By Wayne McLaurin
Georgia Extension Service
Volume XXVII
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A little roadside restaurant over in south Alabama would
cause me to plant
more tomatoes, especially for my wife.
Why?
Because they make a sandwich that’s out of this world. It’s
a “Southern BLT.”
It’s not just a BLT.
It’s a BLT made with fried green tomatoes.
I know about cholesterol and all of that stuff. But you do
what you have to
do occasionally, and you have to eat one of
those “samwiches.”
For fried green tomatoes, plant extra plants and harvest the
fruit when they’re
mature green and very firm. Almost all of the green tomatoes
will have the same
flavor, so you won’t have to worry, discuss or get upset over
tomato flavor.
No one really knows the origin of fried green tomatoes. But a
movie from Georgia
really put them on the national culinary map. And well it
should.
Almost any good Southern cook can tell you how to cook a
perfect fried green
tomato. Most will say “meal ’em and fry ’em.” However, some
like to use a mixture
of flour and meal, while others just use flour. Some cooks use
an egg wash,
while others use buttermilk. I’ve tried many recipes but have
settled on the
fine-ground fish coating made from corn flour. And I find I
like it best along
with a buttermilk/egg wash.
One of my favorites is to put pesto on toasted garlic bread
and top it with
fried green tomatoes and soft cheese. Oh, the taste of the
fried green tomatoes
and basil-filled pesto! You just have to experience it.
We Southerners can’t keep all of the good food to ourselves.
With their short
growing season, our northern gardening friends may very well
need a recipe for
fried green tomatoes. We can cut the cholesterol on some other
dish.
