- Hi, I'm Becky Striepe from Glue & Glitter,
and today we are air frying some okra.
(upbeat music)
Y'all, this okra is crunchy.
It is flavorful, you can eat it on its own
or you can make a simple creamy dipping sauce
to go with it, it's really up to you.
Whatever you do with it,
I know that you are going to absolutely love it.
Don't panic, all you have to do to make vegan buttermilk
is mix a plant based milk.
You wanna choose a creamy one for this recipe
because that'll clean better to the okra.
So mix that up with just a little bit of vinegar.
In this case,
we're gonna mix a quarter cup of, I used oatmeal,
but you could use soy or almond
as long as it's nice and thick and creamy.
And then mix that quarter cup of milk
with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.
Stir that up and set it aside,
it's gonna thicken and curdle a little bit.
I know usually curdling is not the goal
when you're cooking something, but today it is.
The reason that we're making this buttermilk
is because the acidity from the vinegar
is really going to help.
Not only help the coating stick to the okra
better than it would with just plain soy almond milk,
but it will actually help it brown better.
So definitely don't skip this step.
While your milk is thickening,
slice your okra in half lengthwise.
I know that usually fried okra recipes
cut the okra into rounds,
but this is the preparation that a restaurant here in town
has always used,
and it is some of my favorite fried okra in the whole world.
I really feel like this lengthwise slicing
just changes the whole experience.
There's more okra to breading,
which I really love because I love okra
and it makes it more of like a fry's shape,
so you can easily pick it up with your hands
and dip it in that creamy sauce.
So set the okra aside,
and now it's time to make the coating.
Grab yourself a large bowl
and add a third of a cup of corn meal,
a quarter cup of all purpose flour,
two teaspoons of Italian seasoning,
and then a teaspoon each of garlic and onion powder,
a teaspoon of salt
and three quarters of a teaspoon of black pepper.
I know it's a lot of seasonings,
but we want this coating to be really flavorful.
Mix that altogether,
and then add the okra to the vegan buttermilk
that you just made and toss that to coat really well.
You're gonna end up with a little bit of milk
still at the bottom of the bowl, and that's fine.
As long as everything's nice and coated.
Now it's judging time.
So I experimented with a few different methods for this.
And what I landed on was something in between
doing the okra pieces one at a time
and dumping them all into the cornmeal mixture.
If you do them one at a time,
it'll work great, it just takes a long time.
If you dump everything in,
even if you're careful to leave that extra milk
at the bottom of the bowl,
your cornmeal is just gonna get really gummy
and it's not going to coat the okra evenly,
you'll end up with a lot of clumps, don't do it.
But what you can do is grab small handfuls of okra,
maybe like six or eight pieces at a time,
transfer those to the bowl and then just use your hands
to toss it all together
and make sure each piece of okra
is getting coated in the cornmeal mixture.
Transfer that to a lined baking sheet.
And then once you've got all of the okra coated
and arranged on your baking sheet in a single layer,
put the baking sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes.
I am using the freezer instead of the fridge,
so the chilling time is a lot faster than it could be,
but you really do need to chill it
because that will harden up the coating
so that it doesn't just clump and fall off
under the heat of the air fryer.
After a few minutes,
the coating will have hardened from cooking
and so that'll help it adhere,
but the chilling really does make a big difference.
Once the chilling time is done,
transfer the okra to your air fryer basket
in a single layer.
It's probably going to take you two to three batches
to finish air frying everything,
that's gonna depend on the size of your basket.
My air fryer is pretty big,
so I was able to do two batches, but if you have a smaller,
like single serve air fryer,
you might have to do a third batch.
It's okay if the okra pieces are touching a little bit,
but you don't want them to overlap
because then they're going to stick together during cooking.
Once you have them arranged in that single layer,
give them a nice spray of oil.
You wanna kinda cook them evenly.
I also want to say,
please do not use an aerosol oil sprayer
in your air fryer basket.
It's okay to spray stuff with oil,
propellant oil outside of the basket,
but that mist from the propellant sprayer is so fine
that it can actually damage your basket over time.
As you'll see in the video, I'm using a manual sprayer,
it's kinda like a water gun, but for oil.
Cook your okra in your air fryer for eight to 12 minutes.
I know that's a big range of cooking time
and it's really gonna depend
mostly on the size of your air fryer.
A bigger air fryer like mine is going to cook more quickly
because there's more room
for that hot air to circulate around,
a smaller air fryer might take a little bit longer.
So what you're gonna do is every four minutes
during the cooking time, stop, shake,
and then any okra that looks dry,
give it a little spray of oil.
You don't want any dry chalky pieces at the end of this.
The other thing you're gonna do when you stop
is check the progress of the okra.
It's finished when it's golden brown,
so you can see how quickly it's cooking during each step
and kind of gauge when it's done.
I like during the last four minutes of cooking
to check in every minute or two, that way,
I make sure that my okra is done, but not burnt.
It is pretty easy to burn this,
so do keep an eye on it towards the end of cooking.
Once that first batch is done,
just repeat the same thing with any remaining okra
until it's all air fried and then you're ready to serve.
If you are worried about the okra
getting cold in between steps,
you can transfer the cooked okra back to that baking sheet
that you used to chill it and stick it into an oven
that's heated to 200 degrees Fahrenheit,
that'll keep it warm while everything else is cooking.
I like to serve my air fryer okra up
with a creamy sauce for dipping.
In the video I'm using
one of my favorite quick creamy sauces,
which is just a tablespoon or two of vegan mayo
mixed with a teaspoon or two of yellow mustard.
It's a really simple sauce
that's a great contrast to that flavorful air fried okra.
I hope that this video has answered all of your questions
about how to make fried okra in your air fryer.
If you have any questions that I didn't address,
feel free to drop a comment,
I'm always happy to help.
And don't forget to rate and subscribe, happy cooking.
(upbeat music)