Fried green tomatoes are pretty serious business. I found this out last week when I went to Atlanta for work, and well, it turned out I had a lot of down time since a few meetings were cancelled. I was perfectly fine with that since it meant I was able to roam around mid-town, sit in cafes for hours at a time and drink copious amounts of sweet tea (though I’m a total wuss and always go half sweet tea and half unsweetened). All this unexpected downtime meant that I was able to eat at a few restaurants, all of which were Southern. And while it did scare me a tad when the dude sitting behind me had to be carried out on a gurney by the paramedics, I decided right then, as I was eating my fried mac n cheese, that it had nothing to do with Southern food. I decided to ignore that possibility. You should too. Moving on….
I don’t really consider myself a Southerner, even though I was born just up the street from my hotel in mid-town, went to middle school in Atlanta and attended college in North Carolina, but I do have a huge affinity for Southern food. So…perhaps you could say I’m a half Southerner or something?
Anyway, the one thing that totally stole my heart on my trip were the fried green tomatoes. And I had them prepared every which way you can have them: in crispy batter, soft batter, in between crispy and soft batter and spicy batter. My favorite, to no surprise to me, was when they were super crispy on the outside and soft, but not overcooked on the inside. The thing I found out: Southerners are dead serious about the way they prepare their fried green tomatoes. Everywhere I went I kindly asked how they prepared it and each person explained their way as the right way.
When I finally nailed down my favorite way to fry up green tomatoes, I paired it with some bread, some cool butter lettuce, a bit of mayonnaise and some bacon. You should do this too; it’ll make you happy. And if you don’t? Well…bless your heart.
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