Home › Vegetables › Boiled Okra
Boiled Okra
Take one quart of young okra, wash well with cold water; put it into a porcelain or granite kettle, as iron always discolors the okra. Put in a half pint of water and a teaspoonful of salt; cover the kettle and simmer gently thirty minutes. Then add one tablespoonful of butter, one tablespoonful of vinegar and a dash of pepper. Serve as an accompaniment to roasted or boiled chicken.
1 quart of okra,
A plain steam-braise with a butter-and-vinegar finish. The only thing that needs rethinking is the clock.
- Cut the time in half or moreThirty minutes reduces young okra to grey mush. Whole pods under three inches are tender in 8 to 12 minutes of gentle simmering; test with a knife tip rather than the timer.
- The vessel matters"Porcelain or granite kettle" means enamelled cast iron or the speckled graniteware pot of the period. Bare cast iron reacts with okra and dulls its colour, as the recipe warns; aluminium is often said to do the same. Enamel, stainless steel or glass do not.
- QuantitiesA quart of whole okra pods is roughly three-quarters of a pound. A half pint is one cup of water, which is enough to steam that quantity in a covered pot without leaving it swimming.
- Keep the pods wholeThe mucilage that gives okra its reputation is released at cut surfaces. Trim only the stem cap, leave the pod intact, and the finished dish stays clean rather than ropy.
- The vinegar is doing workAcid firms the pods and cuts the slippery texture. Add it at the end as written, not at the start, or the okra will take much longer to soften.
- BuyingChoose small, bright, unblemished pods; anything that feels woody or fibrous has passed its point and will stay tough however long it cooks.
- YieldA pound serves four as a side dish.
Okra came to the American South from West Africa by way of the slave trade, and both the plant and its common name travel with it — "okra" is generally traced to Igbo ọkụrụ, while "gumbo" comes from Bantu words for the same pod. By the late nineteenth century it was thoroughly domesticated in American cookery books, appearing stewed with tomatoes, thickening gumbo, or, as here, simply simmered and dressed as a vegetable in its own right. The warning against iron pots is a recurring note in period vegetable cookery, when graniteware and enamelled pans were newly affordable and cooks were being taught which foods discoloured in the older bare-metal kettles. Pairing it with roast or boiled chicken places the dish squarely in the Southern summer dinner, when okra and young chickens come in together.