Fried Okra
Back when I first started Southern Plate, I had an email from a reader asking if I could do a tutorial on fried okra. Well, y’all know I’ll eventually get to everything and here it is, the long awaited fried okra tutorial!
Fried okra is a truly delicious side dish. It seems no matter the time of year, whether it be frozen or fresh, okra always adds that “fresh from the garden” taste to any meal. Around these parts, you can find it pre-breaded in the freezer section and some places even sell cups of it hot alongside chicken nuggets and such at lunch. Although I have no complaint if I am getting okra (no matter how it is prepared), my all time favorite form of okra is prepared at home, with this recipe.
I have a funny story about okra which some of my friends from my teenage years are thinking of right now as they read this (it kind of made an impression!). When we were teens, my parents used to go out of town on the weekends a lot. My brother was around 20, I was about seventeen, and my sister was 15 at the time. Once, when they were gone to Nashville for the weekend, I decided I would invite all of my friends over and have a dinner party – dun-Dun-DUN!
This was before my cooking days had really taken off and my experience didn’t reach beyond cracker dumplings and frozen pizzas so I decided that spaghetti would be a good choice (seemed easy enough, right?). I used store bought sauce and put it on first thing in the morning, adding plenty of ground beef. However, the sauce didn’t look appealing or labor intensive enough – I wanted to fancy it up a bit and impress everyone with my grand culinary skills. I remembered my home economics teacher telling us that we should serve food in a variety of colors in order to have a more appealing meal. Well that made sense, I’ll just add some more colors to the sauce!
That evening, my friends were quite surprised (and I was confused that they weren’t as impressed as I thought they would be) when I served them spaghetti with okra and corn in the sauce! We still laugh about that and shake my head at my seventeen year old self. God love her, she had good intentions.
You’ll need: Fresh or frozen okra (I am using frozen), salt, pepper, cornmeal (self rising or plain, either is fine), and vegetable oil. If using fresh okra, go ahead and slice it up like this okra is.
Place your sliced okra in a bowl and add corn meal, salt, and pepper.
Have your grandmother stir it all up while you take a photo
(or you can just stir it up yourself – I realize not everyone has a grandmother handy!)
Place about 1/4 cup oil in skillet and heat over medium heat for three to five minutes.
Take okra out of bowl with a slotted spoon and place in heated oil.
Keep skillet on medium heat (if in a hurry, you can cook this on medium high heat, just watch it a bit closer).
Stir it occasionally (every two or three minutes) for about twenty or twenty five minutes or so, until crisp and browned.
Remove cooked okra with a slotted spoon and place into serving bowl.
DEVOUR! (This is the good stuff!)
Southern Fried Okra
Approx 4 Cups Okra (fresh or frozen, sliced)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 cup cornmeal (self rising or plain)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Thaw okra. Sprinkle cornmeal over okra. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir okra to cover with cornmeal. Heat approx. 1/4 cup oil in skillet until hot. Dip okra from bowl with slotted spoon into oil. (Leave the extra cornmeal in the bowl and throw away.) Stir occasionally and cook until okra is brown and crisp. Take out of oil with slotted spoon.
*Special thanks to my mother for doing this tutorial for me. I also want to thank her for driving all the way to my house to bring me her camera’s SD card when her computer had problems preventing her from emailing them.
I also want to thank her for the good laugh I got when she sent me an email last week (before her computer had issues) with these photos attached – supposedly. I opened the email this morning to do this post and found photos labeled “okra” – but they were actually from the event where my mom and dad got to meet John McCain and Sarah Palin. Mama had no idea until this morning! That was a good laugh for both of us.
My dad and Cindy McCain, who will hereafter be thought of as “Okra’s Wife”.
~giggle~
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I’ve never had fried okra before, but it really looks delicious!
I remember the days of teenage cooking. Sigh. My sisters and I had some good times in the kitchen in those days, often with humorous results just like yours! Now we still enjoy being in the kitchen, but our efforts usually bring better results than they used to.
Oh Stephanie! never had fried okra?????? Are there any flights from where you are to Bama tonight?!!!!!!!!
Oh yes, teenage cooking. What was really funny was I did this mess and my poor sister thought I knew what I was doing with every step – and she ATE it all!!!
Yum! I try to avoid fried food, but okra is my weakness. Fast food fries, no problem! But okra, can’t hardly say no!
