ISSUE 81, PRESERVING, Part 1: Dried Okra
Dried Okra
In 1851 an agricultural writer in the June issue of Plough, Loom, and Anvil magazine spoke of four vegetables that had been introduced in relatively recent times to American fields and tables: they were the rhubarb, the vegetable marrow (zucchini—brought by Joel Poinsett from Chili in the antebellum period), the tomato, and okra. The tomato had been grown as a specimen plant by some experimental gardeners in the quarter of the 18th century. It came into culinary use in the 1810s in the South and the 1830s nationally. Okra, brought by enslaved Africans from the Western African region, had been cultivated in huck patch gardens through the 18th century.
Of the four introduced foods, the writer believed the okra as potentially the most valuable, citing its splendid employment in soups. An additional virtue was that okra could be dried, and hence had potential year round use. Indeed, the fact that okra could be dried struck the author as a revelation. He had encountered it in Manhattan’s Washington Market. “We saw an old colored woman with an open bag of something that looked as dry as a basket of chips. It was okra that when in season had been cut into thin slices, and dried as a good housewife dries her peaches. Unpromising as it looked, a quart of it was bought, and with it a knuckle of veal well cracked . . . and a more delicious plate of soup need never be tasted than these materials afforded that day.”
The African genesis of dried okra is attested by ample commentary. If the farmsteads of New England had roof rafters bedecked with winter squash, then the rafters of Gullah Geechee cabins in the Sea Islands boasted strings of dried okra, sometimes so thick they looked liked Spanish Moss growing in the house interior. Dried okra spread out of the African-American community into general public notice in the 1850s. The New-Jersey utopian socialist commune, The American Phalanx, made its preparation a special project. Securing a dwarf okra strain from New Orleans, Solon Robinson and other of the New Jersey Fourierists, grew and dried okra within a horse ride of New York City, and excited the agricultural section of the American Institute Exhibition of 1855 with the specimens they exhibited. [“American Institute Farmers Club,” New York Tribune (January 23, 1855), 3].
During the Civil War the light weight and compactness of the dried slices caused them to be included in many of the soldiers’ relief packages assembled for Confederate troops. They appear repeatedly in donation lists. After the war they are advertised throughout the winter in the food market sections of newspapers.
There were two methods of drying okra: threading and basking. In the former the processor sliced the okra into ¼ inch sections, pierced them with a threaded needle, and strung them in long hangs that gently waved with the wind when fixed to the rafters of a porch or an open window kitchen. Mrs. R. G. McKissack of New Orleans described the other method in late summer of 1933: “Cut okra in thin slices and spread on cloth, put out in sun and let stay until quite dry. When you want to use it put in cold water and let soak until it comes to its nature size. It is then ready for soups, gumbo or any way that fresh okra is used.” [New Orleans Item (August 18, 1933), 6. Late in the twentieth century “drying trays” to be used with ovens became popular. Then, freeze drying could desiccate the entire pod into a crispy vegetable, worthy as a snack item in itself.
In the 1950s freezer technology and the creation of frozen okra as a winter food resource obviated the need for much drying. Yet at precisely this time, dried okra caught the attention of interior decorators and designers of flower arrangements. Indeed, the popularization of red okra in the 1950s can be directly attributed to its use in dried form to serve as imitation candles in all vegetable Christmas displays.