North America · Volume 33, The Rice Coast, the Corridor and the Delta
Lowcountry okra soup
Lowcountry and Gullah Geechee coast, South Carolina
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
- 500g fresh okra, sliced
- 100g bacon or smoked ham, diced
- 1 onion, diced
- 400g tinned tomatoes
- 200g lima beans
- 300g shrimp or crab meat
- 500ml stock
- to taste salt, pepper, cayenne
Method
- Render the bacon or ham in a heavy pot, then add the onion and cook until softened.
- Add the sliced okra and cook briefly, allowing its mucilage to begin releasing.
- Add the tomatoes, lima beans and stock, and simmer until the beans are tender and the soup has thickened from the okra alone, roughly 30 to 40 minutes.
- Add the shrimp or crab meat in the last few minutes, just long enough to cook through, and season with salt, pepper and cayenne.
What a modern chef changes
The okra's own thickening deliberately maximised, no roux anywhere near it
Rung 2
Method
- Slice the okra thinly and add it earlier in the cook than instinct suggests, giving the mucilage maximum time to release and thicken the liquid on its own terms, per Rung 2.
- Dehydrate a portion of sliced okra separately and grind it to a fine powder in a spice grinder, whisking it into the soup at the end for extra body without any of the characteristic sliminess some cooks want to avoid, an idea this chapter offers rather than a documented tradition.