Home › Soup › Okra Soup (Three dozen tender okra pods)
Okra Soup (Three dozen tender okra pods)
Three dozen tender okra pods sliced; add to them a few tomatoes and a shin of beef. To this add four quarts of water. Let it boil three hours and season highly. A tablespoonful of rice improves this soup.
A Southern okra soup in the old style: a long-simmered beef shin broth thickened by the okra itself. The original assumes an all-day fire and a cook who tastes as she goes.
- Shin of beefThe shank; cross-cut pieces are sold as beef shank. A whole shin is a large cut, so 2-3 lb bone-in is a practical amount for four quarts of water. The marrow and collagen are what give the broth any body at all. Brown it first if you want depth the original does not mention.
- Three dozen podsRoughly a pound of okra, depending on size. Choose pods under four inches; larger ones tend to be tough and fibrous.
- Tomatoes"A few" means about 4-6 medium fresh tomatoes, peeled, or a 28 oz can with its juice. Their acid keeps the okra from turning to pure slime and balances the fat from the shank.
- The three-hour boilKeep it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil. A hard boil for three hours emulsifies the fat and clouds the broth, and the meat toughens before it finally gives way.
- When to add the okraThe original puts everything in at once, and three hours of boiling will break the sliced okra down into a thick, ropy soup. If you want the pods to hold their shape, hold them back for the last 30-40 minutes.
- The tablespoon of riceLong-grain white rice, added in the last 30 minutes. One tablespoon in four quarts is a token amount rather than a starch course; it breaks down over a long simmer.
- Season highlyNo salt is listed anywhere. Four quarts of unsalted broth will need something on the order of 2 to 3 teaspoons of salt to start, added toward the end, plus black pepper. "Season highly" implies a generous hand, though the recipe does not say with what.
- YieldFour quarts reduces to roughly three over three hours, serving eight to ten as a first course, or six as a main with the shredded shank meat returned to the pot.
Okra soup is one of the clearest culinary traces of West Africa in the American South: the plant itself came across the Atlantic with the slave trade, and the word okra is generally traced to Igbo okuru, while the alternate name gumbo comes from a Bantu term for the pod. By the time this book appeared, versions built on a beef shin and summer tomatoes were in circulation. The shin is a thrift cut, the okra and tomatoes are garden surplus at the same moment of the year, and three hours of slow simmering cost nothing but time -- the economics of the dish are as regional as its flavor.