Hill Country Red Okra in my garden, mid-September

It was inevitable that I would to learn to how to prepare okra right about now. But that’s exactly how I knew it would be back when I planted okra seeds in my garden plot earlier this summer. That’s one of the great things about having a garden: it forces you to deal. If there is a vegetable you want to become familiar with in the kitchen, plant it in your garden. A pot in a courtyard or on a balcony will do just as well. Then, weeks, maybe months, later, the vegetable will have migrated from the soil to your kitchen counter, and finally into one of your cooking pots.

You may or may not have had ideas for the preparation of the vegetable when you planted it, and even if you did, a lot can happen along the way from seed to produce. I had pickles in mind when I planted my seeds, and, for that reason, of the two heirloom varieties I planted, Cajun Jewel and Hill Country Red, I was especially excited about the latter, described as (more…)

Indian cookbook author Shubhra Ramineni lives in Texas, where okra is a popular vegetable and is available year-round. She says that Texans are always surprised to learn that okra is also a popular vegetable in Indian cooking.

Sauteed Okra with Onions and chapati

In the South, okra is prepared in a number of ways: fried, pickled, stewed. And it is a key ingredient in gumbo, where it adds flavor and serves as a thickener.

In New England, where I live, okra is nearly as exotic as fresh curry leaves. It is rare to find it fresh in grocery stores, and even frozen is a gamble. I have sometimes found it at farmers’ markets, but not often. (This is not so surprising because okra grows best in warm climates; it is a relative of cotton, after all.) And okra is highly perishable: once picked it should be used within about three days. So I can see why Northern grocers and farmers are not inclined to take a chance on breaking into the underserved okra market. It’s a catch-22. Northerners don’t often get the chance to experiment with it because it’s hard to find, and grocers and farmers, presumably, don’t want to take a chance with okra not selling because of a lack of interest. What we need is an okra education campaign!

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An okra flower

I decided to plant okra in the garden this summer because I love all the cuisines that use it: Indian, Middle Eastern, Southern U.S, plus Mediterranean and Caribbean (and there are probably others). I’ve eaten it prepared different ways in restaurants but, before this summer, had cooked it just once at home. My plan was to grow lots of it and then become adept at preparing it different ways.

What do all of these cuisines have in common? They all originate in a warm climate. If this was not enough to deter me, you’d think these two characteristics of okra, of which I was fully aware, would have kept me from trying to grow it: okra does not like temperatures below 45 or 50°F and doesn’t like to be transplanted, eliminating the usual solution of using starters to extend Vermont’s short growing season.

Another lesson I learned, which I suggest to anyone planning to grow okra, is to plant a fair number of plants—a dozen at least. I had six plants and found that I never had enough okra to make a dish. Because okra toughens when allowed to grow too large—they should be picked when they’re about 4 inches in length—I made an effort to pick them almost daily. The problem is that there would only be a few ready to pick at any given time. By the time I’d accumulated enough for a dish, the first okra I’d picked would no longer be fresh. That was when I realized I would need to blanch and freeze as I picked.

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