Sonya oh yes, I am the same way! I often go get a small bag of it from the wal mart hot deli while I am getting groceries and munch on it throughout the store (hey, it takes me a while to get groceries sometime and I need to keep my strength up!).
Gratefully,
Christy – Who is running around like a chicken with its head cut off until school starts back.
Ive never had fried okra before, but I have had it in homemade vegetable soup and I LOVE LOVE LOVE okra smothered with tomatoes. I bug em at work to make it for lunch, and when they do make it, they give me a double helping of it. God that is such good eating
Robert Ooh have you ever cooked okra, onions, a can of tomatoes, and macaroni noodles together? DELICIOUS! I bet you’d love it!!
Christy, your story reminded me of trying to bake a cake for my mom on her birthday when I was about 13. My mom’s favorite cake is spice cake with the icing drooling down the sides. So I decided to make it for her. I used a boxed mix because I was afraid to try baking one from scratch. But I found a recipe for the icing in my mom’s cookbook. It called for something called Confectioner’s sugar. Now, I thought that was just a brand name for sugar, so I pulled out the sugar canister and for the life of me couldn’t get the icing to work. It was just a great big ball of hard sugar. I called my dad at work (he was the main cook in our family) and he just started laughing hysterically at what I had done. To this day, I can’t make a cake without my family laughing at me. Good times!
Alisha Oh Alisha, that sounds EXACTLY like something I would have done!! How funny! You are right, good times!
I love your site. I read it all the time. I’m from kentucky so all your food is like home to me. I never could make chicken and dumplings until your site taught me how. That is how I found your site.I was actually looking for a recipe that didn’t say a little of this and a little of that:-) My daughter worried who would make dumplings for her kids when they arrived. Now me and her can make them! Grandmas and the such always made them before. Now we love ours better than every body elses! What are cracker dumplings?
Lana I am so thrilled to hear that! Makes my heart just about burst.
Stay tuned, I got cracker dumplings coming up, I’ll try to make it soon! It was the only thing Mama let me cook for us after school when she wasn’t home!
I’m sick as a dog but after reading that you put okra in spaghetti sauce, that made me feel a wee bit better because I’m cracking up laughing over here. I do love fried okra though, so thanks for posting this tutorial.
Deborah eek! I am so sorry you aren’t feeling well! I know all too well just how bad “sick as a dog” is! I hope you get to feeling better soon and glad I could give you a giggle at least!!
The okra needs to be fried longer. It does not look nearly crispy enough. Also, for a completely different but totally delicious, taste, place a lid on the fried and smother fry it. It will “mush up” more, but just keep turning it and mashing it back down to get the browning all over. OMG–Delicious!!
Beverly I will be sure and pass on to my mother and grandmother that they aren’t doing their okra right (or umm…maybe I won’t. I’m sure you’d understand!). Thank you for the advice and insight!
. Nobody cooks like your mama, you know!
I’ve always loved their okra though so this is just perfect to me and my family
I’m sure your okra is equally delicious.
Gratefully,
Christy
Christy,
I just love your site and I love fried okra. My five year old would eat it every meal. I cook it every chance I get. I really like fresh okra from the garden, so I try to put some up during the summer. Thanks for all of your hard work and preparing all of these wonderful receipes and how-tos.
I am SO with you on the fresh from the garden okra. Nothing comes close to it. You know, I really should be a better gardener! My grandaddy always kept an amazing garden and he could make anything grow in such abundance that we were never without fresh vegetables and even some fruits in the summer. He used to have a fig bush, too, and he and I would go out there with bowls and pick it clean dry whenever I came to visit. Then we’d go back in the house, wash them off (what we hadn’t eaten yet) and sit down and finish off every single one of them!
Thank you so much for your kindness and praise. It means more than you know!!!
Gratefully,
Christy
I like to mix cornmeal & flour together to bread okra. Big boo on fresh from the garden okra if you’re the one having to pick it! We have a large garden every summer but once I figured out that frozen was almost as good, I told husband to quit torturing us and just plant more tomatoes.
You know, I just don’t think it is possible to have enough tomatoes, do you?
They make the BEST stews and such in the winter and ……..oh goodness I could devote a whole site to them!
One odd thing though, I don’t like raw tomatoes. I love them in every shape or form except that. Both of my kids eat raw ones like they are candy!
I do love me some garden ‘maters!
Christy
Christy!
