Fried Green Tomatillos

I just finished reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. It's one of my favorite movies and I can't believe I had never read the book. There are recipes at the back of the book, and I decided to try my hand at the main dish.

The book itself says just to use green tomatoes and corn meal, with enough bacon drippings to fry them with. I also found another recipe online that says to use milk, flour, and eggs as well. I tried them both ways, and I think I like the plain corn meal best, as it lets the flavor of the tomatoes come through better.

I got tomatillos, since those are the only kind of "green" tomatoes I could find. I'm not sure if those are what people in the South use or if they use unripe tomatoes (as I saw mentioned on one site).


Tomatillos come in little pods, which is why I couldn't find them at first, since they don't look at all like tomatoes. Mine above look pretty filthy because they had been sitting in the fridge for awhile, and the papery outside got a little soggy. Here's what they looked like "unwrapped":




They look a bit different than regular tomatoes on the inside:


They are nice and tangy, and even a bit tart.

Here's my station where I dipped them in milk, then flour, then egg, then corn meal. (Again, just dipping them in corn meal is the best, I think.) Then it was into the frying pan with some good ol' bacon grease. Hey, I wanted to be authentic, y'all.



While they're not much to look at when they are done, they are quite delicious!


If you want to be healthier, you can cook them in olive oil, and I'm sure they will taste just as good. And while the bacon grease didn't exactly make for the healthiest meal, this was good for my Discretionary Eating Challenge, since they weren't made with processed or refined foods and they didn't have any sugar or caffeine :) (I was also happy that the tomatillos were grown locally.) I did cheat, however, on the Seconds Only When Hungry, since I pretty much stuffed myself.