This article originally appeared in The Local Voice #208.
To download a PDF of this issue, click here.
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by Betsy Chapman
Warning: The following recipe is really delicious and may cause overindulgence. Please eat fried foods in moderation so that Mississippi can move down some on the Fattest State List. And in the spirit of Haley Barbour’s now defunct Let’s Go Walkin’, Mississippi! campaign, please follow the consumption of fried okra with a long, brisk walk.
We’ve all been told that fried foods are bad for us but we’re also hip to the fact that crunchy, golden fried crust is delicious especially when it encases one of the South’s most beloved/maligned vegetables: Okra.
Okra—the heat loving relative of cotton, hibiscus, and cocoa—is a Deep South delicacy that also features prominently in Indian, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern cuisine and is prized for its soothing medicinal properties in Ayurvedic medicine.
Down here, we tend to think of okra less as medicine and more as something to envelope in crust, another popular Southern food. In addition to frying, we stew it, pickle it, and gumbo it (yes, I just made gumbo a verb.) I’ve also heard that some more progressive Southerners are grilling it these days.
For Sunday dinner, I had a pot of peas on the stove and some eggplant roasting in the oven when I remembered the pound or so of okra in the fridge. I kind of wanted to stew it with tomatoes but deep down I really wanted to fry it.
In times past, frying okra has been a little melodramatic, requiring lots of bowls, cutting, time, labor and I always made a mess of the kitchen. I needed to keep things simple and come up with a quick recipe that didn’t call for eggs because I didn’t have any and I feared my marriage would not survive another request to run to the store. Here’s the recipe I came up with. I left the okra whole and created a thick, crunchy jalapeno and Tabasco spiked crust.
Betsy’s One-Bowl Deconstructed Jalapeno Fried Okra
1½ lb. Fresh okra, whole
3 Jalapeno peppers, sliced into rings
Buttermilk, about ⅓ cup
Flour, about ⅓ cup
Non-GMO Cornstarch, about 3 TBS.
Grit Girl Cornmeal, about ⅓ cup
Salt & Pepper
Tabasco Sauce
Oil
Clean okra, pat dry, and trim only the top tough ends. Put okra and jalapeno slices in a big bowl. Pour just enough buttermilk to coat the okra and peppers, add a little more milk if you want a thicker crust. Once coated with buttermilk, season with salt, pepper, and Tabasco, and begin adding enough flour, cornmeal, and a little cornstarch to create what looks like cornbread batter. Keep batter thick so it will cling easily to the okra. This is going to look weird—kind of like a batch of okra infused cornbread—but please push on because it will be delicious.
Get your heaviest bottomed skillet hot and add about a quarter inch of oil. Drop coated okra and peppers into hot oil. Drop extra batter into hot oil alongside the okra—these okra-less crust bites are what makes this “deconstructed.” Also, do not worry if some of your crust falls off in the skillet. Just fry it all until deep golden brown and pile crust and okra up on a big platter lined with paper towels to drain. Serve hot.
