Fried Green Tomatoes

There are a few foods that are quintessentially Southern. Chief among those are sweet tea, grits with butter and salt (not sugar), chicken and waffles, pimento cheese, casseroles of any shape or form, and these little golden brown delicacies right here. You can't get green tomatoes just any time of the year, so anyone with a craving for them in, say, December, will have to find refuge in the freezer case of their local grocery store or try to satiate their desires with some suitable replacement. If you find out what that replacement is, please let me know.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Green tomatoes
Cornmeal
Buttermilk or regular milk
Oil, for frying
Salt and pepper, to taste

Slice green tomatoes to approximately ½ or ¾ inch thickness. Blot with paper towels to remove any excess juice. Dredge tomato slices in milk, letting excess drip off, then dredge in cornmeal to cover. Shake off excess cornmeal and set aside until the cornmeal has absorbed the milk. Fry in hot oil for two to three minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and season to taste. Serve hot.

There are some very important rules to follow in this recipe. First of all is the buttermilk versus regular milk debate. I've done both and the buttermilk holds the cornmeal much more effectively. Regular milk also does well, but there is a noticeable difference. If anything, the coating might be a little more crispy with the buttermilk since it will hold more cornmeal. Second is how thick to slice the tomatoes. I would definitely go with the 1/2 inch measurement at least. You don't want a floppy tomato slice. It should be firm. Additionally, blotting the tomatoes lets you control the amount of moisture in the slices. Too much moisture and they'll be soggy.

On that note, the other important thing to note is that when all of the slices are dredged and waiting to go into the fryer, make sure the cornmeal has been absorbed by the milk. This is important because if you were to dredge the slices and immediately drop them in the hot oil, the cornmeal would fall off in the oil and start to burn in the pan, thereby burning your tomatoes. Not good eats. But if you follow all of the directions, you should come up with something like this:

Then you can go one step better and add toasted bread and bacon:




Sorry, you'll have to give me just a minute to recover after seeing those pictures. They just look. So. Good.

Okay, I'm better. And yes, that's a pickle on the plate. We like our pickles fried in the South, too, but that's another recipe for another time.