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Fried Green Tomatoes
Cut the tomatoes into rather thick slices. Heat in a frying-pan 3 tablespoonfuls of butter. Lay the tomatoes in and fry on both sides, turning carefully without breaking the slices. After turning, dust lightly with pepper. A very little minced onion may be cooked in the butter if liked. Serve as a border for steak or chops.
Another way is to dust each slice of the tomato with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour or very fine cracker crumbs before frying. Cook until nicely browned.
A plain butter fry rather than the deep-fried, cornmeal-crusted version most Americans now picture. The two methods given are distinct: bare slices in butter, or slices salted, floured and browned.
- Slice thickness"Rather thick" probably means something around 1/2 inch. Thinner slices collapse in the pan before the interior softens; much thicker and the centre stays hard and squeaky.
- Butter alone will burnThree tablespoons of butter over the heat needed to brown tomato will darken past the point of pleasure. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up; watch the pan and add fresh butter between batches.
- Salt timingThe first method calls for pepper only and omits salt altogether; salting at table keeps the slices from weeping into the butter. In the dredged version the salt goes on before the flour, and the slices are best floured and put straight into the pan rather than left to stand.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs generally came from plain soda or water crackers rather than anything seasoned. Unsalted saltines crushed fine are a close match; commercial dry breadcrumbs behave much the same, though cornmeal gives the coarser crust of the later Southern style.
- Which tomatoesFully grown but unripened fruit, firm and pale green throughout. A ripening tomato that has merely gone yellow-green will slump and taste sour rather than tart.
- Heat and timingMedium heat, roughly 3 to 4 minutes a side, and turn only once. Repeated turning is what breaks the slices.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; three or four medium tomatoes will serve about four as a border to steak or chops, and are best fried in two batches so the pan is never crowded.