Yum yes! people really do: you can get them in restaurants and cafes here (in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina).

I enjoyed that movie very much and always wanted to taste fried green tomatoes, but I've never seen green tomatoes or had a recipe. Thanks to you, Elise, I have a recipe. Now I have to find the green tomatoes.

Paz ;-)

Oh my - as an Atlanta resident, I must say that Fried Green Maters are alive and well. Make a homemade ranch sauce for dipping and serve with a dinner of hot wings and celery, and you're good for the night.

If you like the maters, try your hand at fried okra. It is indeed an acquired taste, but it is truly scrumptious.

I just dredge them in flour with a little salt and pepper and lightly fry them - the batter method doesn't work for me because i like them sliced really thinly, and a light coat of flour keeps the tomato taste from being compromised. we've been eating them this way since I was a tot, it was quite the occasion at our house, we'd crowd around mom at the electric skillet and take turns eating the slices as they finished cooking - they rarely, if ever, made it to the table.

I had never heard of fried green tomatoes until I saw the movie. Then I read the book. While olive oil is much more "coronarily correct" these days than bacon grease, here's Sipsey's recipe straight from the book. And dang it, some days a body's just gotta ingest SOME form of pig, whether it be the grease, the bacon, some ham ... until it makes you "squeal" with pleasure (ouch, sorry about that).

"FRIED GREEN TOMATOES WITH MILK GRAVY
Servings: 4
3 tbs Bacon grease
4 Tomatoes: green, firm, sliced
2 Eggs, beaten
Flour
Milk
Salt
Pepper
Heat your bacon grease in a heavy frying pan. Dip tomatoes in eggs, then in bread crumbs. Slowly fry them in the bacon grease until golden brown on both sides. Put your tomatoes on a plate.
For each tablespoon of grease left in the pan, stir in one tablespoon of flour and blend well; then stir in one cup warm milk and cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Add salt and pepper till you like it.
Pour over the tomatoes and serve hot.
The best there is."
-- Sipsey Peavey
Whistle Stop Café
Whistle Stop, Alabama
[From the book "Fried Green Tomatoes" by Fannie Flagg]

P.S. Elise, your site is a delight (and yep, I meant that to rhyme). I finally got to try the "Five Fires Beef" -- and oh, Dancing Fire Goddess, was it sensational!

Cheers and fine flavors be ever thine,
Lisa Joan

Great recipe. I would reccomend mixing the flour and corn meal.

Sorry, those aren't real fried green mators! I was raised on real ones since I was 3 years old. The recipe is simply this (pasted down from grandparents living in the 1800's)...

Slice em no more than 1/4 inch thick
Dip in milk
Dip in flour mixure (salt & pepper only)
Fry (on med heat) until dark brown (in lard, corn or veggie oil)

Simple huh? That was the way it was and that's how they were made.

ps we used lard but veggie oil is better for you; I now use corn oil.

No eggs, no cornmeal or olive oil...if ya want'a zest em up, use seasoned salt instead of regular salt. I still eat them at least once a week and at 89 years old I'm still doing fine!

Many Southerners fry green tomatoes by simply dipping both sides of a slice in cornmeal which has had salt and pepper added and laying the tomato slices in a reasonable amount of vegetable oil in a med-high heat frying pan. Sear both sides to a nice even toast color, then turn down the heat and simmer until the tomato is soft (like fried eggplant).

The result is a light toast finish with a soft, very zingy, tasty inside.

The "SC" stands for "South Carolina". Green tomatoes are not an end-of-season treat, but when you have too many tomatoes ripening on the vine at the same time, cut the big green ones for frying.

I can remember eating them as a kid in Mich.
No, it's not just a Southern dish. There were never any leftovers.
I hadn't had any for years after moving to Ca. When I went to Okla. to visit friends they made a platter full.
I waited till everyone seemed full, and when I saw that the platter still had some on it, I asked if anyone wanted any more of them. When I got the NO answer that I was looking for I ate every one of them. They were delicous.
I have 5 plants in the ground right now, just waiting.
Our little dog will pull them off and eat them after they get ripe, peppers too.
Lee

Yum! So glad you got to try fried green tomatoes. Your recipe sounds delicious. I use a batter mix for mine & the platter rarely makes it to the table full.

I was looking for a recipe for fried green tomatoes that a friend of my mom used to make when I was younger. She actually had the tomatoes cut into wedges and I remember her pulling them out of the oven for us to eat. Does anyone had this one?

Texas version of fried green tomatoes is much simpler - all you need is tomatoes, flour, oil, salt and pepper.

Get the green tomatoes or green tomatoes with a bit of a pinkish blush (if you don't like the truly tart ones). Slice them approximately 1/2-inch or slightly smaller in width. Lightly salt and pepper both sides of tomatoes. Dip in flour and coat well on both sides, and then pan fry in just the littlest bit of canola oil (approximately 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons for each group). Make sure the oil is nice and hot before putting in tomatoes. Brown on one side and flip over. Brown on second side (approximately 4-6 minutes each side). Remove that group from pan, add a little more oil and continue with next batch.

I have always used cornmeal to dip the Maters or okra in. And we do not dip them in milk or egg. Try it just once... I promise you they are more in line with the true style!! It is the way my step father did them...(he was from the LA (Lower Alabama) area... Straight Country!!

I think the best BLT I've ever eaten was a fried green tomato BLT with mozzeralla cheese. It was at a little place in atlanta, where they also served mac and cheese fritters :) http://agnesandmuriels.com/dinner.shtml

I think it was one of the highlights of our robotics trip XDDDD

And now I get to try this recipe and see if I can get close to recreating some of the amazingness :)

I love your blog. So many yummmmmy things ^_^

I'm tryin' to make some fried green tomatos from memory. My mom used to make them by frying up some bacon, then she floured and salt and peppered the tomatoes slices and used the grease to fry up the tomatoes.Then she made a cream sauce with the pan drippings and served it on toast, with the bacon on top. Yummmmmmy. I don't have a recipe so I'm gonna just wing it. It seems there are lots of variations but nothing like the one she did.

I'll let you know if it was as good as I remember.
Connie

The days are getting shorter and I have lots of green tomatoes on the vine. For lunch today I used the Better Homes and Gardens recipe that they have used since 1930. I used Olive Oil and they were delicious. I would love to try the ones with bacon and the bacon gravy but I will just have to imagine what they taste like as I can't have things like that anymore. I am sure to try some of the other recipes for green tomatoes though. Gee I am glad I have lots of them left. I introduced my grandaughter to them this year and she loved them too. Carol

Help!
I'm Swedish and I've got into my head to have a dinner with Southern American cooking, any suggestions? I'll need recipe for a first course, main course and dessert! is there any expert on this kind of cuisine out there?

I suspect its one of those things that you can't hardly really do wrong. I just used some maters from the end of my garden (MI) - sliced, dipped in flour (whole wheat for me) and fried in olive oil with salt and pepper. Mmmm mmmm! Yummysville... Next time I think I'll try cornmeal, but for me, extremely simple (i.e. sans milk, eggs, bread crumbs etc.) seems to work plenty fine to my way of tasting...
Anyway, I enjoyed reading the comments - happy eating y'all!

Hello I just wanted to let you know that the recipe is very good. The way we(native american Indians) make them is we use bacon oil or deer fat.Plus we use chili pepper or cumino salt & pepper, brown eggs are thicker and sticks better to the tomatoes, of course flour & fresh ground corn(meal) as you may call it.You can use a little cream or half & half but back in the day it was just egg or water..Now I use dash seasoning.Cook until brown. Don't know how it taste cold cuz they don't last that long. As soon as they are cooked they are gone. Our recipe was given to me by my 109 year old great great grandma from AZ. We are white mountain apache Indians. Enjoy...

Fried green tomatoes are not just a southern dish. I'm from Northern Maine and grew up eating fried green tomatoes from our garden. I don't remember how Mom cooked them but they sure were good. I now live in Tucson AZ and our local Food City sometimes has green tomatoes mixed in with regular tomatoes. I bought one today and will try it for my lunch tomorrow; probably just flour, salt, pepper & olive oil.

my mother and i this summer kept getting green tomatoes to make the recipe. we always wanted to try them, but everytime we had a batch of green tomatoes from neighbors or friends they would ripen before we got to make them, now i went to this sight because im trying to find green tomatoes in this cold weather, my mom got diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer 5 days ago and would love to make them with her or for her, so if anyone can tell me where i can get a green tomato, in southeast Connecticut please reply. thank you.

So there really is fried green tomatoes... It looks tempting, I'd like to try it myself. Thanks.

Gay

In the south we dip the tomato slices in buttermilk and then dredge them in a mixture of flour and cornmeal that has been seasoned with salt and pepper. Fry them in a little bacon grease or vegetable oil for a healthier version. IMO the best tomatoes to use are ones that have just started to turn slightly pink.

Hello,
This is the first time I decided to post a comment, although I have been using your website for more than a year. So far I have been very successful. These tomatoes- it was a disaster! They were sour like fried limes! What did I do wrong? I used green tomatillos from Harris Teeter, maybe it was not the right kind of tomatoes? Thank you for response:-) and all your recipes.

Hi Eva - Tomatillos are not green tomatoes. They are a different species. You can't necessarily substitute them for green tomatoes. ~Elise

Hi,

I have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, manured with wallaby poop, our native kangaroo in Tasmania, Australia. I'm try one of your recipes at the moment. Dipped in milk then seasoned flour to which I added lemon mytle and Tasmanian pepperberries to make it local.

Annie

Hi Annie, wow, wallaby poo certainly beats the chicken manure I use on our garden! I bet your tomatoes are fabulous. ~Elise

Hi Elise,

Yes really good. The climate change is really making a long season for vegetables down under in Tasmania. We have had a hot summer and now into autumn still very warm. I look forward to the cooler days with log fires and some snow on the Mountain.

Annie

This recipe is not authentic, but thanks for trying! I grew up in the South and I can attest to the fact that green tomatoes are coated in mere cornmeal before frying. Fannie Flagg even says so in the book that the movie you reference comes from.

I really want to try making fried green tomatoes, but I am not sure as to what "green tomatoes" are and where can I buy them? Some help on this would be great!

Green tomatoes are unripe tomatoes. You can find them in season at farmers markets, or by bumming a few from friends who grow tomatoes. Whatever you do, don't use a tomatillo for this dish, it's completely different than a green tomato. ~Elise