This Episode Is Anything But Medi-Okra

Okra is both prized and demonized for its goo – the vegetable thickens stews beautifully, but some find it slimy. Learn the history and slime science behind okra (including how to cut back on the goo when you cook it).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Anny Rees and I'm
Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about okra. Yeah, okra
has a little bit of a bad rap, it does.
It has a goop factor, at least here in the US.
I don't think in other countries it has this negative association.
The United States, people think it's slimy is the word.

(00:30):
You'll hear it the most, sure, but you can be
some people like that. Yeah, but it is one of
my favorite foods, especially fried because fried so good. And
when I was little, I think I've told the story
before on the show, but my brothers didn't like okra
and it was the best thing ever because every time

(00:50):
we cooked okra, it was all for me. You had
a very food competitive family. I very much did. And
I think when I was near eleven, they discovered that
they did, in fact like okra and it was a travesty.
Oh I'm sorry, ten year old Annie. The okra ride
was over the competition began. I don't think I grew

(01:13):
up in um In, Ohio and South Florida, so I
don't remember having okra until I moved to Atlanta. But
I mean, I think I must I must have had
it sometime, but maybe not. I don't know. Huh, yeah
I didn't. Again, this is another thing where I forget
regions exist essentially in the United States, Like I always

(01:36):
think the Southwest is particular one. Um, but I a
lot of my favorite foods are Southern and are kind
of specific, and that's something I have learned through doing
this show. But okra is very popular in the South.
Um My mom loves okra and tomatoes, which is a
very Southern dish, and I kind of adore it. She's
always like, I can make go grant tomatos. It's like

(01:57):
like a little like stewed kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
has usually because it's the South as bacon in it,
some type of m in it. But yeah, I love it. Um.
And I am personally of the belief that a lot
of people who don't like okra haven't had it cooked properly.
Now you can disagree, but I am not the only
one who thinks that. Way back when Savor was food

(02:20):
Stuff and food Stuff was a video and before I
was on that video series, yes, and technically before I
was like a producer, but I wasn't host. Um. We
worked with Peach Dish, which is a local meal kit
delivery service, and the chef over at Peach Dish, we
asked him like, what do you think is the most underutilized,

(02:41):
misunderstood ingredients in the American cuisine landscape and he said,
without hesitation, yeah, and he his suggestion was that you
should if you don't like it, you've never had it
roasted at a high heat, that that's the way to go.
That will get rid of that slime. The slime. And
I've got a few more tips on that. Yes, later on.

(03:02):
It's really cool. Yeah, I got to talk about goop, Yes,
but not going to Faucho's thing that that is gross.
It is not the subject of this podcast now. Um.
We also as part of our actual series, we talked
to Marijuan Rani over at Chaipani and um Any Inquisine

(03:23):
does feature a lot of okra and chaipani, which specializes
in Indian street food. Um has like fried It's like
sticks of okra that are lightly fried. They're kind of
like fries. They're so oh, They're very delicious. Yes, and
it is also a popular ingredient in Cajun and Creole dishes.

(03:44):
A lot, a lot, a lot of people brought it
up when we were in New Orleans. You might have
heard Amy Sends, founder of Lan Bois, mentioned it in
our New Orleans Cocktail Hour episode. But okay, okay, okay,
let's get to our question. Okra. What is it? Well,
okra is the fruit of a flowering plant. Botanical name apple,

(04:07):
muscious escalentis. I think I'm trying. It grows quickly the
plant from seeds. You'll get plants some two to three
feet in height that's about a meter, with a bunch
of fruit within about two months. That fruit is oblong,
pentagonal um and wider at the stem end, with the
other end narrowing to a point. For food purposes, it's
picked before it's ripe, when it's still tender. As it ripens,

(04:28):
it toughens up with with fibers and dries out so
that it can split open and release its seeds. But
when it's tender, it's got a thin skin with a
bit of fuzz to it, surrounding a ring of a
juicy and or gooey flesh, surrounding a whole mess of
seeds that are connected to like a central spike, sort
of like a fuzzy five sided talapena. That's a very

(04:49):
good description. Thank you, You're welcome. They're often deep green
in color, but can also come in like reddish or
purple or a silvery white. And ochris flowers are really pretty.
They look like Hibiscus um to the point that it
was once classified in the Hyperscus genus. They are related,
just not that closely. Um there in the mallow family,
along with cotton, durian and chocolate. Oh. I didn't know

