OKRA, Part ll

Ozark. We pickle our okra too. The recipe we use sounds like yours--okra, dill, a clove or two of garlic (we use home grown elephant garlic), and a small hot pepper. Last year, we tried a couple of quarts substituting fresh basil for the dill. It turned out great. So if you like basil, give it a try.

"Usually canning them for so long will give you mushy pickled okra, not crisp or firm at all."
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Shoe, I like those pickles so well I've already finished a jar of them! They're already pickled from being boiled in the brine, of course.

They're not mushy, but maybe a little soft. As I can more of them, I'll experiment with a shorter heating time. Thanks.

paradacrades - Thanks for the suggestion about adding basil. I've got a real good strain of Italian basil that critterologist sent me growing in the garden, so I'll give that a try.

Shoe, I looked at the garden before dark and I'll need to pick okra again tomorrow. Is that the way your okra works when it's in production - a picking every other day?

Hah! "Excited Sam, the Ozark Man"! I love reading your posts!

I'm glad your okra came out good. And yep, play around with it, the recipes sure do vary. Many years I buy "Mrs Wages pickle mix" for my okra...it is a great seasoning. There are two mixes, one regular, one Kosher. I don't know if it is my imagination but the kosher mix seems to be better.

And yes, I get tired of picking okra sometimes. That is one reason I take a weed whacker or machete to cut them down by half at some point. It gives me a reprieve from having to pick so many times a week. A few weeks or so later the plants have sent up new branches and are flowering, giving me a later crop to pick.

Shoe

I don't get real excited until the white bass start biting - and I think that's about to happen after this long HOT summer!

After babying these okra plants and waiting an outrageous time for them to start producing, I'm not about to whack them. I'm just glad I'm finally getting okra!

The plants are still wanting to get bushy and I know they're healthy, but they're not growing tall this year. They're all still 4-5 feet except for Betty's White which is only about 2' but producing well. That's fine with me, but I'm surprised. Even the Cowhorn, which I thought I'd have to top at 5' or it'd get too tall, is staying short. Hmmm.

Yeah, our store has "Mrs. Wages". I'll give that a try.

Ozark,
That sounds good, you are making me salivate!!!

Belle

Horseshoe,
I am waiting for the secret fig recipe. I still have tons of figs and some friends does not know what to do with them so i will go pick some. I hate to be pushy.

Thanks, Belle

Thanks, Belle...I need reminders sometimes!

Ozark, fried fish and okra sounds like a pretty good meal to me! I've camped on what I think was called the Spring River, it is at the lower end of MO and upper Ark. lines. Woke up from my tent, right on the bank, and trout were jumping so high and so close to shore they seemed to be looking for a frying pan to jump into. You might wanna try that river sometime.

Shoe

Shoe, I know where you're talking about - that's a real pretty place, huh? It's about 100 miles east of us.

No, I'm not a trout fisherman around here. Back when I was younger and we lived in CA, I fished for trout all over the west. Backpacking in and standing in a snowbank in August in the High Sierras at 11,000 feet fishing for golden trout, natural streams and lakes with rainbows, browns, brook trout, and cutthroats all over the rockies. The Snake River in Idaho with natural 3-lb. rainbows, fly-fishing the Spring River in Montana - like that.

It kinda ruined me for these pellet-fed hatchery trout here in the Midwest. They dump 'em out of a truck into certain places (like where you were) where the water's cool enough for them to live for awhile. The limit's FOUR trout - not enough to get a boat wet for, IMO.

But the natural fish around here - bass, walleyes, white bass, crappie, catfish, etc., well now, that's different! Different strokes, different folks.

Hey, I got into the pickled okra jar that has garlic, dill, and hot pepper as per the recipe I found. That's GOOD! Heading for the garden now to pick okra, tomatoes, cukes, and peppers.

I've never been a trout fisher either. Never even cast a fly rod. I prefer rod-n-reel with live bait or spoons. But I bet I could've caught those jumping trout on a rod! No license so just had to drink morning coffee and admire them.

Sounds like you're hooked on pickled okra now. I make it every year, one of the few things I still can.
Glad you're having okra fun!

