Home › Vegetables › Stewed Okra
Stewed Okra
Cut one pint of young okra into slices; slice a goodsized onion, peel and cut in pieces six large tomatoes. Put them in a stewing-pan, add a tablespoonful of butter, teaspoonful of salt and dash of pepper, and a half cup of water. Stew till tender and serve with poultry.
A plain vegetable stew of the sort that turns up in every American cookbook once okra reached the northern kitchen. The only real decision is how long to cook it.
- The pint of okraOkra was measured by volume, sliced. A pint is two cups of sliced pods, on the order of half a pound — under a pound of whole pods before trimming.
- Slime, and how to manage itOkra's mucilage thickens the stew; the tomatoes' acid keeps it from turning glutinous. Do not add extra water beyond the half cup, and do not stir constantly — both work the pods and draw out more of the mucilage.
- Young okra means youngPods over about 4 inches are fibrous and will stay tough however long they stew. If that is all you can get, use only the tips.
- "Stew till tender"Twenty to thirty minutes at a bare simmer, uncovered for the last ten so the tomato liquid reduces. Okra collapses rather than firms up, so judge by the onion.
- TomatoesSix large tomatoes is roughly 2½ to 3 lb. Peel them as directed — the skins separate in the pan and are unpleasant. A 28 oz can of whole tomatoes, drained and broken up, works out of season, though it may taste sharper.
- The stewing-panUse a wide, heavy, non-reactive pan. Cast iron unenameled will darken with the tomato and can give the okra a metallic edge.
- YieldFour servings as a side dish. Salt it again at the end; a teaspoon is not much for this weight of tomatoes.
Okra came to the American South through the Atlantic slave trade from West Africa, and several of its names — okra is generally traced to Igbo ọ́kụ̀rụ̀, while gumbo comes from a Bantu word for the pod — reflect that passage. The combination here of okra, onion and tomato is the base of countless Creole and Lowcountry dishes, offered with no explanation, only a note that it goes with poultry.