Homemade Guacamole

Fair warning: My Homemade Guacamole is mainly unadulterated avocado, lightly seasoned, doused with lime juice, and left a little chunky. Tomatoes, raw garlic, chopped onion–none of these are actually necessary, but feel free to go that route if you want. I don’t, but before you decide my Homemade Guacamole is too boring, you should know that I get asked for the recipe every time I serve it to guests. (Remember that you’re almost certainly serving it alongside salty, tomato-y, and likely garlicky food.) Here’s how I do it:

First, pick out your avocados. Avocado selection is an art, but it’s easy to learn. The avocados we almost always see in the grocery stores around here are Haas avocados, typically grown in California. They are small and have bumpy skin, and are very dark when ripe. The other avocados you might occasionally run across on the Gulf Coast are Florida avocados. Florida avocados are bright green, smooth, and much larger than Hass avocados. Generally speaking, two Haas avocados typically equal one Florida avocado in recipes. If the Haas avocados are especially petite, it may be closer to 3:1.

For either variety the trick to choosing avocados is to find one that yields to gentle pressure at the stem end. So what, exactly, does that mean? I learned to pick up a green avocado, hold it in my palm, and put my thumb right next to the divot where the stem had been, then press firmly. If it might as well be a hunk of granite, put that avocado back. Next pick up a very dark one–uniformly matte black in the case of Haas avocados–and do the same thing. It may be so soft that it’s mushy. Put that back too. Then go through the rest of the pile testing and finding ones comfortably midway between these two extremes. Pleasantly springy avocados are for use today. Slightly firm but ever so slightly yielding is good tomorrow or the next day, put those on the counter. Firmer ones can go in the crisper drawer in the fridge for a week. Really and truly as hard as a rock? Some of those never soften up so skip it.

Beyond that, to make Homemade Guacamole you’re just going to cut the avocado in half, scoop out the flesh, season it, squeeze lime juice all over it, and then, using a fork, mash it to the consistency you prefer. If you need to keep your Homemade Guacamole for a few hours without it turning brown, put it in a container, pat plastic wrap directly on the surface leaving no air bubbles, and stick it in the refrigerator. I can usually keep it appetizing-looking for a day to a day and a half that way.

Yum.