Are you craving a little south in your mouth?

These fried green tomato and pimento cheese stacks are just oozing with southern charm.

I'm Trace Barnett, and welcome to Garden Party.

Today we are utilizing all the southern food groups.

You got your fried green tomatoes, creamy pimento cheese, tangy white Alabama sauce, and lots of smoky bacon flavor.

If that doesn't encompass all the things that Southerners love, I don't know what does.

So first things first, we need to start with our green tomatoes.

And if you're like me, you're probably struggling on whether you should pick them now or wait until they turn red and you don't want this flavor to go away.

So I have washed our green tomatoes here, and I'm just going to remove each end look how pretty that is on the inside.

So when you're looking for green tomatoes, if you're buying them at the farmer's market you want them to be uniform in shape.

No blemishes, no bites, no bruising, nothing like that.

And you want to cut them.

And one fourth inch thick slices, no more, no less.

If you cut your green tomatoes too thick, they're going to act like a sponge and just kind of absorb all of that grease.

When we fry them.

And if you cut them too thin, they're just gonna almost disintegrate when we're frying them and just become a crunchy, hard thing.

And you really want that happy medium in between.

So this is a step you do not want to miss, and you want to take your green tomatoes and you want to line them in a colander over a bowl.

You can do this over your sink as well.

But what we really want to do is we want to pull out all of the excess moisture that's kind of hanging out in our tomatoes, so fit them in there the best way you can.

I usually toss these once.

We're going to let these just hang out.

In their little salty spa experience for about ten minutes.

So about the halfway mark I'm going to just kind of toss these over just to make sure all the moisture is out on the other side.

So while I'm letting these just hang out for ten minutes, let's make our pimento cheese.

Now let's make our pimento cheese.

So any good Southerner knows that you have to have a good pimento cheese recipe.

And I don't vary too much from the classic just because I've had, you know, a little fancier pimento cheese and the tried and true flavors always work.

So let's start with a cup and a half of shredded cheese.

So I'm using just a sharp cheddar today.

And this is going to be the kicker.

I know that there's all those packaged cheeses out there that are already ready to go, already measured.

I never use those for my pimento cheese.

And the reason being is because they pack a little bit of cellulose in there.

Cellulose?

Cellulitis?

Something, sell you something.

So if you use that for your pimento cheese, it's essentially not going to marry together.

It's all going to want to come apart.

Plus, there's just something to be said about how you can control the size of your cheese when you're grating it at home.

Because I really like these really good kind of thick cheese slices here.

I would, you know, throw in just a little bit of white cheddar too.

That looks like about a cup and a half.

Although I don't think you can ever have too much cheese.

Give our cheese a little toss here.

And pimento cheese is one of those great dishes that you can just make up and have hanging out in your fridge, too.

So half a cup of cream cheese, a fourth a cup of mayonnaise.

I really love a pimento cheese that just seems like it's swimming in mayonnaise.

Of course, you can always adjust if you think your pimento cheese needs a little bit more oomph Give that a good stir.

And it's already looking kind of how I want it.

I like mine fluffy, almost like a cloud, so I'm not going to over stir it here at the beginning either.

So to our cheese let's add the pimentos the star of the dish.

I have drained these and I've also gave them just a tiny chop.

You want about half a cup.

And I'm just tossing that to kind of coat everything together.

Now I'm going to add just a little bit of garlic powder, salt, pepper just to round out that flavor there.

Garlic didn't want to go in, wanted to stay with the plate.

Look how pretty that's coming already too.

Now like I said, you don't want this to form like a big clump or ball in your bowl.

You want it to be light, fluffy, airy and ready to go in a stack.

Give this a taste here.

Of course don't tell anybody I'm eating with my fingers.

Perfect.

All the flavor you want in pimento cheese.

And it's just so easy.

Now let's fry some tomatoes.

I guess you know everybody just wants to jump the gun and just have that tomato.

Like I see the green tomato.

I've worked so hard.

I've been nurturing this plant since the beginning of January.

I always look at them like oh is it the perfect size?

Should I get it now?

Should I wait?

Just always pull it.

I love it because it's your first taste of, like, summer.

It's almost like you're going from spring into the hot months, it's that fresh tomato flavor there.

And you know, the tomato flavor of a green tomato's completely different from that of a ripe one.

You know, you've got that tangy, kind of smoky flavor in the green tomato, whereas, you know, it's sweet and soft with the ripe tomato.

And I really love the texture of green tomatoes, too.

So the ten minutes are up and our green tomatoes are ready to go into our batter.

So I'm going to discard all of that water there.

And it's just amazing how much water can come out of a tomato.

So it's pretty simple and straightforward when you're battering a green tomato.

And I use this same batter when I'm doing squash, zucchini, any kind of vegetable that I'm frying.

