Fried Pickled Okra
Fried Pickled Okra is a delicacy we Southerners love. Regular fried pickles are wonderful, but to fry pickled okra … well, is divine. If you can’t grow your own okra in your neck of the woods, they have jars of prepared pickled okra in most grocery stores. Hope you enjoy!
The Many Ways to Enjoy Okra
My dad gave me the most wonderful gift about 15 years ago – okra seeds! He has been saving seeds from his okra plants each year and thought I may like them. They have been one of my most prized gifts of all times. It is as if I have my dad here in my garden with me when I plant them. I think I’ll ask him to actually help me plant the garden next year, or better yet, I’ll help him plant his garden.
Okra has always graced my Granny’s fresh vegetable soup recipe as a thickener. Not until I became an adult did I realize the struggle between the two camps of thought on how to thicken soups and gumbos. One camp feels it must be okra, the other file´ powder made from sassafras, and some, like me, use both. File´ and okra both have very distinct flavors. There is no need to choose one over the other when you can use both.
Often people think the only way to eat okra is to boil it … yuck! It gets slimy and just gross, in my opinion. There are so many other ways to eat it! Obviously, you can fry your okra and pickle it. But you can also roast it (get the recipe in my Harvest Cookbook), freeze dry it, and use it in soups and stews. By the way, you can use the vinegar pickling brine in recipes, too.
Read my blog post on 3 fabulous ways to prepare okra – fried, baked, and succotashed!
Pickled and Fried Okra: the Best of Both Worlds
In this fried pickled okra recipe, I am getting both worlds of the pickled flavor and then adding the crunch of the batter and frying. What a treat.
Serving this beside of fried catfish is dreamy! Dip the okra in a horseradish mayonnaise sauce like my Creamy Comeback Sauce. Give it a try; you will see. Give it a try; you will see.
Fried Pickled Okra Ingredients
Ingredients
- Vegetable oil for frying
- 1 cup self-rising yellow cornmeal
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon Cajun / creole seasoning
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon ground red pepper
- 12 whole pickled okra or you can use prepared pickled okra
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce
Instructions
- In the same skillet or large Dutch oven in which you cooked the fish, heat oil to 350 degrees.
- In a shallow dish or plate, combine cornmeal, flour, Cajun seasoning, salt, pepper, and red pepper.
- In a small shallow bowl, whisk eggs and 1 teaspoon of hot sauce.
- Coat okra with the egg mixture, then liberally coat okra with the cornmeal mixture. Once oil reaches 350 degrees, fry in batches until golden brown, about 1 to 2 minutes. Remove okra to a cooling rack placed over a baking sheet to drain excess oil. You can put a paper towel over the sheet to catch the oil.