Please don’t tell them they aren’t cooking it right!! It is really about how you were raised up eating it. I just like mine more crispy than your picture appears to show it being. Also, try it smother fried sometimes. I add a little water to it while it’s smother frying to keep it from drying out, although the lid keeps a lot of moisture and steam inside as well. It is awesome cooked this way!
One other thing–a friend of mine said his mom always chopped up green tomatoes about the size of the okra pieces and mixed them in with the okra and then mealed everything and fried it together. Those fried green tomatoe lovers would probably love it that way too.
Love your site!
Beverly
Beverly,
After reading what you just wrote about adding the green tomatoes in and frying it all together, I can’t hardly type right now because my mouth is watering so bad.
I don’t know how I am going to last until green tomato season……..
I need that.
I need that really, really bad!
CJ
I’m sorry, but your fried okra needs to have less of a environmental impact… *snort!
~falls out of her chair laughing~
LOL! Maybe we could all chip in and get Christy some carbon offsets! And the okra looks plenty crispy to me, BTW!
Made the apple flautas last night. They were a big hit even with the low carb tortillas!
LOL!Yes, lets see if we can get us some government funding to make Southern Plate a greener place…ooh OR we could just get a local farmer’s market to start providing me with all of my groceries !! Weee. You know, Wal Mart recently had a contest where they gave away a year’s worth of groceries to the winners. I’m kinda glad I didn’t know about it until it was too late because its killing me thinking of the possibilities of it now!
Some people dream of winning the lottery, I dream about unlimited baking/cooking supplies!
I’m so glad you got to make the flautas!!! I just love ‘em!!
Christy
after reading about fried okra yesterday, I went home and cook some for supper. You will think that I am crazy, but I spaghetti and meat sauce and had the fried okra on the side along with garlic butter english muffins. It was good, and my little one love it. His two favorite dishes.
talking about figs, we have a fig tree. I make fig preserves and strawberry fig preserves. they are so good on a hot biscuit and I have even used them between cake layers as a filling.
Happy Cooking
)
Think your crazy? More like think your family is LUCKY!! Sounds like prime eatin’ to me!
Ugh, fig tree. My heart just dropped reading that. Ohhh how I miss my grandaddy’s figs! lol
I buy them every now and then, when they are available at the grocery store though.
Mama also has a neighbor with a huge fig tree and she picks me a whole bucket sometimes!!! Its funny because I have a reaction to eating raw figs. The outer skin of them makes my lips raw as can be. So I sit down with my bucket of washed figs and a wet cloth. Eat a fig, wipe my mouth, eat a fig, wipe my mouth. Apply Vaseline liberally afterwards:)
Yeah, that might have been TMI but y’all should be used to me by now…
I wanna come to your house for dinner too! Yum!
LOL Sonya! I also love okra boiled.. yes.. slime and all. heck.. ya don’t even have to chew it.. just let it slide down. Ok ok.. i’ll stop.
I just bought two “The Biggest Loser” workout DVD’s and I haven’t recovered yet… they have me delirious…
Now Bill, your weight is just fine. you just need to eat more heart healthy food. By “heart healthy” I mean food that makes your heart smile because its so stinking good!!
I have GOT to make something for dieters today..alright a few more comments and I’ll be off to the kitchen.
Christy
I love fried okra – and believe it or not so do my kids (even my two year old) but I’ve never made it from scratch. I usually just buy frozen. I didn’t even like it myself until I was a teen. My mama just about fell over when I told her I liked fried okra because she’d been begging me to “just try it” for years and I had refused but tried it and liked it at school of all places! LOL
I’ve also never had a fresh fig (and strangely have been wanting to for the last several months) – I only see dried at the stores and wonder why I never see them in the produce section. Guess I’m just going to have to grow my own.
You know, all of mine like okra too! I guess they are able to get over the fact that its green because it tastes so good!!
Oh, I’ve never had a dried fig! I’ve had fig newtons, guess its about the same. Fresh figs are AMAZING though. They aren’t available all of the time and do tend to be a little pricey but the taste is unlike anything else.
I’ve never attempted to grow them because I’ve always heard figs were really finicky. Then again, I’ve also heard if you put it in just the right spot, your fig tree will take off like wild fire!!!
I really really really hope you get to try one soon!
I LOVE fried okra and just don’t like the ready-made kind in the frozen section at the grocery store. I can’t wait to make this at home. Thanks so much for sharing!
Hey JayhawkGirl!!
Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment (I love me comments!).
Let me know how it turns out!! What time is dinner?
