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Boiled Okra
The pods of okra are so sticky that especial care is needed to avoid breaking them while cleaning. They should be well washed before the stems are removed; then place them in boiling salted water sufficient to cover, and boil until tender. They should boil very slowly, as rapid boiling will break them in pieces. It requires an hour or more to cook this vegetable. When tender, throw the okra into a colander, and when drained, lay it in a dish. Heat together two tablespoons of butter, one tablespoon of vinegar and a little salt and pepper; mix well, and pour the sauce over the okra in the dish.
A plain Southern vegetable dish with a warm butter-and-vinegar dressing. The one thing to change is the time.
- An hour is far too longWhole young okra pods are tender in 5 to 8 minutes in boiling water; large late-season pods may want 10. An hour reduces them to grey mush and breaks the pods down so the mucilage escapes into the water.
- Why they say to keep them wholeThe stickiness is soluble mucilage, released wherever the pod is cut or split. Trim the stem cap without slicing into the seed cavity, and the pods stay firm rather than slimy. This is the hinge of the recipe.
- Slow boil, or better a simmerThe instruction to avoid a hard boil is sound; hard agitation knocks the pods about and splits them. A steady simmer in plenty of salted water, uncovered, helps keep the colour bright.
- Size matters more than timeChoose pods 3 to 4 inches long that snap rather than bend. Anything longer is fibrous and no amount of boiling will fix it.
- The dressingTwo tablespoons butter to one of vinegar is a sharp ratio by modern taste; cider or white wine vinegar works well. Warm the butter only until melted, whisk in the vinegar off the heat, and pour over while the okra is hot.
- Pan choiceVinegar and a bare aluminium or cast-iron pan will pick up a metallic taste and grey the sauce. Use stainless or enamelled ware for the dressing.
- YieldThe recipe gives none. A pound of pods and this quantity of sauce serves four as a side.
Okra came to North America from West Africa, carried on the slave trade routes along with rice, cowpeas and sesame, and the English word is generally traced to Igbo ọkụrụ; the alternative name gumbo comes from Bantu terms such as kingombo. By the time this book appeared, okra was, by most accounts, firmly established as a Southern and Gulf Coast vegetable but still something of a curiosity in Northern kitchens, which may be why a general national cookbook like Butterick's opens with an explanation of the pods' stickiness rather than assuming the reader has handled them. The butter-and-vinegar dressing appears to have been a common nineteenth-century treatment for a boiled vegetable, the same sauce that turned up on beets, asparagus and greens, and the acid here does double duty by cutting the vegetable's slipperiness.