Chomp!

By Ron Aiken

 

 

Fried Okra Edition!!!!!!

 

There is nothing better than fried okra in all the whole wide world.

Not foie gras, not salted caramel, not crème fraiche, not Kobe beef, not nothin.

If you’re from the South – and God has truly blessed you if you are and cursed you if you are not – fried okra is the apex of cuisine. Forget shrimp & grits, forget fried green tomatoes or any other dishes that rightfully have elevated our region’s food to the point where it commands the attention of the nation’s best chefs and beyond. It’s okra that makes us who we are and no one else.

If you want to truly test a chef or cook’s skill, don’t ask them to filet a flounder, prepare pâté or Sous-vide shrimp. Have them fry okra, taste it and you’ll know if they’ve got the goods.

The best fried okra I’ve ever had was made by my grandmother, Nanny, whose family came from Natchez, Mississippi. She’d take fresh okra from her Victory Garden (as so many of the WWII generation did) and fry it up using only cornmeal, salt and pepper, and when served together with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers in vinegar, a baked potato and steak off the grill cooked by Pop (a real-life hero of D-day and the Battle of the Bulge) as he told stories of creeping up on German patrols while we listened to Bob Fulton call Gamecock football games, well, life doesn’t get better than that.

Fast forward to this week, and for the first time in my life I’m making fried okra. Using Nanny’s recipe with some twists, I successfully pulled of a transformative food experience that in the first amazing bite cut through the clouds of three decades to put me right back in Nanny’s kitchen, right back beside her at the stove waiting impatiently for the first okra to cool enough to eat.

In other words, ERMAHGERD, THE OKRA WAS SENSATIONAL!!!!

Here’s what I did.

First, by virtue of the fact I work at WLTX and have access to the fresh (and FREE!) produce from weatherman Jim Gandy’s garden, I got my okra.

 

The freshest of the fresh, baddest of the bad!

 

I then sliced the okra into about 1/4-inch pieces, which I placed on a platter with paper towels underneath and let them sit about 20 minutes or so so de-gooify (It’s a thing. Look it up.). From there, I created nice buttermilk back, about a cereal bowl’s worth of milk. I then used a mixture of 1 cup cornmeal to ½ cup flour.

To that I added a two tablespoons each of kosher salt, ground black pepper, garlic powder and cayenne. You can up that to three tablespoons if you’re feeling cheeky, four if you’ve lost all regard for society’s hangups and play by your own set of rules!

Here’s my shakily photographed station where I did muh battering. To fry them, I used peanut oil, which is GREAT for high temperatures, and turned the heat up to HIGH. Go all the way with this! When your oil is hot, CAREFULLY drop in your okra!

 

Look at these bathing beauties! Golden-brown, here we come!

 

And finally, the result – PERFECTION.

 

Life, again, does not get better than this.

 

 

A close-up! Can you taste the goodness? Hot off the stove? So crunchy and perfect! Can you?????

 

The salt, the pepper, the hint of garlic and cayenne and the crunchy cornmeal – DO NOT go with a flour-only recipe for fried okra unless you hate history, hate the South and probably hate yourself. Life is too short, and fried okra too good, not to use cornmeal and taste what fried okra is meant to taste like.

Let me know how your efforts turn out, and as for Chomp!, he will be frying okra from now til kingdom come, when he reunites with Nanny and Pop for his Heavenly reward, which certainly will include fried okra, cucumbers, tomato and fresh steak as we listen to Bob Fulton call the latest Carolina game. Til next time, friends!

 

 

 

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