It’s recipes like these that make us miss living in the South. Where’s good ‘ol grandma when you need her to whip up some fried okra goodies when you need ‘em?
Aww, now that made ME homesick! You know, with the exception of about three months in Georgia, I’ve never lived more than an hour from where I was born.
I actually happen to have a few grandmothers around here, want me to send ya one?
I adore fried okra too! I never make it because I hate frying things at home. It gets so messy. But I love to get it at Wally World or good southern restaurants.
Christy, I love your blog so much. I live in the Panhandle of Florida (also known as LA – Lower Alabama) and your recipes are good home cookin’ to me! I love how you tell stories along with the recipes.
We have a locally owned Tastee Freeze here with the best hamburgers, fries, and onion rings on the earth. But the best things they sell are the fried green tomatoes and fried pickles! Oh man, that’s good eatin’. Do you like fried pickles? We’re a military town and when we get to know folks who are stationed here, we introduce them to sweet tea, fried pickles and boiled peanuts. There’s about a 50/50 mixture of revulsion and delight. Fun!
Becky,
oooooh, have you ever been to Landry’s in Gulf Shores? They come around to your table with vegetables while you eat. One of the things they serve is an okra/tomato dish that is just phenomenal!
Thank you so much!! I love hearing that , it just keeps me so motivated and excited about Southern Plate!
I am going to have to get myself to that Tastee Freeze soon! In Rogersville (where my mother lives), they have the Tiger Hut and they make awesome burgers and cherry shakes!
I do like fried pickles and my mother LOVES them! Sounds like you’re doing your part to convert the masses! Now we just gotta feed ‘em Nanna Pudding and world peace is right around the corner!!!
Christy, do you mean the Lambert’s in Foley? I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s impossible to eat light there! You will come out full to the gills! Their regular meals are ample and then they come around with those “pass around” side items and fresh baked rolls that are hard to resist!
Hey Becky…my Mama is from LA. She lived her first few years of life in Andalusia and Montgomery AL, grew up in Niceville and now lives in Milton. My Daddy is from NC and worked for the gov’t so they ended up in MD…where I’m from. When I was a kid I didn’t even know that MD had a beach…when it was summer vacation, we drove to Ft. Walton Beach from MD. There isn’t anything as nice as being on the Gulf…except maybe hanging out for a week or two in the Caribbean.
This looks really easy! I have never had fried okra but adore it on the BBQ. I need to try your technique!
Now, I need to try YOUR technique!!! I’ve never heard of that!
Theres just no wrong way to eat okra! lol
I love fried okra and (so far) only have it when I head back to Georgia. Funny, they don’t seem to serve fried okra in California…
But now, thanks to you, I can make this Southern classic myself!
Lol, for some reason (I honestly don’t know why), thoughts of fried okra in California made me laugh. I just can’t imagine it there but maybe we need to implant some southerners and start a silent movement of bringing southern dishes to Californians. Once a week, people would step outside and walk to neighbors houses with covered dishes of okra, cornbread, dumplings, and casseroles.
Reckon they’d think we were trying to poison them?
Well, they might
I do get odd looks sometimes when I get dreamy-eyed talking about biscuits and gravy or fried shrimp (I’m from Savannah so nothing says home like good fried shrimp).
I’ve got my covered dish ready
SUCH a classic, right? BUT you’ve gotta have some really good hot sauce too. Can’t forget the hot sauce.
I made fried okra last night! It was great, I’ve never had okra cooked that way before. My mum cooks okra and I have eaten it since I was a kid but she cooks it in a totally different way (it does turn out a little slimey, but don’t tell her I said that!).
I had been wanting to try fried okra for the longest time but I only ever see it sold frozen and I didn’t think it would work with frozen. The last couple of weeks I saw fresh okra in the local market so I bought some.
I had to substitute polenta for cornmeal, but it was yummy! Mine turned out looking like yours, I am so glad because I saw another recipe online and the fried okra was completely coated in the cornmeal and I was thinking I had done it wrong.
Christy, I love the way you write. It sounds just like Mama….except she can’t cook to save her life – bless her heart.
I taught myself to cook when I was a teenager – and I do pretty well, thank you…and then I married a man whose last name is, well, COOK! How ironic…and now I sell gourmet food mixes…the irony just continues.
My son told me that last time I made fried okra that is was good, but not as good as my stepmother makes it (BJ who lives in GA). I’m going to wow my teenage son with your recipe.
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