Shoe

Shoe emailed me her fig secret recipe and I will try it -. I had sold over $100.00 already so we need t6o come up with $900.00 +++ . The most expensive that wehave to buy are the cholesterol reagents.

I'm so glad I found this forum. I have had a bumper okra crop this year. I planted 28 plants in 3 raised beds. The beds are large enough that the plants have room to develop a strong root structure and do not get top heavy and topple. I add only peat, lime and cow manure to my garden each year and have never added any other fertilizers.

The three beds were created and treated exactly the same. They are the same depth and receive the same amount of water, however the bed closest to the center has much smaller plants with smaller leaves, the middle bed gets larger and the bed on the outside of the garden has huge plants with large lush leaves. All plants are producing okra, though I'm fighting the stink bugs tooth and nail. The one difference is the bed with large lush plants have much longer, more slender pods. The pods actually get quite long without being too large or tough.

I have not pinched or topped the plants, yet some of them are branching anyway. I have to pick daily to avoid large overgrown pods as they seem to go from tiny to huge overnight.

I'm not complaining about my okra harvest, but am curious about the reason for the more stunted growth of the two beds. The pods are smaller and tend to get fatter and tougher more quickly, so I guess in a way their production is less than the other bed. Any ideas?

You didn't say how your okra beds are oriented east-and-west, but my guess is that they're getting different amounts of sunlight. Okra likes direct sunlight and lots of it, so maybe your smaller plants are shaded for part of the day and the bigger ones are getting more time in the sun? Check what's to the east and west of your beds that might be shading some of your plants in the early mornings or late afternoons. Maybe that's the explanation.

Are they all the same variety?

Ozark...they get full sun all day. They are oriented east to west, but are in the middle of a field with nothing blocking their sun for a good 11-12 hours. The nicest bed will get the shade first as the sun goes down, but only for about 15 minutes longer. I don't know if that makes a difference.

bellieg - they are all the same variety with seeds purchased at the same time.

Thanks for the replies. I'm stumped, but I'm also picking plenty of okra, so I guess I should just be happy, keep notes and see what happens next year when I rotate the beds.

"The nicest bed will get the shade first as the sun goes down, but only for about 15 minutes longer. I don't know if that makes a difference."
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Hmmm. Well, maybe it does. If they're on the east they're getting the morning sun first when it's cool, and they're getting some extra shade in the late afternoon when it's hot. My best okra plants this year are in a north-south row that's shaded by a fence full of tall tomato plants in the late afternoon - maybe that helps, I dunno.

I guess the important thing is that we're getting a bunch of okra now.

After me griping here for weeks about having no okra production, they're finally in full swing now. I picked a gallon of pods today. You were right, Shoe, though I still don't know why it took them over three months to get started.

I'm disappointed in Texas Hill Country Red. It's already almost quit, I only picked 3 or 4 pods off a whole row today. Also, those fat little pods start getting tough when they're only about 2 1/2" long. My wife, who cuts and prepares most of our okra, had already asked me not to plant that variety again. Then it quit producing, so that clinched that deal.

My other four varieties, Stewart's Zeebest, Betty's White, Cowhorn, and Perkins Long Pod, are all doing great. Betty's White grows on compact 3' plants that are productive and easy to pick (thanks again for those seeds, Shoe). I can't tell any difference between the Cowhorn variety I got from Shumway and Perkins Long Pod. They're both very productive of ribbed, green, medium-thickness pods, they're both the same height, 5 to 6 feet, and the pods are straight on both varieties. I'd expected Cowhorn to grow 'way tall and have curved pods, so maybe there was a seed mix-up. It's good okra so I'm not complaining.

We like Stewart's Zeebest a LOT. It's the most productive, growing on 5 to 6 foot plants that want to get bushy if I don't keep some leaves trimmed. The pods are skinny, dark green, and smooth with no ribs. I picked 2 or 3 pods off the end of each branch, and they stay tender even at 7 or 8 inches long - that one might be "zeebest"!

