The Complete Guide to Cooking With Okra (2024)

What is okra?

There’s plenty to love about okra; it’s nutritionally dense, adaptable to multiple cooking methods, grows like magic, and carries important cultural significance. Okra is high in vitamin C, and rich with heart healthy antioxidants and the gel it excretes contains soluble fiber and is purported to help prevent heart disease.

Okra, a plant of the mallow family, comes with some impressive relatives — hibiscus, cotton, and cacao to name a few. It’s grown in tropic and subtropic regions throughout the world, from Pakistan and India to Japan, and Ethiopia. Its origins are unclear, but it’s believed okra first took root in West Africa before spreading to the middle east and beyond. Later, through the transatlantic slave trade, okra spread to the United States, Brazil, and the West Indies.

What does okra taste like?

Every part of the okra plant is game for cooking and eating.The cream-colored flowers, which resemble hibiscus and have a fleeting one-day existence, have a nutty, asparagus flavor. They can be used raw in salads, cooked in stir-fry dishes, or stuffed and fried as you might a squash blossom. The leaves (as well as the blooms) are sometimes added to soups and stews as a thickening agent. The leaves can also be used in salads and stir fries. Seeds, harvested from mature pods, can be dried and ground into flour or brewed like coffee. But it’s the young, tender pods, with their grassy, green bean-meets-eggplant taste, that get most of the attention in recipes.

How to cook okra

Okra pods have tiny, fuzzy spines, although some varieties have been bred to minimize them. The spines can irritate skin, so wearing gloves during prep is a smart move. As they mature on the plant, okra pods will grow longer but also toughen and become especially fibrous, so it’s best to select younger, small (2-3 inch), tender pods. Avoid any pods that have started to blacken or are dry. Fresh okra keeps for two to three days, refrigerated. Store it, unwashed, in a brown paper bag or wrapped in paper towels to inhibit moisture and mold growth.

The slippery liquid that okra pods contain is called mucilage, and the gel-like liquid has thickening properties that are coveted for making stews like gumbo. How much the mucilage is accentuated will depend on the cooking method used to prepare the okra.

Cook okra low and slow and you’ll get maximum mucilage that adds a silky mouthfeel to dishes like gumbos and stews.

Fast and piping hot preparations like roasting, frying, and grilling deliver especially crisp outer skins and tender centers with heightened grassy flavor. Try this recipe for Crispy Okra Salad, which features fried okra spiced with garam masala in a salad of fresh tomatoes and onion, or Crispy Snacking Okra, where a hot cast-iron skillet transforms okra into a crunchy, chiplike snack.

Stir-frying and sautéing (as in this stir-fried okra with tomatoes and spices) will yield lightly crisp pods with a juicy interior.

Pickling (as in our Hot Pickled Okra recipe) almost completely abates okra’s viscosity.

Is okra a fruit or a vegetable?

Although usually treated like a vegetable, okra pods are technically a fruit that develops after the plant’s brief flowering stage. The pods develop rapidly and are ready for harvest within two days and by Day Five they’ve likely over matured. Okra color varies, depending on variety, from pale green, silvery green, red, burgundy, and bright green. Once cooked, all okra varieties turn green.

The okra varieties shown here were shared with Food & Wine by the Utopian Seed Project, a nonprofit that cultivates and disseminates seeds for heirloom fruits and vegetables, including over 125 varieties of okra.

1. Puerto Rico Everblush:Bred from a Puerto Rican variety called Puerto Rico Evergreen, the long, thin, ridgeless pods have a sweet pea flavor.
2. Ultracross:This composite cross of 85 different kinds of okra is a grab-bag for gardeners; you never know what you might get.
3. Nkruma Tenten:The name for this towering okra from Ghana means “tree okra.” It has dark green, mucilage-rich pods.
4. Hill Country Red:Thought to have been cultivated in Texas Hill Country, this okra has plump, spineless pods with deep ridges.
5. Essoumtem:Essoumtem okra produces pods that are short and stubby, light green in color, and lightly ridged.
6. Red Burgundy:The most widely grown red okra variety in the U.S., Red Burgundy was originally bred at Clemson University.
7. Aunt Hettie’s Red:This burgundy-colored okra plant yields small, glossy, ridged red pods with terrific flavor.
8. Candle Fire:These rounded red okra pods are prized for their great taste and tenderness, and for their resistance to high heat and disease.
9. Sherwood Red Okra 98:The pods of this okra are relatively low in mucilage and remain tender even when large.
10. Mr. Bill’s Big:This rare North Carolina cultivar sends forth fat green pods with a satisfying, buttery texture.