Scholars, Farmers Try to Perfect a New Use for a Southern Staple Food

This article is published in partnership with The Food Section.

Tessa Desmond wasn’t getting married last fall, but her coworkers could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The director of The Seed Farm, a 3.5-acre plot for community-engaged agricultural research at Princeton University, had filled her office with hundreds of small gossamer bags, the kind a couple might stuff with tchotchkes and send home with their guests.

But instead of candles or matchbooks, each bag held finger-length pods harvested from one of the nearly 2,000 okra plants that flourished on the farm that summer.

Princeton students soon made short work of the pods, with dozens cracking them by hand and separating out the BB-sized seeds in what promotional material described as “the tactile study break of your dreams.” Some seeds from each plant were saved for next year’s season, while others were reserved for testing. Desmond rewarded the students’ efforts with quirky door prizes, like bags of dried okra from Trader Joe’s and canvas totes emblazoned with the slogan “Don’t settle for being medi-okra!”

The fever for the Southern staple that gripped the Ivy League school traces back to Asheville and okra evangelist Chris Smith. The founder of the Utopian Seed Project and author of The Whole Okra has spent years trumpeting the plant’s versatility. Often pigeonholed as a gumbo thickener and frying vegetable, okra in his hands has turned into cosmetics, paper, tea, and kimchi.

Smith joined forces with Princeton in 2023 to explore yet another application for the crop: okra oil. When grown to maturity and pressed, okra seeds yield a medium-bodied, greenish-golden liquid, rich in unsaturated fats, with fresh vegetal flavor and subtle notes of nuttiness and pepper. He compares it to a fine extra-virgin olive oil, but one infused with the terroir of the South. Unlocking that potential to its fullest, however, will take a combination of crop science, culinary creativity, and farmers willing to try something new. 

Possible or Sensible

Existing okra varieties aren’t great candidates for commercial oil production. Their seeds currently top out at around 21 percent oil content, substantially lower than established sources like canola and peanuts. Smith estimates that content would have to reach about 35 percent for farmers and producers to consider okra a viable oil crop.

To speed along that achievement, Smith in 2021 began crossbreeding 17 high-oil okras from a U.S. Department of Agriculture seed collection. Desmond agreed to grow out the descendants of those crosses at the Princeton farm, and her colleague, professor of chemical and biological engineering Jonathan Conway, is analyzing the plants to identify the most promising offspring.

The partnership is a long-term project. Although preliminary results show that the selected breeding lines are besting their parents in terms of oil content, Smith estimates that stabilizing an okra variety that meets his target will take at least five more years. 

But he points out that other crops have undergone a similar transformation. Wild sunflowers hovered below 30 percent oil content before concerted breeding, starting in 19th-century Russia, brought their cultivated cousins to their current 45 to 50 percent range.

“I used to believe that if something was possible or sensible, then it probably had already been done,” Smith says. “But more recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of things don’t get done, even though they maybe could have or should have been done, and I feel like okra seed oil might be one of those things.”

The Louisiana Experiment

Most of the high-oil varieties Smith started with came from Sudan, part of the East African region where okra was likely first cultivated. But while the plant has long been part of African culinary culture—and, thanks to enslaved West Africans who brought okra to the Americas, part of Southern, Caribbean, and Brazilian foodways as well — there’s no historical tradition of its use for oil.

Clay Oliver, whose Oliver Farm Artisan Oils in Pitts, Georgia, may be the only current Southern producer of okra oil, chalks that omission up to practicality. With relatively low oil content and very hard seeds, he says, okra’s proverbial juice wasn’t worth the squeeze for African growers.

“If you tried to take a mortar and pestle and bust up okra, you’re liable to put your eyeball out,” he says. (Oliver’s modern oil presses can handle okra seeds, but he still has to limit the amount of time he spends processing them to avoid overheating the machinery.)  

Prior to Oliver, notes University of South Carolina food historian David Shields, the biggest push to explore okra oil came in the years after World War II. Scientists at Louisiana State University, with the support of the Memphis-based Wesson brand, processed the plant’s seeds in keeping with the manufacturing ideals of the time to make a clear, neutral oil.

“This ultimately doomed the Louisiana experiment, because in parts of the North, large-scale planting of canola supplied an easily processed, prolific source of culinary oil,” Shields explains. “Since there was no flavor difference between tasteless okra seed oil and tasteless canola oil, the cheaper canola prevailed.”

Oliver’s approach, which Smith sees as a prototype for the region, is much different. Instead of trying to make okra oil taste like any other commodity vegetable fat, Oliver cold-presses the seeds and leaves the oil unrefined to retain its unique flavors. It’s marketed as a premium product—$35 for an eight-ounce bottle—and has found a following among some of the South’s leading culinary lights.

Add Okra to the Rotation

One of those fans is Ian Boden, the chef-owner of Maude & the Bear in Staunton, Virginia. He admits to being confused by okra oil when Oliver first sent him a sample several years ago, but one taste made him an instant convert.

“It’s really delicious. It’s amazing how much of a flavor transfer there is from pressing that oil out,” Boden raves. He even finds the oil to have a similar texture to fresh okra, not slimy but smooth and rounded. 

Boden primarily employs okra oil as a finishing drizzle, like in a pepperoni-braised eggplant with burrata, or as an ingredient in uncooked preparations that preserve its qualities. A fan of layering similar flavors, he recently crafted an okra-oil aioli to top a dish of wood-fired okra, pickled okra seeds, and fried okra.

Demand from chefs like Boden and the cooking public exceeds the supply of okra oil, Oliver says. His own supply chain is a challenge; because no one in the South grows appreciable quantities of okra for seed, he buys from a farm near Yuma, Arizona that has traditionally provided planting stock for home and garden centers. A ton of this seed produces just 25 gallons of oil, estimates Oliver, a much lower yield than other specialty crops he’s processed such as green peanuts, benne seeds, or pecans. 

The research at Princeton aims to help Oliver and other potential oil producers meet their needs much closer to home. Although Smith hasn’t yet floated the idea to many Southern growers, he argues a high-oil okra would be an economically attractive option for those looking to add a low-input “scavenger crop” to their rotation. He also notes okra’s resilience to stresses like droughts and flooding, crucial qualities in the face of climate change.

Meanwhile, Boden and other chefs are working to incorporate okra oil into the culinary vernacular, building public familiarity in anticipation of a more available product. “Friends of mine, if they see it in my kitchen, they’re like, ‘What the hell is that?’” he says. “It’s not something that’s on the tip of everybody’s tongue.”

One day, those same friends might keep okra oil in their own pantries, ready to dress a salad of farmers market greens or zhuzh up a bowl of home-movie popcorn. Perhaps a just-married couple might even send their wedding guests home with small bottles in gossamer bags, unique souvenirs of Southern taste. 

Daniel Walton is an Asheville-based freelance reporter covering science, sustainability, and political news. He was previously the news editor of Mountain Xpress and has written for The Guardian, Civil Eats, and Sierra. Contact him at danielwwalton@live.com.