There are "Fried Green Tomato" varieties that allegedly hold up well in the frypan. Sold by many. Park, Reimer, etc. Google is your friend.

Thanks! does anyone else have a favorite?

^^ Ditto :-) And any green cherry tomatoes make wonderful pickles!!

I quite like green tomatoes, which is a good thing as our short cool summers here often lend themselves to a quantity of unripened tomatoes at the end of the season - green tomato relish, green tomato pie, green tomato ketchup, etc........ :-)

Agree. No need for any special variety for making them. Any slicer type works just fine.

Dave

thanks everyone.

I remain a bit perplexed about fried green tomatoes, and collards for that matter, as food staples of southern living. Down here, the growing season is so long, we almost never end up with green tomatoes that we can't ripen, and collards are notoriously deep-freeze tolerant and hot-weather intolerant. Why aren't these things food staples of *northern* living? Now other southern food traditions are, from a climate perspective, easier to understand -- peanuts, rice, squash, okra, black-eyed peas, peppers, etc.

Just musing ....

Maybe the abundance of tomatoes led to boredom with red ones? So they invented new ways to use the fruit?

Now, that's a possibility. When you are overloaded with red tomatoes, there is some incentive to pick green ones.

Also fried foods are more of a tradition in the south. I grew up on pan fried potatoes. Fried chicken was for Sunday dinner when kin folks visited. I got the neck and back.

No I just love fried green ones and have picked them before becoming red. I was just curious what others (if any) grew for fried green ones. As far as collards, this will be my first year trying those, I do love them but have never tried a spring or fall garden, and didn't know they were heat tolerant? excited!

Good point about fried foods. Collards are a green that southerners traditionally fry. I don't use them that way, though. While you don't see fried lettuce, fried cabbage (which is also a cool-climate vegetable) is a southern dish. In fact, cabbage as a green is more a northern dish, though southerners do like their slaws.

"Beans and greens" is a southern specialty, and the greens are collards or kale, which are cool-season veggies.

Collards are generally heat INtolerant, Etta. That's what I said. You can nurse them through a hot southern summer, but they'll tend to bolt. I plant out in October and harvest them through spring.

collards were popular in the south, because the old type of cabbage was not reliable in heading. Also when saving seed, the cabbage tended to revert to a collard as Burpee reported in the 1888 catalogue. Brassicas, onions, carrots, English peas etc are excellent winter crops for the south ( zone 8 -9) Just pulled a bushel of rutabagas. The mustard and collards also survived the last cold snap. Unusually cold here this winter.

Etta, as dan brought out, you'll want to aim your collards for fall through spring. You've missed the fall planting date, but in your climate, collards should make it through winter just fine. You may even be able to start them even now for harvest throughout the spring, even early summer.

Oh, and while lettuce may not fry well, that doesn't stop southerners from getting it as close as possible lol. 'Wilted' lettuce, or 'wilted' greens are delicious. If you haven't heard of them, look it up and try it.

And before I moved to Tennessee, I'd never heard of frying sweet potatoes. They were strictly oven cooked where I grew up. Here in Tn. they're often steamed/boiled - then fried - in the saute pan.

I should add that last summer, when I was removing my collards (2-inch trunks!) one was just too hard to dig up without disturbing things around it. So I hacked it off near ground level and left it. Presumed it would just compost. And then ... it started to sprout! The first leaves were oddly greenish, but as it matured and increased in size in the late summer and fall, it started to look like a normal collard plant. So the lesson seems to be that you can perennialize collards. Hack them off when they bolt in the summer, and just wait for them to come back. I have a bed of collards elsewhere, so I'm drowning in collards right now. Not entirely unfortunate because I love collards. Sorry, getting off-topic here. But fried green collards are somewhat relevant to fried green tomatoes.

Wilted greens? Sounds like my mid-summer swiss chard.

Ahh I had no idea collards would go through winter!! To be able to garden year round!!! I’m still learning a lot

Cabbage not southern? Lord that is a staple in this house! Both fried and boiled! (Fried meaning cook with out batter just sautéed in bacon)

In your neck of the woods, collards will grow handily throughout the winter. They sneer at frost. I find them to be one of the easiest vegetables to grow. Be sure to spray with BT in the spring to avoid cabbage moths. Otherwise you'll be eating wholly holey collards.

"Otherwise you'll be eating wholly holey collards."

LOL!!