Alton Brown's way to fried green tomato perfection

On the prose portion of the recipe for fried green tomatoes in I'm Just Here for the Food, Alton Brown writes, "So, I'm Southern." I must paraphrase, so I'm Appalachian. To me--a mountain gal--fried green tomatoes are the grand poobah of Appalachian comfort food. Since the deep South and Appalachia share common foodways, many dishes cross between us. Even though most people would still call it a Southern food, I still think of this dish as a mountain classic.

The dish, however, had not been one I created at home. My memories of these tomatoes come from my grandmother and great-grandmother kitchen. I hadn't made or even thought of them in years.

But my friend J was talking about making some last week. It is the height of tomato season right now. And little green maters are a-plenty. With my friend's talk of making them and knowing it was primetime for tomatoes, I decided it was a great time to make my own.

Now the type I recalled were coated in cornmeal. That is tradition. My friend J said some times she used cornmeal and sometimes not. She talked about having problems with making them. That's when I told her AB had a recipe in is cookbook. Seriously, I need help. Can you believe I actually knew Alton had a recipe for fried green tomatoes?

Anyway, with my interest piqued I plunged toward making some of my own.

I read AB's recipe and discovered he replaced the cornmeal with Ritz crackers. Hmmm. I figured it was worth giving a try. He also added cayenne pepper. The rest, however was typical.

The best part of the recipe was Alton's explanation on how to get the batter to adhere to tomatoes. Yeah, leave it to AB to explain what's going on!

According to Alton, the reason fried green tomatoes fail is the moisture from to tomatoes. The answer is to place the 1/4 inch sliced tomatoes on paper towels (top and bottom) to get the moisture from them.

Once the tomatoes are dried, salt and pepper them and dip them in a flour and cornstarch mix. The coated tomato then is dipped in an egg wash. Then dipped into the crushed Ritz crackers.

The coated tomatoes then head to a hot cast iron skillet with oil. I used canola. Fry until golden, brown and delicious and drain.

My fried green tomatoes were great! The batter stayed on and knowing you need hot oil for proper frying (something Alton taught me in another show) I turned out a mighty fine plate of fried green tomatoes.