fruit · The Trophy Room
Okra
Botanically a fruit, kitchen-wise a vegetable, and to its fans a beautiful thing — okra is the ridged green seed pod of a hibiscus relative, picked young and tender. Slice it and it turns famously slippery, which is exactly what thickens a gumbo and exactly what its detractors can't stand.
Identifying
- a slender, ridged, tapering green (sometimes red) pod, fuzzy-skinned, picked a few inches long
- rows of small round white seeds inside a star-shaped cross-section
- the plant is tall with large lobed leaves and yellow hibiscus-like flowers
- cut open, it exudes a clear slippery mucilage — the giveaway
Facts
- a true fruit of a plant in the mallow family, kin to cotton, hibiscus, and durian
- the "slime" is soluble fiber that thickens stews — the whole point in gumbo and bhindi
- pick young; over-mature pods turn woody and stringy within days
