Fried Green Tomatoes with Creamy Cilantro Bacon Ranch Dipping Sauce

To prepare the sauce/dip:
Blend all ingredients together, taste and add more salt or pepper if necessary. Cover and keep chilled until ready to serve with the tomatoes.

To prepare the tomatoes:
Preheat oven to 250F.

1) Slice tomatoes, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2) In a shallow dish (a pie plate works great), whisk all of the dry ingredients (flour through salt) together.

3) Whisk egg and buttermilk together until well blended and place in shallow pie plate or bowl.

4) In a cast iron skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of canola oil and 1 tablespoon bacon grease over medium high heat.

5) Add a drop of water into the hot grease – when it sizzles you know the oil is ready. Don’t add the tomatoes before this or they will end up soggy, not crisp.

6) Add tomato slices, one at a time, into the buttermilk mixture, turning to coat both sides. Then dredge in flour mixture, coating both sides. Then add the tomatoes into the hot grease. Continue dredging the other tomato slices – but make sure the pan isn’t crowded. I got about 5 slices in my skillet at a time. Decrease heat to medium and cook until bottom of tomato slices are golden brown, about 3-4 minutes, then flip and cook second side until golden brown, an additional 3-4 minutes. Remove tomatoes and place them on a wire rack to drain. Place a cookie sheet on the middle rack of your preheated oven and put the rack with tomatoes on top of it. Keep the tomatoes warm while you repeat the dredging and frying process for the second batch of tomatoes. Placing them on the wire rack helps to keep that nice crunchiness, you worked hard to achieve that and don’t want to spoil it now!

7) Serve immediately with the bacon cilantro ranch sauce on the side. Enjoy!

Notes:
1) Save your bacon grease when you cook the bacon – you’ll use it for the dressing.
2) If you like lots of sauce to dip, you might want to double the recipe for the bacon cilantro ranch dip.