Heheheh, love the play on words, "zeebest!" :>)

My Perkins will start to curve if I don't pick them right away...and that's exactly what happened. I went a week or more not picking okra. Ended up cutting lots of pods off, dropping them on the ground, huge ones. The Perkins had nice thin pods even at 6 inches or more, some had gone longer and were beginning to curve. Clemson Spineless is hanging in there with Perkins as is Betty's White. Tonight I picked nearly a plastic grocery bag full, well, more than half full but not quite filled, for the neighbors off one row (60'80 ft row maybe). Now if the deer will leave the leaves alone I'll still get more pods coming on.

Good to hear your Okra Report, Ozark. I can almost hear you say, "And THAT's the way it is...." (For give me Walter Cronkite)

Shoe

"And THAT's the way it is..." (For give me Walter Cronkite)"
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Now you're dating yourself, Shoe. But I can remember Walter Winchell giving Harry Truman a hard time, so I'm in even worse shape. lol

I think I'll take some pictures and add information to PlantFiles on these okra varieties I'm growing this year. Any objection if I add Betty's White, as there's no listing of it? With due credit to yourself and your friend Betty Harrison, of course. It's a good one!

Fine with me, Ozark. (well, fine with adding Betty's White to PF, not so fine dating myself!) Hah! :>) But, I think as we age we care so much about staying youthful. Matter of fact, I think old(er) age is a nice change from youth after all those years!

Shoe

We've got this okra-fixing thing down now!

Since it was mentioned on here last year about roasting okra in the oven rather than frying it, we've been trying it both ways, with variations. My wife and I agree that we like it better roasted and without breading. Now we've come up with a further refinement that's GOOD.

We've used olive oil, as suggested, on the okra before - and it's good that way but the flavor of the olive oil comes through and changes the taste of the okra. Today, I asked my wife to try peanut oil instead, figuring that peanut oil is so good with stir-fried veggies it should be an improvement. It is!

She cut the okra into bite-size pieces, added salt, pepper, and a little peanut oil, and covered a cookie tray with it. She pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees and roasted the okra for 25 minutes. At that point it's cooked all the way through, turns olive-green, and there's just a little brown on the high spots. I think I ate about a quart of it, and this is the way we like it best!

Good tip! And I just happen to have peanut oil. And okra, too!

Will definitely give this a try, Ozark.

Thanks!

Shoe

I roast the entire Okra pod (without the steam) and after i add some salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil and maybe some parsley.
Very light and delish ... my favorite right now .... yummy

LOL, Ozark!

YOUR process for "roasting okra" is MY process for "browning okra" under the broiler, just before I add it to a pot of OKRA GUMBO! I coat the cookie sheet with plain old veggie oil and run it under just until it browns.

And, yeah, it's great just like that with the salt and pepper. It's a wonder any makes it into the gumbo! ^^_^^

"YOUR process for "roasting okra" is MY process for "browning okra" under the broiler, just before I add it to a pot of OKRA GUMBO! I coat the cookie sheet with plain old veggie oil and run it under just until it browns."
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Hehe. Nope, not MY process. I'd have to look back on the "Okra I" thread, but someone there told us about "roasting, browning" okra in the oven instead of frying it - so we've been doing that and like it a lot. My only "improvement" is our recent use of peanut oil instead of olive oil to keep the original okra flavor. We haven't tried vegetable oil or canola oil yet, but we will.

Hey, we've got an okra surplus now and my wife wants to try making okra gumbo. What's the rest of your recipe after browning the okra? I think you told about that here before, but I didn't find it after a quick search. Thanks.

I'd better stay away from the kitchen while she's making gumbo, or she won't have any browned okra left to put in the pot!

A quick FYI, Folks...

Dang deer have now decided to eat my okra leaves. Last night I put Bounce dryer thingies every so many feet in the row and it was the first night they left them alone. I'd done the same with some of my pole beans earlier in the year, it worked, so perhaps it is yet another way to deter them (for a while anyway).

Ozark, I might've posted the roasted okra, I do it that way a lot. Recently I've been doing it with carrots, too..it really sweetens them up and are great!

Shoe

had harvested maybe 6 fruits. i might go to the farmers market to get some. We grill ours to and make balsamic vinegar, ginger brown sugar and soy sauce dipping.

