Fried Green Tomato BLT with Homemade Pimento Cheese

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This Fried Green Tomato BLT combines crispy fried tomatoes and bacon with the perfect Southern sandwich addition, homemade pimento cheese. I dare you to try and find a better bacon lettuce tomato sandwich than this ultimate Southern BLT!

A while back I made a fantastic Southern-style chicken sandwich on the griddle… It had a perfectly griddled chicken breast, a quick Alabama white sauce, and a delicious homemade pimento cheese.

And ever since I made that awesome griddle sandwich, I’ve been wanting to make another batch of that delicious Southern-style cheese spread. So when we decided to dial up the flavors of a classic BLT sandwich, we knew that our jalapeno pimento cheese recipe had to be incorporated somehow.

In fact, the crispy fried green tomatoes on this BLT probably share the spotlight with the pimento cheese. It’s hard to pick which component of this griddle sandwich that we liked more. The creaminess and flavor of the pimento cheese perfectly balanced the crispiness of the fried green tomato, so I’d definitely recommend making both of these Southern staples for the ultimate BLT sandwich!

And then call and let me know what time for lunch…

Here’s how to make your new favorite BLT sandwich:

Ingredients for Fried Green Tomatoes BLT

This Southern BLT sandwich takes quite a few ingredients… more than just bacon, lettuce, and tomato. But remember, you’re making not one, but two Southern delicacies from scratch – fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese.

Here’s what you need for this epic griddle sandwich:

For the Fried Tomatoes

The fried green tomatoes start out with a basic 3 part dredging station. To make the tomatoes for your BLT you will need:

• Green tomatoes. I prefer to use the tomatoes that have just a tiny bit of reddish-pink color on them.
• Flour.
• Eggs.
• Hot sauce.
• Panko breadcrumbs. The combination of panko and fish fry mix is perfect because you get a little extra crunch!
• Fish fry mix. It may say “fish fry mix” on the package, but don’t let that fool you! I use the Louisiana Fish Fry Products brand of fish fry mix to make a wide variety of fried foods, including fried okra and fried green tomatoes. You can use the New Orleans style or the Cajun Crispy variety, but I would not recommend using their beef battered mix for this recipe.

For the Pimento Cheese

If you’re going to add some pimento cheese to your BLT sandwich (and you definitely should), then you can either use your favorite store-bought pimento cheese or make your own. Here are the ingredients you need to make my awesome homemade pimento cheese:

• Freshly shredded cheeses. We used a blend of sharp cheddar, pepper jack, and smoked gouda cheese – and we grated them ourselves, which I highly recommend for making your own pimento cheese spread.
• Butter. Either salted or unsalted butter works with this recipe, but I would definitely stay away from margarine. If you use salted butter, go easy on the amount of salt that you add to the cheese spread.
• Cream cheese.
• Mayonnaise.
• Diced pimentos. If you can’t find jarred diced pimentos, then you can substitute diced roasted red peppers. Pimentos are actually a type of red pepper, and the jar that we used (in the photo above) specifically said “pimentos” on the ingredients label.
• Onion.
• Jalapeños. We prefer fresh jalapeños over pickled jarred jalapeños for this recipe.
• Seasonings. We used garlic powder, ground cayenne pepper, and a little S & P.

In addition to the ingredients listed above for the fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese, you will of course need your choice of sandwich bread and bacon. Can’t have a BLT sandwich without those!

How to Make a Fried Green Tomato BLT Sandwich

This ultimate BLT sandwich take a few more steps to make than a traditional bacon lettuce tomato, but it’s absolutely worth the extra effort. Here’s how to make my wife’s new favorite griddle sandwich:

Making Homemade Pimento Cheese

The pimento cheese is very easy to make, especially if you use a hand mixer to incorporate all of the ingredients like I did. The most time consuming part of the cheese spread is grating your own cheese blocks, but I would definitely recommend taking the time to do so, because your pimento cheese will be smoother and creamier.

Once you have all of your ingredients prepped, just add everything to a large bowl and use a hand mixer or spatula to mix well.

