Fried Okra

I really like southern food. I am not that great at making it though. I am a little hesitant to use all of the fat and salt that makes it so great. When I used to drive around the country on a regular basis, I used travel as an excuse to eat the things that were specific to the region and really, really bad for me. In the south of the USA, gas stations were my favorite snack place because of the readily available sweet tea and deep fried okra.

Okra is one of those foods that turns people off. I think it was my dad that said, "thats been eaten before." It is slimy and viscous. When you make it the right way, the natural okra mucus (so so gross of a description, but so accurate) doesn't have a chance to form and ruin your dish. The key is to make it work for you. I used it as the binder to keep the coating on the okra. I chopped the pods into bite sized pieces and poured a tablespoon of cream on them. I let them sit in my fridge for an hour or so and stirred them every 15 min. The cream and the slime mixed together and coated the okra. The seasoned flour and cornmeal stuck to the binder very well. I pan fried them in olive oil and had to flip every single one. I let them sit on a paper towel to drain off the excess grease and sprinkled a bunch of salt on them. Crunchy, tasty and great. So bad for me, yet so so delicious.