Lauren asked me how we cook okra in the south, so I figured I'd post the recipe.
The answer is, of course, fried. Delicious, delicious fried. Here's how I make it.
Ingrediants:
Lots of fresh okra
Some sort of milk*
Cinnamon
Corn meal
Flour
Chili powder
Salt and pepper
Vegetable oil/canola oil
*Although I have come to accept the taste-less-ness of much of vegan cooking, the last time I fried okra we made a batch with vanilla soy milk for me, and one with half & half for Mathgimp. We both liked the soymilk batch better. It seems to coat more effectively, and just tasted more delicious. So, I recommend soy milk.
1.Wash the okra, cut off either end and throw away.
2. Slice the okra in half (not length wise - into smaller almost-circular pieces.)
3. Let the okra pieces soak in a bowl of milk for 5 minutes or so - they'll get kinda slimy.
4. Pour about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil into a pan and heat until the oil spits when you drop water in it.
5. While the oil's heating and the okra's soaking, mix together all the dry stuff. I completely make up amounts, about a cup of flour, a cup of corn meal, and then a few spoonfulls of chili powder and cinnamon. That's my special addition to the recipe - I think it's too bland otherwise.
6. Now that the okra's done soaking, roll it around in the dry mixture til it's nice and coated (I think the fancy term is drege)
7. Drop as many pieces of coated okra in the oil as will fit at one time without touching each other. Be wary of spitting oil. Let it fry until it turns golden brown, and then put on a plate. If there are random pieces of fried floating around, you might want to fish them out between batches.
That's it! Delicous.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Southern fried cookin'
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3 comments:
Hi, I'm a friend of Smed's who loves cooking.
The difference between soy milk and dairy milk will depend on what kind of dairy milk you use. Ideally, you should use whole milk. But if you're comparing skim to soy, soy will usually come out on top where the keys (as in fry batter) are viscosity and fat content.
The chili powder and cinnamon is definitely non-standard, but I could see how that would be tasty. You should try some time, as an alternative, using more salt and pepper. Or (this is my favorite) making a beer batter. The way you do that is you make your batter... then... this is really tough... pour a beer into it. That's it. It comes out delicious.
One final note... I'm sure you're aware of this, but it wasn't entirely clear in your recipe. Even if lots of okra fit in your oil, you want to make sure not to add too many at one time. Not because they'll stick together, but because doing so will lower the temperature of the oil too far. When the oil temperature drops below about 315, the batter will start soaking up the oil instead of frying, and it will be less healthy and more soggy than it otherwise would be. The oil will spatter when you sprinkle water into it at any temperature above about 300, so you actually want to wait a little longer for your oil to get up to about 375 before putting the okra in.
Thanks for the comment! You clearly improve the recipe, and know WAY more than i do about cooking.
I absolutely fly by night - it's not so much a recipe so much as trying to put into words what I do when I cook =) So thanks for your tip! We're making some tonight, so we might try the beer batter!
Wow, intense y'all. It's like the foodnetwork online. I have no recipes, but yours, Kel, sounds AMAZING
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