I made fried green tomatoes last night as an appetizer. They were absolutely delicious! I have never made fried green tomatoes before so I was a little hesitant...I shouldn't have worried at all because they turned out great. For the official recipe follow the link at the bottom of this post. This post is dedicated to the recipe and I have laid out step by step directions for those of you who love fried green tomatoes, but have never made them before. The first photograph below is everything that you need (minus the actual cookware and bowls to mix everything). You can see the two tomatoes on the left are more green and are closer to being ripe than the one on the right-hand side.
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| All of the ingredients required to make fried green tomatoes |
The first thing to do was pick three medium-sized green tomatoes. From the tomato garden I had two tomatoes that were more on the ripe side (still green) and one that was definitely less ripe. It actually doesn't matter how green your tomato is - just pick three (or more!) depending on your mood. I found that the less ripe one had slightly less flavor, but much more than what you would get at the grocery store.
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| Slicing green tomatoes into 1/3in - 1/2in slices |
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| Line up in preparation for cooking! |
I first sliced each of the tomatoes into 1/3 in to 1/2 in slices. You can see from the insides that the tomatoes are still a greenish color. There was one
on the riper side that had some red on the inside.
I then prepared each of the mixture solutions according to the recipe. First, I took an egg
and slightly beat it with a fork, then added the buttermilk and mixed well so that the mixture
was smooth. The container closest to the tomatoes in the photograph to the left is just flour. The bowl contains the egg and buttermilk mixture. Then, I mixed cornmeal, flour, pepper (more than what the recipe called for as we both like pepper), and salt. I lined everything up in order so that I wouldn't have to worry about where everything was. The skillet contained about 1/2in vegetable oil that I heated on medium heat while I prepped everything.
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| Flour |
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| Egg mixture |
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| Cornmeal mixture |
After getting the ingredients prepped and lined up, the fun started! The first step was to "dredge" the slices in flour. I basically coated both sides with the flour and then dipped the tomato sliced in the egg/buttermilk mixture making sure everything was coated well. The last step was the coat the slice in the cornmeal mixture. I placed all of the coated tomato slices on a paper plate before cooking them in batches.
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| Cooking tomato slices in batches |
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| Tomatoes ready for cooking |
The photograph on the left shows the tomatoes ready to be cooked! The picture above is the hot vegetable oil and cooking the tomato slices in batches. The recipe says to heat the oil to 375 degrees, but because we do not have a thermometer and I just really wanted to cook them I tested the oil by throwing a few drops of water (I mean a very little bit...don't burn yourself please!). The water sizzled so I figured it was hot enough to cook. I flipped the slices after 2 minutes, but they were not golden brown so I actually ended up cooking them for a lot longer than the recipe called for. I imagine this is because the oil was not hot enough. Honestly, I'd rather have to cook them for longer than risk burning myself with really hot oil. Either way, the tomatoes turned out deliciously golden brown :-)
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| Cooking the tomatoes! |
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| Fried Green Tomatoes |
Above you can see the slices cooking in the oil - by the way I did use the entire tomato, so the ends were included. I then let the tomatoes cool on a rack with a paper towel below to catch any excess grease. As you can see from the picture I cooked the slices until they were nicely golden brown. I had to hide a few slices in order to have some for lunch today :-) I can say that these were a huge hit in our house and I will be making more in future! I don't think that I would change anything in the recipe, even though I love to make little additions here and there. This is just a fantastic (and easy!) recipe as is. Bon appetite!
Original Recipe: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/fried-green-tomatoes-10000000461220/
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