I’ve ever had before. They weren’t bad, and my wife, whom hates anything “weird” didn’t think so either. (This from a woman that refuses to try anything new. Took me 2 years to get her to try grilled swordfish)
Anyway, it was a mild success in that they weren’t disgusting. But I’ll have to work on it. Maybe salting and letting sit overnight to dry the tomato out a bit to help keep them crisp. I may even break out the ole Fry-Baby.
Updates if anyone is interested will follow in the next day or two. Thanks again for all the suggestions.
I’m not a fan of Paula Dean’s in general (the woman puts mayonaise on a BBQ sandwich, for God’s sake!), but she’s got a recipe for fried green tomatoes on the Food Network site. If you do a search under recipes from the main page, you’ll find plenty more variations.
I’ve had Dean’s at her restaurant in Savannah, and they were passable but not spectacular. The best I’ve ever had were from a chain restaurant called “Po Folks” (which I think is called just “Folks” now). Great stuff, if you can get them done right.
When I had an overload of green tomatoes, I used them in Rice-a-Roni. The results are not as pretty as when red tomatoes are used, however the flavor is good. I’m not sure if it is as good as traditional fried green tomatoes as I’ve never had any. But, it seems less labor intensive.
