Give Fried Green Tomatoes A Flavor Blitz With Bacon Grease

Summertime means tomatoes, but if you've ever been a vegetable gardener you know that it can take a long time for your backyard bounty to come to fruition. It was probably an impatient tomato lover who figured out how to make southern fried green tomatoes because it's hard to wait six to eight weeks for a perfectly ripe red Beefsteak or Brandywine. If you're watching the backyard with bated breath, go ahead and steal a few green fruits if you need a garden fix because fried green tomatoes are easy to make, especially if you have a little bacon grease hanging around for an extra flavor blitz.

Ask any Southerner what they use to fry their fried green tomatoes and chances are they'll say bacon fat because the flavor combo can't be beat. Bacon and tomatoes go together like chocolate and peanut butter or peas and carrots. Green tomatoes have a lot of acidity that makes them pretty tart, while bacon brings fatty, smoky, savory flavors to the table. As an added bonus, if you have to make some bacon in order to get the grease, you'll have most of the ingredients to make a bacon, lettuce, and fried green tomato sandwich when you're done.

Making fried green tomatoes is pretty easy as long as you slice them properly, but it is important to pay attention to the temperature of the bacon grease in the pan. There's actually a pretty narrow temperature window you need to hit to fry your fruits (yes, they're fruits not vegetables) so that they're crispy and golden while also avoiding setting off the smoke alarm.

There's nothing sadder than a soggy fried green tomato, let's be real. If you go to the trouble of coating and frying your tomatoes — which you plucked early off their vines — you'd better get the breading and frying part right, otherwise it's just a waste. In order to get a crispy, brown crust on the outside of the tomatoes, which is caused by the Maillard reaction, the oil needs to be around 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

With that said, bacon grease, unlike, say, vegetable oil, has a pretty low smoke point of around 325 to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. So if it gets too hot, the fat will literally start to fill your kitchen with smoke. This is where a calibrated quick-read thermometer really comes in handy. As the fat melts and heats up, take regular temperature readings to make sure you're in the right zone. If it gets much hotter than 350 degrees Fahrenheit, pull the pan off the heat for a few minutes to bring it down before you fry the next round of tomatoes.

If you don't have a good thermometer or enough bacon grease, you can also mix bacon fat with any kind of vegetable oil, which will have a higher smoke point and be a little more forgiving when cooking up your tomatoes. Try to also strain away any meaty bits from the bacon fat before you use it for cooking, which have a tendency to collect at the bottom of the pan and cause more smoke.

Hands down the best pan for the job of frying green tomatoes is a cast iron skillet. Its thick metal walls will hold heat and radiate it into the food so you don't need to fuss with the flame too much to maintain the right temperature. Cast iron really works best over moderate, medium heat so don't crank the flame trying to get the tomatoes to cook faster. It's also easier to clip a frying or candy thermometer to the edge of a cast iron skillet than to a sauté pan, so if you have one handy this is a great time to break it out. That way you can keep an eye on the temperature as you cook without needing to pick up the thermometer every few minutes.

Once the tomatoes are fried up nice and crispy, if you used a brown paper bag to do the breading (a traditional step), flatten it out and lay your tomatoes on it to drain off any bacon grease drippings, and then they're ready to eat.