Hey! How you all doing? This is cooking with Dave once again. I am Dave. Hey today somebody asked me to cook some fried okra rice and sure I like fried okra. Here in the south, we fry okra. We use okra in our stoves; use okra in your gumbo. It’s good in gumbo. If you think your gumbo is not thick enough, put some okra in it. Okra has a way of mean a thickening agent and it will thicken up some food and make it good. I like it fried. It is good fried. Can’t beat it. I just take it in. Put in it some egg, a little season to the egg, and add some onion powder, some garlic powder with salt and pepper. Let it soak for a little while, about five minutes. You need to let your okra soak in the egg. Let’s soak it up so it’s go on up here to it. So it’s going to help the cornmeal because we’re going to fry the cornmeal, help the cornmeal stick to the okra. So it stay on there on your all when it fries. Then we’re going to use a little vegetable to fry it out; about a quarter inch in your pan. Fry it in, heat it up, 375º. Just fry it, this one is golden brown as quick 3, 4, 5 minutes, very quick. Don’t fry until too brown. Fry just until golden brown and the okra stick nice inside, you have a nice flavor on the outside, a good texture. I love into fried okra. We’re bring it over here and show you how you do it.

Okay, here is our okra. So okra looks like, it’s pretty much well grows like it comes off the plant like that. Okra grows on like a maybe three or four feet plant. It has little fruits whatever you call it. It’s pretty cool like okra. Okra originated in Africa. We believe it did and that is pretty much all of the world and here in the south, we like to eat it in stews. We like to fry it. It’s good and it is good for you.

Well I cut the tip it off. I cut the base off and I cut it in just about a quarter inch, links by like so. I wash it off first of course. The best ones to use for okra are the young, small, tendered okra. If you let an okra get too long, it gets kind of tough, just kind of hard and it is not very good. So you want to you use a young, tender okra.

We’re going to take a beaten egg, just pour it right over top of that. Now if you cut up more than this one, we want to use more egg but you want to make sure you have enough egg. It pretty much covers your okra completely.

And then we want to let it sit in here, soak in, in this egg about five minutes and then we’ll put in some cornmeal and fry it. We’ll fry this in our cast iron is good. Want to feel—I know that is our; a new cast iron is skillet. I did a video about the cast iron.

Looking pretty good, doing well, seasoned nicely, non stick, got to love it. We’re only going to use about a quarter of inch of oil so, some more in there; just barely enough to submerge this okra.

Okay, now while it’s sitting there soaked and doing his thing. I am going to hit just a little bit of salt. I am going to hit it with a little bit of pepper and at same time, I am going to go ahead and hit it with some garlic powder; a little bit and some onion powder. It gives some more flavor up on our okra. Little onion powder, start to cover it. And now, we’ll mix that around so that everybody gets a little salt and pepper, onion powder, garlic powder upon them, water soaking. Oh hot, stop popping, we’re ready to go.

But I am just going to take my okra here and then dip it into some cornmeal, a couple few pieces at a time. Try to get it coat evenly. I am just using regular oil; yellow cornmeal, nothing special about it.

All right, just cooking a little bit, start floating. Give them a little flip. We’re going to golden brown on every side, they’re ready to go. As soon as I put them in, get them to cooking. I turn the heat down to medium.

It really takes a you know, three to four minutes to cook these and they are ready to go. Don’t cook them too brown, just golden brown and then you are ready to come up. Let’s take them up, put them on a paper towel. Put them on a plate with a paper towel and they are ready to go.

There we go. So we call it fried okra. It’s going to be good. I like it as a side dish, it will be good. And don’t that would look good? Fried chicken, collard greens and fried okra. Hmm, that is a plate of food.

Okay, there is our fried okra. Man, it’s good. I got to like the fried okra is good and it’s good for you. How can you can beat it? You can also try—like I said you can try okras into stews or gumbo, hit extra worth of thickening agent in your gumbo. Gumbo’s not stick as you want? Put some okra in it. It will thicken right up. It is good stuff. A lot are not going to like it a little bit. This—taste. I think this is—put this stuff but okra came from Africa originally. My family actually is from South Carolina, they started a new kind of okra called the—okra. They just—I guess cross three different kinds of okra. I mean different kind of okra. It’s a big okra. I don’t think—I just don’t like as much as I like the small okra but you know, you want to get more yield, you want to get more okra, you grow a—okra and you’ll get more okra because of it. But you know, like I said, it’s good. It’s some—nice vegetable is good for you. Slice it as small, put in some egg, slice them up, roll some cornmeal and fry it. It’s hot in here. It’s a hot South Carolina day and very humid, means a lot to the humid on South Carolina gumbo meals. South Carolina a few dumpling most humid place in the world if you ask me, hot in the kitchen but I am going to eat this. I am going to eat it with some fried chicken and some collard greens and some fried okra. Man, this is going to be good.

Okay, hope you all enjoy watching the fried okra. You all have a great day. Thanks.