Your pimento cheese should look something like this when you’re done. Of course, the color of your spread may vary based on the types of cheeses that you used. I used about equal parts of yellow and white colored cheeses, which is why my spread looks lighter than some you may be familiar with:

Refrigerate the pimento cheese for about an hour just to marry all of the ingredients together. Then, you may want to take it out of the fridge about 20-30 minutes before serving so that it can soften up just a bit so it’s easier to spread on your sandwich bread.

This recipe makes about 5-6 cups of pimento cheese, but you can store any leftovers in a covered container in the fridge for up to a week. Make pimento cheese sandwiches, serve the spread as part of a charcuterie board, or use it as filling for smoked pig shots or bacon wrapped stuffed jalapeno poppers.

Cooking the Bacon

When the pimento cheese is done, start cooking the bacon next. I chose to cook the bacon for my BLT sandwiches first, because I wanted to fry the green tomatoes in the excess bacon grease on the griddle… Don’t forget – griddle cooking is largely about time management and planning the order of your cook.

For more tips on cooking bacon on the griddle go here. I used thick cut bacon for my fried green tomato BLT, but any bacon will work fine.

When the bacon is done cooking, transfer it to paper towels to drain and cool. Leave most of the leftover bacon grease on the griddle to use when frying the tomatoes for your BLT.

Prepping the Green Tomatoes

While the bacon is cooling and draining, start prepping the green tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in slices that are about 1/4″ thick like this:

Then, prepare a dredging station to batter each of the tomato slices. To batter the green tomatoes, you will need these three wide-bottomed bowls:

1. Flour – About 1 cup of all-purpose flour with about 1 teaspoon each of salt and pepper
2. Egg Wash – Two eggs beaten with 1-2 tablespoons hot sauce
3. Panko and Cornmeal Fish Fry Mix – About 1/2 cup of Japanese-style panko breadcrumbs and 1/2 cup of fish fry mix, mixed together

Once your dredging bowls are set up, just follow these steps to bread the tomato slices:

Add one tomato slice to the bowl of flour first, turning and rolling it over to be sure that all sides are evenly coated. Shake off the excess flour, then transfer the floured tomato to the egg wash bowl. Dunk in the egg wash so that the tomato is evenly coated, and drain off the excess just a bit. Then, transfer the tomato to the third bowl with the panko fish fry mix. Coat the tomato evenly in the fry mix, and transfer to a wire cooling rack.

Continue battering all of the tomato slices. Then, you’re ready to fry the tomato slices in the leftover bacon grease on the griddle. Yum!

Cooking the Fried Green Tomatoes

The next step is to shallow fry the battered tomato slices in the leftover bacon grease. You can use your spatula to direct the residual grease towards the corner of your griddle to create a “pool” of sorts. If you time things correctly, your griddle (and therefore, your bacon grease) should still be hot and ready to fry the tomatoes.

If needed, you can also add some of your favorite cooking oil to the bacon grease for frying.

Just add the tomato slices to the grease, taking care so the grease or oil doesn’t splatter up on you. Your griddle should look something like this:

Then, just fry the tomatoes on the first side for about 2-3 minutes, or until they turn a nice golden brown color on that side. Carefully flip to the second side and continue to shallow fry for an additional 2-3 minutes:

When the tomatoes are done frying, sprinkle each slice with a pinch of salt, and transfer them to a wire rack to drain a bit.

Toast up your bread on the griddle, and then you’re ready to build the perfect fried green tomato BLT sandwich!

Spread on as much of the homemade pimento cheese as you like, top with the crispy fried green tomatoes and bacon, and maybe add a romaine lettuce leaf just so you can say your got your greens for the day!

The combination of the toasted bread, the creamy and flavorful pimento cheese, and the salted crispy fried green tomatoes on this BLT sandwich is absolute perfection! Definitely a restaurant-quality sandwich at home!

Fried Green Tomato BLT Recipe

Trust me, you’ll definitely want to add this ultimate BLT recipe to your list of must-make griddle sandwiches! Print the recipe card down below to save it for later: