a dishfried okra

Okra pods sliced into rounds, rolled in cornmeal and fried until the outside is crisp. It is the commonest way okra is cooked in the South and a standing side at barbecue houses and meat-and-three counters, eaten most in summer when the pods are in. Cutting the pods small keeps the outside crisp and leaves the inside slippery; whole pods can be fried too.

Okra came to the Americas on slave ships, and the method of frying it is thought to have roots in the Congo or West Africa before it arrived here. Fried vegetables and fritters spread through Southern cooking in the middle of the nineteenth century, and fried okra spread with them; the dish belongs to soul food, to Cajun cooking and to Gullah Geechee cooking, and is part of the Oklahoma state meal. In the Carolinas the barbecue connection is a farm one as much as a kitchen one: Brown's Bar-B-Que in Kingstree grows the okra it serves, along with corn, squash, butter beans, collards and cabbage, and McCabe's in Manning puts it on a buffet beside the hash and rice. Older Southern cookbooks cook it wet rather than dry — boiled and finished with cream and butter, or cut into a soup — and the frying is the newer habit.

The pods are topped and cut into rounds about half an inch thick. They are tossed or dredged in cornmeal, or dipped first in beaten egg or buttermilk and then in cornmeal, or cornmeal and flour, and fried in butter or vegetable oil, deep or in a pan, until browned. The batter may be seasoned with black pepper and cayenne. Drained and salted, and sometimes given a dipping sauce.

On the buffet line at Dukes Bar-B-Que in Orangeburg with the collards and corn nuggets; at McCabe's in Manning with the tomatoes and butter beans; at Brown's in Kingstree, grown on the family's own farm.