(05:09):
okra was a mallow, and it makes sense with the
mallow connection with marshmallow, it does. Yeah. The flavor of
okra is mild and kind of green, like like bright,
with a little sort of musky floral kind of flavored
I read grassy in some places. Sure, yeah, yeah. But
more than the flavor, as we've been talking about, okra

(05:30):
is prized and or demonized for its texture, which can
be quite slimy. Uh. And that's because it's chock full
of mucilage, the same sort of stuff that makes aloe
and chia seeds gooey and that we talked about, yes
in our marshmallow episode and also our basil episode, but
more on that later on the name. We mentioned in
our Gumbo episode that the word gumbo probably came from

(05:52):
an African word for okra. Okra itself is thought to
come from a niger Congo group of languages, specifically tweet
language of West Africa. By the late eighteenth century, it
was in use in the English language, also sometimes called
ladies fingers, which I read comes to us from India.
I think. I think it's through the English occupation of

(06:13):
India makes sense. Also, apparently some athletes and others in
the US call it vegetable viagra. Huh. Yeah, I didn't
read about that. It was in Time magazine, so I
just missed it. It was specifically about the Olympics. Very interesting.

(06:34):
I hadn't heard that before. Um, what about nutrition? Perhaps
this is why it was food, not the viagra thing,
but the nutrition thing at the Olympics. Yeah, okay, is
pretty good for you. I again cannot vouch for that
other thing, but it's good for you, like until you
deep fry it. Sorry, like at that point all bets
are off. But it's got a lot of vitamins and

(06:54):
minerals of potassium, magnesium, vitamins A and C, a smattering
of others. It's low and sugar but high in fiber
and it's got a little bit of protein in there,
so even though it's low and fat, it can really
fill you up. M hmm. And there are a lot
of types of okra, oh goodness, so many, like hundreds
of varieties that people have developed wherever it's grown. Um.
And as with any commercial food crops, some of the

(07:15):
names are terrific. You got Emerald Clemson, Spineless, Annie Oakley,
green Velvet, white Velvet, Jade, silver, Queen Beck's, big Buck,
Cajun jewel, cowhorn x big Buck. Yeah, I gotta try that.
Curious now, very curious. Okra is grown commercially in a

(07:40):
lot of places, parts of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the
Middle East, Southeast Asia, and North and South America. Worldwide,
humans grow seven point nine million tons of okra per year,
with five point eight of that um coming from India,
and it is, as we said, really popular in the
American South as an ingredient um like in stud okra
and tomatoes, fried okra, straight up, boiled, straight up, roasted orange,

(08:04):
Cajun Creole cuisines, and stooze or soups like gumbo, burgo
and Kentucky and Brunswick stew, limp and Susan also featured
in a lot of Middle Eastern cuisine, Caribbean, South American,
and Indian dishes, apparently not so much in Europe, aside
from Grease and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. European
listeners right in if that's not the case. Oh yeah,

(08:26):
and like like I said, it isn't the most popular
vegetable outside of the American South here in the United States,
but it is gaining popularity, largely due to the rise
of Indian cuisine. I also read that Japan likes it
deep fried as well. And you can use the leaves
like you would beat greens raw in salads are cut down.
You can pickle it. My dad loves pickled okra. Can

(08:49):
fry it, giant freeze it, can it. You can take
the seeds from ripe okra and roast and grind them
and then treat them like a coffee grounds to make
a caffeine free beverage. You can also extract cooking oil
from the seeds. Apparently they can be used to make
rope and paper in two ways. Yeah, the goo from
okra can help make homemade paper especially stronger and smoother,

(09:11):
and the plants are pretty fibrous that the roots and
stems are sometimes used for for clarification of sugar cane juice.
Very important. Number number of Okra mascots Okra mascots, mascots
for Okra or no sports teams mascots that are Okra
okay to to that that I know of, there might

(09:34):
be more. Superproducer Dylan turned us onto the first one.
And I cannot stress this enough. Look up the Fighting Okra.
Look it up, the Fighting Okra, the fighting Okra. His
frown is a thing of beauty. I could only wish
to scowl like that. And he's an Okra. What am

(09:55):
I doing with my life? We've been talking a lot
about food mascots, so you'll be hearing us some more
of those. But in the meantime you've got already the
fighting artichoke, the fighting pickle, and cayenne kayane is a
little scary looking. I gotta say, I'll I'll have to
find a time when I feel like looking that up.

