One day when I was looking for tortilla bread in the grocery store, I was standing in front of the shelves with “Tex-Mex” products. I rarely buy any of these products, but this evening I was short on time. And the tortilla bread you can find is quite decent.
My eyes fell on a little paper bag with the words Guacamole seasoning mix. I picked it up and read the table of contents.
It contained 19 ingredients and additives. That’s more than there are ingredients in ordinary guacamole altogether.
The selling point was that it was so much easier to mix guacamole with this spice mix.
How hard is it to mix guacamole? You place avocado, coriander/cilantro, lime juice, chopped onion, garlic and jalapeno, and some salt in a bowl and mix it with your stick blender to required consistency.
Now, I don’t claim that this is the optimal way to make guacamole.
But it’s much better than using a seasoning mix. It’s just as easy, and you will get tastier guacamole with natural flavors. And you avoid any useless additives.
So please don’t buy this kind of product. Please?
Try this recipe instead. It requires a little more effort, but it will give you truly great guacamole.
Before we start, there is one thing I would like to mention. I know it’s obvious, but I’ll say it anyhow.
Only use ripe avocados.
Don’t try to make guacamole on any of those green and unripe ones. You will only be disappointed.
Why do I even mention this? Because I’ve been served such guacamole. And it’s not fun.
But how do you know that your avocado is ripe?
It can be a little hard to tell if an avocado is ripe. You don’t want any overripe either. Such avocados will only turn your guacamole into a brown disaster.
So how do you know if the avocado is ripe enough, but not overripe?
The first thing to check is the color. If it’s still very green is probably not ripe yet. Go for the ones with a dark brown color.
Take one in your hand and squeeze gently. If the avocado yields to the firm, gentle pressure you know it’s ripe. If it doesn’t yield but feels hard instead, it needs a few more days to ripe.
On the other hand, if it feels mushy and very soft, it’s probably overripe. Overripe avocados sometimes also have indents on the surface. It looks, well, a bit rotten.
You can speed up the ripening process by the way. Just place your avocado in a paper bag with an apple or banana for 2 to 3 days. Apples and bananas emit ethylene gas naturally, which speeds up the ripening process.
But let’s get back to the guacamole. Put white onion, garlic, salt, and jalapeño into a mortar and pestle. Add some coriander/cilantro leaves and mash everything into a paste.
Dice two avocados and mash them together with the paste to preferred chunkiness (real guacamole shall always be a bit chunky so don’t use the stick blender for this recipe).
Add some lime juice and make a taste test. Try to find a balance between the salt, heat from the chili, and the sourness from the lime. That’s it.
It’s not harder than that to make great guacamole.
If you want to add chopped tomatoes, please feel free to do that. But whatever you do, don’t add any sour creme or creme cheese. That must be considered to be a deadly sin, and you risk being lynched by an angry mob of Mexicans and other people who love this delicious dip.
But how much is enough? I choose to quote Jonas Cramby, a Swedish food writer to answer that question.
“If you are unsure of how much guacamole to do, it’s better to do too much than too little. You can’t make too much guacamole. It has never happened.”
Chunky guacamole
Ingredients
- 2 avocado Be sure that they are ripe.
- 1 tabelspoon white onion minced.
- 1 tablespoon jalapeño or more if you prefer more heat. Minced.
- 1 glove garlic minced
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 0.5/1 cup/dl coriander leaves/cilantro roughly chopped roughly chopped.
- 1-2 tablespoon lime juice
Instructions
- Mash onion, garlic, chili, coriander and salt into a paste. Use a mortar and pestle or a fork on a cutting board.
- Cut the avocado into pieces and add to the paste. Mash coarsely.
- Add lime juice to preferred taste.
