Fried Green Tomatoes
Faithfully preserved at the Whistle Stop Cafe.
While I truly love “Fried Green Tomatoes,” starring Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates, I have never taken a trip to visit Juliette, Georgia, where the movie was filmed in 1991. Although the film was released 25 years ago, based on the bestseller by Alabama-native Fannie Flagg, its timelessness endures, attracting visitors from everywhere.
The film tells the story of a housewife who, unhappy with her life, befriends an elderly lady in a nursing home and is enthralled by the tales she tells of people she used to know.
I was fortunate to once live near the Whistle Stop Cafe in Thomasville, NC. At the time, my dad lived in a retirement home, and I often stopped in at the Whistle Stop to pick up a pie to bring him. Looking around, I always imagined the restaurant in the movie must be very similar. It’s a tiny cracker-box of a building at the corner of West Main and Lexington Avenue, hardly a stone’s throw from the railroad track. Tom Lawson purchased the place in 1994. “I started off working with a little country-boy restaurant, back when hot dogs were a nickel and hamburgers were a dime,” he says, chuckling at the low prices.
At the Whistle Stop, the red light became one of his best friends - the bane of all drivers in a hurry. Before anyone had heard of him or sampled his scrumptious desserts, he relied on the traffic signal to stop motorists long enough for him to run out into the road and give them a sample of a pie. “And you’d be surprised - I’ve got folks still coming today who remember that,” laughed Lawson. I’ll never forget him and his comforting, delicious pies.
Rich with character and passion, the Whistle Stop story in the movie is also about Southern cookin’. There’s more to know about Fried Green Tomatoes than you might think. I scour the farms in my area looking for green zebras, German Johnson, and sweet heirlooms. I can’t get enough of them. But every time I tried to use my recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes, I ended up with a big mess. I was about to give up when I met a lady out at Demsey Farms.
Her name was Matty. “To make really good ones, you must use firm and just slightly tart ripened red tomatoes, not ripe green tomatoes, like green zebra tomatoes, which develop a golden strip when ripe, or heirloom varieties. These are all too soft to hold their coating or shape when fried. Toss them into your salads or use them for sandwiches. But if you want to make perfect, delicious Fried Green Tomatoes, they won’t work.” The problem was solved and I’ve been frying them up ever since - with success.
If you don’t have time right now to make your own fried green tomatoes, hang on to the recipes. The tomato growing season will not get underway in the Lowcountry until early June.
Bacon grease is like liquid gold in this time-honored recipe. Use these for appetizers, a light entree, a side dish, in sandwiches, or sliced and served on top of salads.
This recipe calls for a Creamy Bacon Dipping Sauce, simply Southern.
Tides of Tradition is our cookbook section to thank our paid subscribers and all Founding Members. All are welcome to join. Pull up a front porch rocker and sit a spell as we take a deep dive into this Southern goodness. Come on in and make yourself at home.
They are served with pride in some of the most notable restaurants in the South.
At Chef and the Farmer in Kinston, North Carolina, Vivian Howard likes to serve fried green tomatoes with fruit preserves and creamy cheeses like a goat cheese puree or benne-fried green tomatoes with goat cheese coulis and blueberry chutney, which incorporates a Lowcountry staple. Brought from Africa, benne - known almost everywhere else as sesame - was a staple in the garden plots on rice plantations, and its seeds were used to enhance the flavor of everything from rice to cakes.
In Charleston, you can eat them at brunch, stacked atop crab cakes on eggs Benedict at High Cotton.
Recipes include: Classic Fried Green Tomatoes with Remoulade, and
Fried Green Tomatoes with Creamy Bacon Dipping Sauce.
Crispy Southern fried green tomatoes, with remoulade sauce, are an iconic classic in the South.
Southern Fried Green Tomatoes
Ingredients
▢4 green tomatoes, ends removed, sliced ¼-inch thick
▢1 cup cornmeal, medium grind, preferably stone ground
▢1 cup all-purpose flour
▢1 teaspoon garlic powder
▢½ teaspoon onion powder
▢½ teaspoon smoked paprika
▢¼ teaspoon cayenne
▢1½ cups buttermilk
▢A few shakes of hot sauce
▢½-1 cup vegetable oil (I used avocado oil)
▢1 tablespoon butter (or bacon drippings)
▢Kosher salt
▢Lemon wedges, hot sauce, and/or rémoulade sauce for serving
Rémoulade Sauce:
▢1 cup good-quality mayonnaise (the southern choice would be Duke's)
▢2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
▢1 tablespoon lemon juice
▢1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
▢1 tablespoon Louisiana-style hot sauce
▢2 teaspoons creole mustard, whole-grain mustard
▢2 cloves garlic, minced
▢2 teaspoons capers, finely chopped
▢1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
▢1 teaspoon paprika
▢1 scallion, finely chopped
▢¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Instructions
If serving, make rémoulade sauce. Whisk together all sauce ingredients in a small bowl until well-combined and smooth. Let it sit for one hour so flavors meld while you prepare the tomatoes. (Cover and refrigerate any leftover sauce.)
Preheat oven to 200º and fit a sheet pan with a wire rack, set aside.
In a wide bowl or pie plate, combine flour, cornmeal, and seasonings. In another small bowl, combine buttermilk with a few shakes of hot sauce and a little salt and pepper. Dip green tomato slices in buttermilk mixture, shake off excess, then dredge in cornmeal-flour mixture until well-coated. Repeat and put tomato slices on a plate.
Heat oil in a large cast-iron pan, about a ½-inch high. Add the butter and mix in; it gives flavor and helps with browning. When hot, but not smoking, add tomato slices to the skillet, and working in batches, fry until golden, about 3-4 minutes a side. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain and sprinkle with salt while hot. Transfer fried slices to a sheet pan with a rack and keep warm in the oven while continuing to fry the remaining slices.
Serve hot green tomatoes with lemon wedges and rémoulade sauce. Enjoy!
Cream Sauce for Fried Green Tomatoes
This is a wonderful sauce for pasta, steak, chicken, scallops, fish, or potatoes.
Ingredients
6 oz thick-cut bacon, diced or cut into small strips*
2 shallots, finely diced**
1 ½ cups heavy cream
2 tbsp grated Parmesan (adjust to taste)
salt and pepper, to taste
red pepper flakes, to taste, optional
parsley, fine
Instructions
Heat a non-stick skillet or another pan*** over medium heat. Cook the diced bacon until it renders its fat and gets crispy. Remove to a paper towel-lined plate and set aside.
Leave about a teaspoon of the bacon fat in the pan, and remove the rest. Sauté the diced shallots until softened.
Add the heavy cream, bring to a simmer (adjust heat to low or medium-low as necessary; you want to see gentle bubbles, do not allow the cream to boil). Simmer for about 5 minutes, then add the Parmesan and gently stir it in. Simmer a bit longer until the sauce thickens to your desired consistency.
Season liberally with salt and pepper to offset the sweetness of the cream (taste). Fold in the bacon bits and serve immediately. Sprinkle with red pepper flakes and parsley to taste.