So in our dry bowl here, I have a cup of cornmeal and half a cup of flour.

And in this little happy plate here we have a little garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper.

And then we have a little bit of smoked paprika.

Papa, it's hard to say paprika.

And sprinkle that in there.

All that's going to give us a little bit of color.

And it's also going to give us a lot of flavor.

It just don't want to go.

And this is the secret ingredient here which will give us that really light crunchy almost tempura effect.

In our batter.

And this is just a couple tablespoons of cornstarch directly into our dry bowl there.

All right.

So you want to stir this just to incorporate everything.

All of those really good spices in there.

Flour cornstarch looks perfect to me.

And then we're going to pour a cup of buttermilk into our other bowl.

And you know this is one thing in the South.

So a lot of people will dredge theirs in buttermilk and then into the dry.

Or you can simply just take them and put them directly into the batter itself.

I'm a person who really loves a good crunchy batter, so I'm definitely a dredger in buttermilk and then into the flour.

So we want to coat both sides of our green tomato really nicely in the buttermilk.

And I'm just going to kind of shake that.

And then we'll put it right into our dry ingredients here and just give it a pat.

Because that's really going to ensure that we're not going to lose any of our all the good stuff on the outside.

And that looks like the perfect battered up and ready for the oil, green tomato.

Now let's do them all!

All right.

Let's get these 'maters in some hot oil for a few minutes.

Now we're at the stove and let's fry up.

These 'mater masterpieces here I've heated some oil.

Just regular old frying oil in a cast iron skillet.

If you don't have cast iron - - I, I have no words if you don't have cast iron, stainless steel is another great option and you want just enough oil to just cover the bottom of your pan, you don't really want them floating around in the oil here, so I'm just going to fill up our pan and we want to let these cook 2 to 3 minutes on each side.

We really are just looking for a good golden brown color and for the batter to really crisp up here.

Now if you put too much oil in your pan, it's just going to cause them to get soggy.

They're also going to cook a little bit more unevenly.

Evenness is the really important factor when you're cooking fried green tomatoes.

All right.

Now's the time that we flip our tomatoes and use a good pair of tongs for this.

So you have a lot of support.

Oh my God they look so pretty.

Let's take these tomatoes out.

And the key here is you don't want soggy fried green tomatoes.

That is just not acceptable.

So be sure and use a wire rack.

And I've lined it on the bottom with just some parchment paper or paper towels if you have them.

And just set your tomatoes on that so they're not swimming around in all of the grease that's in the bottom of that pan.

All right.

While we're letting the second batch cook, those are cooling let's go ahead and make our sauce.

Let's make our Alabama white sauce.

So we'll start with a mayonnaise base.

And this is just half a cup of mayonnaise a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.

That's just going to help break down and marry everything together.

Get a little Dijon mustard.

A little prepared horseradish and simple seasonings.

The sauce is super simple and easy to make.

We've just got salt, pepper, and then just a little garlic powder.

And now just a little lemon juice.

Really good to have that bright citrusy flavor.

Use a whisk and give that a good stir.

We'll put in a little more lemon juice.

So this is a great thing to make up ahead of time.

It stores super well in the fridge.

Just give that a taste exactly where we need to be.

I'm going to pop this in the fridge, let it hang out just until our tomatoes are ready, and then we will assemble our stacks.

So all of our components for our stacks are ready.

And now is the time to layer them.

So let's start with a green tomato first I'm going gonna put that directly on the bottom.

And let's put a generous dollop of pimento cheese.

That don't quite look generous enough to me.

And let's top that with another fried green tomato.

And just a little bit more pimento cheese.

And to go big or go home Let's Just add one more fried green tomato.

And let's just let all of that marry together with our Alabama white sauce.

So I'm just going to drizzle some of that directly on top.

Top it with a little chive and a little bit of crumbled bacon.

You can also do slices of bacon too, but I really like the crumble.

Let's garnish it with just a little pretty chive blossom And there you have it.

That's like southern architecture dish.

All the food groups, everything you want and crunchy, creamy deliciousness all stacked into one Let's dive into our masterpiece.

It's almost too pretty to eat alright, here goes I'll get some pimento cheese in there too.

It's almost just like overwhelming.

You got everything you want in there.

All the crunchy, all the pimento cheese.

It's like everything in the South all stacked in a stack.

Are you craving a little south and your mouth.

238 00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:17,695 Where's the flyswatter.

Are you craving a little south in your mouth?

There's a gnat this time.

Oh, it was waving better.

Dun Dun Dun Think we're good.

Today this dee- dish.

Oh my God.

And now y'all just sit here.

Just watch me cut.

I was going to do that toward the camera.

And then my hands are greasy.

So let me do it again.

I love butter milk.

I drank two cups last night.