(10:17):
It's not right now, it's not. I think I've had
my scary mascots for the day. You've got to be
in a specific mind space. I understand. Okra is an
old world of vegetable introduced to the New World by
African slaves. From Dr Jessica Harris's book Beyond Gumbo Creole
Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim quote. When the African
American songwriter oh lu Dara sings okra, he's singing of

(10:41):
more than just a vegetable that has become emblematic of
the foods of the American South. He's singing of a
food that is virtually totemic for all Africans in the diaspora,
for everywhere Okra points this screen tip Africa has been
from the kirou of Brazil to the fried okra of
Mississippi to the sopa ducking gumbo of Puerto Rico. The

(11:01):
scattering of Africans in the hemisphere has flung the seeds
of the musula genus vegetable north, south, east, and west beautiful.
Quote Yeah, um, and we know it's old, Okrah, But
how old is it? We'll get into that as soon
as we get back from a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes,

(11:28):
thank you, okay. So, okra most likely originated in West
Africa or Ethiopia. There is another theory that it originated
in northern India, but it was almost certainly first domesticated
and cultivated in either yeah West or East Africa, if
we're going with the the idea or the history that

(11:51):
says it that did originate in Ethiopia, then from there
it spread to North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, India and Arabia,
and to Central Africa, probably with the Bantum migrations in
two thousand b c. E. As to when a lot
of this stuff happened, that is a great question. Probably
super early, but there isn't much evidence because that area

(12:13):
was very secluded in ancient times. It wasn't present. Okra
wasn't present in any of the Egyptian tombs, where a
lot of our ancient food evidence comes from, because it's
a great way to preserve something. But records indicate that
by the thirteenth century it was growing along the Nile.
The Spanish Moors might have had okra by the twelfth
century CE, and the word they used for okrah was Arabian,

(12:35):
lending credence to the idea that Egypt seventh century CE
Muslim conquerors introduced okra to the region. As we mentioned before,
the break okra was introduced to the New World by
African slaves. It was important for slavers to understand the
food of those they enslaved, not out of the kindness
of their hearts, purely for profit, so that the slaves

(12:58):
could survive the long, difficult journey, and of course many
didn't anyway. And also planning crops from the homeland of
the slaves was something slavers did to minimize feelings of homesickness,
kind of going back to that quote from Dr Harris earlier.
Okra was often a marker of an enslaved community. Enslaved
cooks would use it in stews with rice, hominy, millet,

(13:21):
or corn mush um that was seasoned with pepper, or
they would boil it with onions and tomatoes, or they
would serve it with rice in a dish called limp
and Susan, which is often called the Wife of Hop
and John, which is a dish of black eyed peas
and other stuff. Oker grew really easily and was really

(13:41):
cheap at the time. By sixteen fifty eight, records show
that oker was in Brazil and in the southern United
States by the seventeenth century, particularly used as a thickener
for soups and stews like gumbo. By the eighteenth century,
it has spread as far north in the States as Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson, I'll go would later, seeing Ochri's praises, we

(14:02):
haven't done bingo in a while. We need to bring
that back, yes, um. And then it was spread up
to Pennsylvania, also to western Europe. If we look at Asia,
existing records suggest it took a bit of time for
it to travel east of India the nineteenth century for
Southeast Asia and soon after China. So that's kind of
kind of later. That's just what the records indicate. Hard

(14:25):
to say. Sometimes. There is an interesting legend that twenty
five young French women known as the Cassette Girls introduced
the southeastern region of what would become the United States
in seventeen four to okra. Al Right. The story goes
that they arrived in Mobile on the hunt for rosbands

(14:46):
because of course, and with them they brought okra that
they had gotten from slaves in the West Indies and
they used this okra to invent gumbo. I have so
many dubts about this story. Yeah, that doesn't sound likely, No,
not at all, zero percent likely, But interspaced on our
gumbo research. Yes, our gumbo research does not bear this out. Um.

(15:09):
And like we mentioned in that episode, around this time,
we start seeing a handful of recipes for okrah soup
or okra stew and cookbooks. These recipes were most likely
passed on from slaves to educated white women. People in
North America generally believed okra was from the West Indies. Yeah,
the Caribbean exactly. During the Civil War soldiers in the

(15:30):
South fighting for the Confederacy. For those soldiers, okra seeds
were roasted, ground up and then brewed into a drink
that was a replacement for the expensive coffee because the
beans were being blockaded by the North. It wasn't caffeine
and okraseeds. But yeah, like okay. First of all, the
price of coffee doubled in the South during the Civil War.

