The Guacamole to End All Guacamoles

this year, kris and i have been playing with the idea of preparing and jarring food for christmas gifts.  we like this idea for 3 reasons: 1. we like food  2. everyone has to eat food  and 3. no jobs = no money..  we talked about perfecting salsa a lot and i think it ripened my taste buds for some mexican.  given we have 6 whole weeks until christmas, i’ve got time to play with salsa later.  our local grocer had some nice avocados, so i decided to give guacamole a go instead.

a friend of mine makes a killer guac, and when i was home a couple weeks ago, my mom had some that was excellent.  i decided to play with a few recipes to try to come up with one that was better than them all.

the smooth texture of the avocados is important to make the guacamole more ‘dip-like,’  but chunky guacamole has a really nice, buttery texture and fresh feeling.  the onions should be crisp, the cilantro – fragrant, and the garlic – powerful.  after a lot of chopping, testing, mashing, testing, mixing and more testing.. i’ve found:

The Guacamole to End All Guacamoles

1 ½ avocados – mashed
½ avocado – diced into 1/4″ cubes
1/3 c onion – diced
¼ c cilantro – chopped
1 jalapeño – chopped
juice of 1 lime
1 clove garlic – minced
salt and pepper – to taste
1 TB Cotija – crumbled

1. Slice avocados in half and remove seed.  Scoop out pulp of 3 of the halves and mash well into bowl; stir in most of the lime juice (saving about 1/2 tsp) – set aside.  Neatly dice remaining avocado and mix carefully with remaining lime juice.
2. Chop onion, cilantro, jalapeño and garlic and mix into mashed avacado with salt and pepper.
3. Fold diced avocado into mixture and let stand for 45 mins to 1 hour before serving.  Top with cotija and serve with your favorite tortilla chips.

yeild = 4 servings

… in our household, this was more like 1 serving.