Belle

I don't know what the world record is for the diameter of an okra plant. I would imagine that my 2 inch plant isn't even close. I wish I could tell you how tall it is but I haven’t been able to see or reach the top in weeks (slight exaggeration). This is an instance in which size really doesn't matter. (Reference to my long ago post regarding size of containers needed for my Meyer lemon tree and Satsuma orange tree which I never actually resolved). Speaking of containers, if you live in the Dallas area, the Garden Ridge store off of I-35 in Lewisville has all of their outdoor and indoor containers (fiberglass, plastic, clay, glazed, decorative, large and small, etc.) for 50% off through September 13th, and there must be at least a thousand to choose from.

I've got this pickle-packing thing down now! Shoe, just ignore me because I know you've been pickling okra a lot longer than I have. I pickled six pints of okra picked from the garden today, and between eating okra fresh, freezing it, and pickling it we're not going to have any surplus we can't use.

After experimenting, I've hit on the flavor and the method I like best. I use wide-mouth pint canning jars since the okra needs to be packed tight into the jars and that would be real hard with regular-mouth jars.

In the bottom of each jar I first put a half-clove of garlic and two little Maui Purple Peppers. I cut the tops off the peppers and cut a slit down the sides so brine can come in contact with the hot pepper seeds inside. With scissors I cut the stem as close as possible on each okra pod before I pack it into the jar. I pack longer pods first by laying the jar on its side and putting the pods in stem-down with the pointy ends toward the mouth of the jar. Pods that are longer than the jar is tall I cut in two and pack them the same way - lots of my Stewart's Zeebest pods are very long but still tender.

When I've got the bottom of the jar packed with longer pods until I can no longer get more in side-by-side, I set the jar upright. Then I add a heaping teaspoon of Mrs. Wage's Dill Pickle Mix. I haven't been able to find the Kosher mix Shoe likes better - still looking.

Then I continue packing the jar, with pods point-down in this layer and of a length that pretty well fills the jar. I get as many pods as I can in that way, then maybe lay a couple of pods down sideways to fill any gaps and fill the jar to the top. I can get twenty-some pods in a pint jar, so this is a good way to use up a lot of okra.

I make brine by bringing a mixture of 2/3 water and 1/3 vinegar to a boil. The brine is half of the volume I'm pickling (to allow for a little extra) - so for six pints of pickles today I made three pints of brine, composed of two pints water and one pint vinegar. I add one teaspoon of Kosher salt per pint of brine - I cut that down from the recommended tablespoon because Mrs. Wage's mix is real salty.

Then I fill the jars with boiling brine almost to the top, attach the sanitized lids finger-tight, and boil the jars for 10 minutes in a hot-water canner. I've tried it several ways and found a 10-minute boil makes the "crispy" just right for me and makes the jars seal well, but that's just a personal preference.

These pickles are REAL good, and that's everything I know about packing pickles! LOL

Ozark,
You are making my mouth water!!! I love okra!! I buy my pickling mix at a meat -processing store.

Where do you buy the stewarts zeebest?

Have fun pickling and think of me. I harvested maybe 5 fruits!!!

Belle

Baker Creek Seeds in Mansfield, Mo. has the Stewart's Zeebest okra seeds. They're only about 35 miles from us but I've only mail-ordered from them - I think we'll take a drive over there soon to look around.

From what I've read Stewart's Zeebest is a family heirloom variety from Louisiana. They're the great-long pods in the picture above, and they grow so fast none of those was big enough to pick the last time - and I pick every other day! Zeebest is real productive and they stay tender even when they're 9 or 10 inches long - a real good okra variety.

Sounds good to me, Ozark! I never thought of putting the Mrs. Wages powder into the jars as is...I always made it into the brine then using the brine as instructed on the pkg.

Love the addition of the peppers, I've been using cayennes.

And glad to hear 10 minutes in a water bath still leaves the pods crispy/firm. I'll have to give this a try.

Glad you're having such a good time!

Shoe

"I always made it into the brine then using the brine as instructed on the pkg."
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Instructions? You read instructions? Shoe, if you keep that stuff up you're gonna have to turn in your guy card. LOL

Hah! Too funny....

but yep, I made the brine using Mrs. Wages, and of course never used the whole package so would store the liquid in jars in the fridge till next canning.

