Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Tomato Plants Are Out: Fried Green Tomatoes

I almost never fry food around here, the one exception being at the end of tomato season when I pull my plants out and harvest all the green tomatoes. I pulled the plants out yesterday. I'm not a fried green tomato purist, so my recipe is a little bit different than most.

As you can see, I picked three different varieties of tomato to fry. They all have slightly different tastes. Cut them into small wedges.
I use the three step battering method. Flour (with pepper and seasoned salt), then egg, then seasoned bread crumbs. (blogspot reoriented this pic and I can't figure out how to flip it.) Anyway, I show the egg here on a plate, for the sake of everything looking the same in the picture. I don't recommend putting your egg on a plate as it makes it harder to coat the tomatoes. Anyway, Brian Boitano taught me a great method for breading. I cover everything in the flour mixture first, then put the tomato in the egg using one hand, and coat it with breadcrumbs with the other hand. A wet hand and a dry hand, if you will.


Then fry em on a medium high heat. I use the smallest pan I own and do several batches because a) I don't like to stand over a big pan of grease and b) it feels like a huge waste of oil to fill a big pan, fry for a minute and then throw it away.



Ta Da! Salt em up a little and eat. Sometimes, if I've got extra ripe tomatoes lying around, I will make a simple red sauce to dip them in.






1 comment: