Fried green tomatoes are Southern food at its best, but oven-fried green tomatoes take the messy, popping oil factor out of the equation!
Regular readers of my blog are fully aware of my undying love for fried pickles and fried green tomatoes. I can resist neither when I encounter them on a restaurant menu, unless they’re both there, at which point I have to make a choice. It’s never an easy choice but it usually comes down to (a) mood; (b) prices; and (c) dipping sauces. Both have been featured here, most recently oven-fried pickles…swoon.
And since I mentioned it, you may have noticed that I do an awful lot of oven-frying around here. I already have a pan-fried green tomatoes recipe, but let’s be honest…on a weeknight, who really wants to fool with a big pan of popping hot oil? If I’m really speaking the truth, I don’t want to deal with it ever. Usually I just let other people (i.e. restaurants) do the frying for me.
Green tomatoes are plentiful right now if you know where to find them. Some grocery stores have them but often by the time you get to them, they’re already striped pink. My produce stand keeps them in the refrigerator, delaying the ripening process and keeping them green, so that’s where I usually get them. Right now I have a bunch of green tomatoes on a vine in my front yard, but they’re all so tiny that they’re going to be better for eating ripe than for frying.
These tomatoes here were given to me by my pal Becky from A Calculated Whisk (I call her Blogger Becky so my husband knows that I am talking about her and not my other friend, OT Becki). Truth time again: we took these pictures in November, when she got a few green tomatoes from the end of the tomato crop at her CSA, Big Sycamore Farm (that’s her hand dipping that tomato!). Becky had never had fried green tomatoes or Alabama white BBQ sauce, so we sliced these up and made some quick oven-fried green tomatoes with some white BBQ sauce for dipping. I think that she was sold, and I doubt that I’ll ever actually fry green tomatoes again.
Just FYI, oven-fried green tomatoes are pretty flipping tasty on fried green tomatoes po’boys. You can take my word for it or you can give it a try for yourself.
Shared on The Weekend Potluck on Served Up With Love!
Yield: 8-10 slices
15 minPrep Time:
20 minCook Time:
35 minTotal Time:
Save Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup cornmeal (not self-rising cornbread mix)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 2 large green tomatoes - cut into 1/4 inch slices
- Alabama White BBQ Sauce , Remoulade Sauce , or [ranch dressinghttp://chattavore.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/pantry-ranch-dressing.pdf], for dipping
Instructions
- Preheat a baking sheet or stoneware pan in the oven at 450 degrees. Set a wire cooling rack over another baking sheet.
- Set up a breading station with the 1/2 cup flour in one bowl, the egg and buttermilk beaten together in another, and the cornmeal combined with the salt, pepper, and cayenne in a third.
- Dip each tomato slice into the flour, egg mixture, and the cornmeal to coat completely. Set on the wire rack as you finish each.
- When all of the tomato slices have been coated, remove the preheated pan from the oven and spray generously with olive oil spray or cooking spray. Place the tomatoes on the pan and spray the tops with oil spray or cooking spray. Bake for ten minutes. Flip, respray the tops, and bake for another 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned.
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