Recently I did a jar (yeh, on single jar, as a sampling) of only vinegar/water/garlic clove. Water bathed it five or ten minutes, let it sit to age 10 days or so and sampled it. Dang okra was too soft for my liking and the flavor needed improving. I like the seasonings of Mrs. Wages much better.

I have another recipe "from scratch" I've had for years but when I discovered Ma Wages it was too easy so have done that for quite a number of years.

Shoe...(now making Sam/Ozark jealous---> Fresh caught catfish, fried.... pan-fried okra, and purple hull cowpeas were my supper night before last. You missed a true Southern meal!)

"You missed a true Southern meal!"
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Well, I'd liked to have had some cowpeas, but we've got the rest of it covered. We had fresh-caught white bass filets, 'taters, sliced tomatoes from the garden, and sauerkraut. I love catching catfish, but you can't catch 'em by chasing them with the boat and throwing a spinner while they're boiling on top. That's fun!

The kraut didn't much go with a fish meal, but it was good and we had to try it and see if it's done. Yep, it's plenty sharp enough with a real good flavor - but I'll have to can it now or it'll get too sharp, it's been working about three weeks. I'll have to buy some more pint canning jars first, though, I've got 'em all full of okra pickles!

SAVING SEEDS. Shoe, or anyone else here who knows - I've never saved seeds from okra before. I'm guessing I'd just quit harvesting pods and let them dry up completely on the plants, then put the pods in some kind of container before they split open and dump the seeds on the ground. Is that right - no fermenting or anything like with tomato or cucumber seeds?

I'm saving seeds from Stewart's Zeebest and Betty's White, and left the pods on one plant of each of those today - they'll be my "seed" plants. I picked another two gallons of okra today, and I'm going to start picking it every day instead of every other day - some of the pods are getting too big, even in two days.

Yep, you have that right, Ozark. Let the pods dry on the plant, then cut them off.

Remember, okra readily and easily crosses so you might want to save seeds from those dried pods with each pod as far away as possible from the other variety, not next to it. Or you can hand-pollinate then bag the flower. Normally I grow a plant for seed separately from others.

Shoe (wondering why he's up so late, or so early)

Ozark and shoe,
I looked at the time of some of your posts and I hope you have enough sleep!!! LOL!!!

Belle

Mornin' Belle...

Yeh, I sometimes go into terribly bad sleep mode, or I should say "no sleep mode". Up all night, sometimes doze for an hour then wide awake. I gave up tossing and turning in bed years ago and just tend to get up and do something, read, write, computerize, watch tv (old Gunsmoke, Bonanaza reruns come on at night!).

Hope you are recuperating from the storm and back up to snuff at your place!

Shoe

Yep - somebody told me when you're retired "every week has six Saturdays and a Sunday", and that's the way it is. It's great, though - I generally don't have to be anyplace at any certain time and I've fallen into a "regular" schedule of odd hours. I usually take a nap in my easy chair during the hot part of the afternoon, so the sleep adds up to eight hours a day - but there may be some late-night hours appear on my posts. It works for me!

Shoe, I'm fortunate in my okra seed-saving because both of those varieties are planted away from any others. It's possible that a flying insect could bring pollen clear across the garden and cross-pollinate a blossom, but I don't think it's too likely since all those blossoms of the same variety are so near. I haven't seen a honeybee all year so they're not going between blossoms, and I'll just hope the seeds aren't crossed.

Another okra-cooking breakthrough! My wife is a good cook, and she likes to experiment. We're eating so much okra now, she's looking for new ways to prepare it - so I found this video on the Internet:

http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/2008/01/07/bhindi-masala-spicy-okra/

Now, we're not big on Indian spices - but the procedure is the thing here. The lady in the video is a great cook, and sure enough - if you wash okra and let it dry, then cut off both ends, split the pods longways, and stir-fry them with a little oil, THEY'RE NOT SLIMY. That exposes the inside of the whole pod to the heat in the frying pan, and it dries up the goo! Okra is a real important veggie in India - they know how to fix it.

My wife used the same process as in the video, but she says she cut the spices down to a little turmeric, a little thyme, a little chile powder, salt and pepper, and she fried the okra with chopped sweet peppers from the garden. This was GOOD!

My row of Stewart's Zeebest okra yesterday: