 Hey y'all, it's Chris and Chamey with Collard Valley Cooks. Today we're making my fried okra deluxe out of the third cookbook and boy, is it good. Tomatoes, onion, pepper, okra, yummy. We're making fried okra deluxe in our third cookbook and it is on page 152 and it's some good stuff. All right. So I'm going to make a smaller batch because it's just me and Chris, I used to feed four of us and he just went and picked some okra. I was going to show you the difference and your knife should go through your okra really easy. Okay. If your knife is not wanting to go through the okra, it's too hard. You don't cook it, okay. So, and I don't cook the onions and some people do, but I don't. Whoops. That one a little thick. So what you're going to do is you're going to cut up some okra enough for a couple of you. See, this one's kind of hard. Once you got enough for a couple of you, you're going to also fry onion with it. So you want these onion. It's onion to be in pretty big pieces. So I'm going to set it down right here because you want to be able to fry it with your okra. So there's my onion. I'm going to do some green tomato. I always pick one that's got a little bit of red in it just so that it's not too, too green. And if I were feeding four of us, I would be making more of this. So you're just going to cube your tomato like that. And now we're going to put a little pepper in it. All this stuff should be coming out of the garden this time of year. So you've got to have plenty of it. So you put it in pretty big pieces. So it's, you know, about the size of the okra, too. Now what you're going to do, once you got enough in there, you think that's going to feed you. You're going to add a little buttermilk and you don't add a lot of buttermilk, just a little buttermilk. Because what you're going to do is try to get buttermilk on all of this. And you don't want so much that you can't bread it. All right? So that's how you do it, just like that. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to come over here to the other counter. We're going to use a little bit of white lily, self-rising flour, my favorite. Put a little bit of it in the sifter. And you don't have to sift it, but I like to sift it into the pot plate. And then I take my veggies, put them on top of the flour. And you could do this in layers. Like if I were making more, I would do this in two layers, but since I'm not making the whole recipe, I'm going to do it in one layer. While it's sitting there, you're going to salt the pepper really good. This is what makes it taste so good. Make sure you get plenty on it. And then you got your salt. My flour is self-rising, so it has a little salt in it too. All right, and then I'm going to put more flour on it. Then we're just going to toss it a little bit in this flour. Try to get it good and coated. We're going to fry it. Yummy. All this good stuff fried together. I call this my fried Oprah Deluxe. You got it coming out of the garden, man, it's a little cookie. All right, so you need a nice hot skillet. Let me wash my hands. We're going to get some shortening in it. Shortening is my favorite thing to make fried Oprah in. You can use oil if you want to, of course, but I'm going to use some shortening today. When you use shortening, lots of times you do have to add a little extra once it starts to cook. All right, I'm going to absorb some of this shortening. The flour does. Must have had a little water on my finger. We're going to let this melt. Then we're going to add our delicious veggies. I'm not used to cook it on electric, so this is a lot hotter than I'm used to. I've even got it on medium. Okay, we're going to turn the heat back up. I'm going to grab one of these and put it in here and we're going to see how hot it is. It's pretty hot. Get this shortening off my fingers. Now we're going to put it in here and you don't want to get burnt. Make sure you got it coated good too. And like I said, you don't have to add more shortening once it starts to absorb it. Here, let me get right here. Get some of the flour out of it before I add it. So I'm down to the nitty gritty. I'm going to try to separate it so that most of it's laying on the bottom. Now the key to making good okra is for one, you batter it with self-rising white lily flour. For another, fried it shortening makes it really good. It really does. You don't have to, but why not just go ahead and do it right? You can do it. And then another thing that makes it really good is you don't turn it too soon. You let it get nice and toasted brown before you ever turn it over. You should not turn your okra more than three times during the cooking process, okay? Now if you're deep frying it, you don't have to worry about it. We're not deep frying. Now always make sure there's enough shortening in there to start with so that it gets good and hot. It's got plenty to fry in and get golden brown. Looks good already. All right, now you can tell it's getting golden brown, so we're going to start turning it in little sections. Only if it looks like it's brown. Like this over here is going to be brown, so I'm going to let it cook longer. This is a dual eye. Has a center and then an outside, and I think the center gets hotter than the outside. I mean, it goes on and off. This thing's just driving me crazy. I'm going to turn it up to high because it goes on and off. And maybe if I put it on high, it'll stop doing that because when you fry okra, you don't want your temperature to go up and down. You want it to stay hot. You want to get okra good and brown. Don't you Chris? Oh, yes. You want it crunchy. You want it nice and crunchy and brown. That's one reason you don't want to turn it too much. Smells good, doesn't it? All right, y'all. So if you're getting all this good stuff out of the garden, whoop, we got to turn this. I turned it up. You're getting all this good stuff out of the garden. You can just put it all together, throw it in the frying pan together, and all them good flavors. You got the sour in the green tomato, and the okra, onion, peppers, what is it doing? Good stuff. What are you doing, Chris? Playing around with our feet? I'm eating the fish that dropped out. All right, now it's brown. Great. We're going to take it out in a hurry. I think I got a piece of tomato. You did? Yeah. And you do want it brown. Smokin', smokin' up some. So there's our fried okra deluxe. Looks good, and it is good. It's hot, hot and crunchy. Good, boy, that's good. Ain't nothing like fresh okra out of the garden, y'all. If you don't grow nothing, you should grow you some okra. If you've never had it, it's really good, but you got to fry it good to make it good. Okay. Go have a wonderful day, and we thank you for watching Colored Valley Cook. It's where we cook like our momma's did. We'll see you next time. Bye, love ya.