Go grab some unripe green tomatoes and fry up a piece of
American culture. (Shutterstock) Go grab some unripe green
tomatoes and fry up a piece of American culture. (Shutterstock)
(Loic Bernard)  Fried green tomatoes are, as far as I know, the
only fried vegetable to be immortalized in the title of a major
American motion picture. But they aren't the most intuitive
fried vegetable to immortalize. (Potatoes come to mind — and no,
I'm not counting Home Fries. Sorry, Vince Gilligan.) Tomatoes
are juicy. They have a lot of loosely contained seeds. They fall
apart easily. All of these traits make them very difficult to
fry compared to, say, eggplant or broccoli.  But let's talk for
a moment about what "green" means. In the phrase "fried green
tomatoes," green refers to unripe tomatoes — tomatoes plucked
from the vine before they've matured to the point of turning
soft and red. There is a very good reason to use these tomatoes,
rather than fully ripe tomatoes, for frying: Unripe tomatoes are
firmer and drier than r