(15:50):
According to some things I read, slaves would parch okra
seeds and they would use that to make coffee that
was sold to white soldiers on either side of the
Civil War. In eighteen six d three, the Wilmington, North
Carolina Daily Journal published an article called Okra the best
Substitute for coffee. It starts out, everybody, we presume knows
how to cultivate okra obviously, obviously, and it goes on

(16:13):
to just enthusiastically recommend this beverage, calling it almost exactly
like coffee and color, very pleasantly tasted, and entirely agreeable. Um.
It recommended using a few coffee beans in the mix
to get the flavor closer to coffee UM, and also
notes that the beverage doesn't have quote any perceptible effects
upon the nervous system through which medium headache is often

(16:34):
produced by coffee in many debilitated females, especially debilitated I'm
not entirely sure what what that is nineteenth century shade
for precisely, but I don't really like it. No, I
do get quite a caffeine headache, but I soon that's
not what they're doing. I'm not sure at any rate. Yes,

(16:58):
it was a popular coffee so institute. It's funny because
if you, if you person on the streets, I ask me,
what would you use a coffee substitute? I would never, ever, ever,
ever ever think okra seats. But they are kind of bitter,
like thinking your parents. I can sort of see it. Yeah,

(17:19):
apparently it's all in the roasting technique that you do.
There's there's a good instructible up for it on instructible
dot com. Okay, or is it plural just instructible. I'm
not sure if it's singular plural either way. Yeah, you
know questions. Y'all know what website I'm talking about. You
can google. We we have faith in you. By the

(17:39):
end of the nineteenth century, Okra hothouses could be found
in big cities. Yeah, that's one of my favorite things.
He's very specific houses. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know,
if you if you want it outside, because it's definitely
a tropical to subtropical plant, so right, yeah, right, right, um,
And then from there it's I guess it's funny. Are sad?

(18:01):
It depends on your outlooking life. But like if you
search for Okra on page two, page two of Google
search results for me was Captain D's and I clicked
on it and I was like, what do they have
Okrah history? And all it was was we have fried Okra.
Point being there's not much modern thought. No, oh that

(18:23):
is that is we we need we need Okra to
make more of a comeback. And and I think that
if people understood more of the science behind it, they
would incorporate it into their recipes more often, and luckily
enough I have some of that information by jove. But
first I have for you a quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,

(18:54):
thank you. All right, So the science of ochris lime.
I'm so excited. Alright. So, so let's talk about musilage.
Most plants produce a little bit of musilage um, which
is a complex carbohydrate um specifically a polysaccharide for anyone
who's keeping track, And it's a polysaccharide that is linked
up with water molecules. It's really good at holding onto water.

(19:19):
It's useful in the in the roots of plants where
it prevents the tips from drying out and helps them
move through the soil and even helps maintain like a
mutually beneficial microbiome in the soil. And seeds will often
produce it when you expose them to water to help
them both hold onto that water, save it for later,
and uh stick in the soil when they are trying

(19:40):
to germinate. Um some more than others, like chia, seeds
are really intense about it, really intense. Okrah probably produces
mucilage and its fruit in order to keep moist and
cool in the hot climates that it grows in. Science
isn't really clear on that though. Science though, is investigating
okrah musilage for medical purposes as an inexpensive natural gel

(20:04):
that can be used as a drug delivery agent for
nasal medicines. That is so cool. I know a mucilage
can link up with quite a bit of water, um,
which is why just a little bit of okra will
thicken a whole stew. That mucilage is the most viscous
when it's in a peach environment. That's neutral to alkaline,
which means that if you like the goop factor, you

(20:25):
can add a little bit of baking soda to your
stew make it thicker um. Or you can cook okra
into an egg dish pretty tasty. The typical treatment of
battered fried okra is adding alkalinity two and um. They're
usually fried hot and quick, which is how you get
that crisp exterior and a particularly guey interior. But if

(20:46):
you prefer to cut the goop, this alkalinity thing also
means that you can just add a bit of acid
to okra. This is why stewed okra and tomatoes is
a common preparation and why when you pickle them in
vinegar they become smooth and juicy instead of slick. Yeah,
and vinegar based hot sauces like tabasco will cut it
a little bit too. Also, high heat, as you said earlier,

(21:07):
like over a hundred and nine four fahrenheit a k
A nineties celsius will also reduce the viscosity of an
okra dish um. That's probably because heat can d nature
proteins a k A unravel them, changing how they function.
Cutting okra into smaller pieces will also expose more of
the muselage to the heat and acid you're working with.

