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Sauted Green Tomatoes
6 tablespoons fat 6 tablespoons flour 6 teaspoons brown sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon pepper 6 green tomatoes Melt one tablespoon lard in frying pan. Mix flour, sugar, salt and pepper. Slice tomatoes, dip in flour mixture and saute in lard first on one side and then on other; add more lard as needed. Delicious with steak. Serves 6.
A plain dredge-and-fry treatment for firm green tomatoes, with brown sugar in the flour to help the slices brown. A few notes on quantities and pan handling.
- The fatThe ingredient list says 6 tablespoons of fat but the method starts with one tablespoon of lard and tells you to add more as needed; the six tablespoons is the running total for the whole batch. Lard, bacon drippings or a neutral oil all work; butter alone will scorch before the slices are done.
- Choosing the tomatoesUse hard, fully green fruit with no blush of pink. Anything beginning to ripen turns to pulp in the pan and will not hold a slice.
- Slice thicknessAbout 1/4 to 3/8 inch. Thinner slices collapse; thicker ones stay raw and sour in the middle by the time the crust colours.
- Salt and pepperA teaspoon of pepper for six tomatoes is assertive by modern taste. Start with half and adjust; the salt at a teaspoon is about right for the volume of flour.
- The sugar burnsBrown sugar in the dredge means medium heat, not high. The pan should sizzle steadily rather than smoke, roughly 3 to 4 minutes a side, and the fat should be wiped or renewed between batches once dark specks appear.
- Do not crowdSlices need space or they steam in their own moisture and the coating slides off. Two batches in a 10-inch skillet is realistic for six tomatoes.
- ServingServes 6 as a side. Salt again as they come out of the pan and serve at once; the crust softens within minutes of sitting.
Frying unripe tomatoes is generally understood as a thrift dish first: at the end of the season, or after a wind knocks fruit off the vine, the green ones will never ripen properly and cooking is the only use for them. The technique appears in American home cookery in various forms from at least the later nineteenth century onward, sometimes with a cornmeal crust, sometimes plain flour as here, and sugar in the dredge is one way of coaxing colour and countering the sharpness of green fruit. The pairing suggested here, alongside steak, places it as a supporting vegetable in the meat-and-two-sides pattern.