(21:29):
So yeah, that can help too. And yeah, Lime Sciencelime
Science major major props on this one to my new
favorite blog called The Botanist in the Kitchen for most
of the info in the section. One of the writers there,
by the way, Dr Katherine Preston, highly recommends pairing okra
without like rich spices and chocolate as in like a

(21:49):
mola sauce. Yeah, interest like fried okra pieces animal a
sash Wow to try that. Okra is one of my
like I I confided, I don't know why I was
so embarrassed to share this with superproducer Dylan, but I
got a couple of jinks in me, and I confided

(22:11):
that on my grocery list, I get essentially the same
things every week, and one of them is Okra. Yeah.
I can't even remember the last time I bought it. Heck,
I love it. Like I said, it's one of my favorites.
Um and I just I roasted and if you roast
it high enough heat and you season it correctly, it

(22:32):
kind of tastes like fried okrab. Oh sure, I don't
know why that was one of my I've got to
tell you something. He's braising himself. I buy Okra. The

(22:52):
human mind is very interesting and we do all have
our deep dark secrets. Hopefully not all of them are
ok related, but I don't know. I kind of hope
they are. Maybe Slimer like the Sliber from Ghostbusters. Oh,
I love Slimer. He was definitely not he was less
of a villain in the Car Team. Oh certainly. I

(23:14):
think that was where I learned to love Slimer. And
then when I got old enough to like really pay
attention to the movie m I was like, Oh, that's creepy, yes,
but sometimes I don't know, creepy can be okay, like
the fighting oak grap like the fighting ok yeah, only

(23:35):
sometimes so oh yeah. Incake baby mascot is not my friend.
We'll get to We'll get to him in another episode.
We will, we absolutely will. But in the meantime, this
brings us to the end of this episode and two
kind of slimy. I have this thing, like if we

(23:57):
ever did a super kind of outtakes. I have this
thing where I like panic right before we do this,
and I say the name of the food we've been
talking about, and I almost did it? Did it? You
made it? You made it. Podcasting is like falling off
a cliff and you grab yes constantly and you're just
hoping that you say words, as if we couldn't edit anything. Ever, Well, yeah,

(24:25):
this is essentially live. It's not at all, Becca wrote.
I was listening to your Brie episode the other day
and the discussion about cheese giving reminded me of the
bouquet my husband brought me on our second date, which
is kind of cool because today is Valentine's Dance. When
record this, who knows when it will be when you
hear it but right now is Valentine's dand we met online.

(24:45):
In the course of our early communication, I mentioned that
I loved cheese and I wasn't a huge fan of
flower bouquetes. Well, he took my comments to heart, and
when he came to my door for our second date,
he presented me with a homemade bouquet of baby bell
guda attached to green pipe cleaners. Instead of flowers. He
had brought me a bouquet of cheese. I wish I

(25:05):
would have had the forethought to get a picture of
it before. There was never any question about what my
answer would be when he proposed ten months later. I mean,
a cheese bouquet is spectacular, absolutely, as far as like
edible arrangements, go cheese that's high quality. Get in on
that sdness business opportunities exactly. Melissa wrote, So, I just

(25:29):
listened to your ranch episode and it reminded me of
when I used to work in a cafeteria at my
old university when I was an undergrad. We had the
greatest housemaide ranch that came in a gallon jug and
people would go crazy with it. The worst was pizza Day,
as you mentioned in the podcast, in certain parts of
the country, it is a given that you put ranch
on your pizza. Growing up in health conscious southern California,

(25:50):
I had never been exposed to this until college, and
I found it unnecessarily fatty. People would grab cereal bowls
and fill them with ranch for their pizza. One day,
I used sixteen gallons of ranch to refill the container
at the salad bar. We had about three thousand, five
hundred people eating at that meal. But it's still too

(26:10):
much ranch. Oh man, and he physically reacted as I
was reading that, and then I messed up the line
and had to read it again. I'm not so sure
you didn't do that. I'm fervous. Is the mezzo of me,
oh man. Cereal bowls of ranch? That that, though, is
the college experience, Like strange food things like that to

(26:34):
the stream. Yeah, like that, you know, are weird and wrong? Yeah,
because you can, because you can, because you're in a
what are they called cafeteria and there's just food, and
you're free food for the taking. No one is watching you,
are they joining in or exactly they're encouraging you. Exactly.

(26:57):
I used to just eat bowls of cereal and then
French fries. And ketchup. That's college, isn't it anyway? Thanks
to both of them for writing in. If you would
like to write to us, you can. Our email is
Hello at savor pod dot com. We are also on
social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and

(27:17):
Instagram at savor pod. We do hope to hear from you.
Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and
Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope
that lots more good things are coming your way