The Guacamole is a Mexican delight that is extremely easy to prepare and filled with health benefits. People of all ages can easily enjoy a nice bowl of Guacamole, with some Nacho chips as an accompaniment.
Guacamole
Mexican Vegetarian Delight
Ingredients
- 2 pcs Avocados Better if you can get American or Mexican grown
- 1 stalk Green Chilli
- ⅓ cup Chopped Onion
- ⅓ cup Chopped Tomatoes
- ⅓ cup Chopped Cilantro leaves
- ½ piece Lemon
- Salt as per taste
Instructions
- Wash the avocados and scoop out the fruit into a steel or glass bowl. Discard the seed.Steel or glass bowl – because we need to mash the fruit with a masher or spoon and you don’t want to spoil or leave scratches on your non-stick or ceramic vessels.
- Mash the Avocados until they are slightly chunky. Do not over-mash them into a smooth pulp.
- (a) Take the Onion – half as suggested in the ingredient list and chop it finely. Do not leave big chunks.(b)Similarly Chop 3/4th of a Tomato into a similar size. Make sure of discarding/ draining the liquid and the seedy part of the tomato away.(c) Take a fistful of Coriander and chop them into tiny pieces as well.(d) Cut the single green chilli into tiny pieces.
- Empty the chopped Ingredients into the bowl where we have kept the Mashed avocados ready.Mix well to ensure consistency of the chopped ingredients spread all over the mashed avocados.
- Squeeze the juice out of half of the lemon into the mixture. This splash of acidity balances the richness of the Avocado.
- This is important. Avocados are inherently bland to taste. It doesn’t have a heavy flavor unlike all other fruits and in addition it is pretty heavy/rich. Hence, we need to supplement it with a good dose of salt. This could be more than what we use for preparing other foodstuffs and at the same time different people would have different tastes. My suggestion would be to sprinkle a full tea-spoon of salt > Mix the mixture well > Taste it > Add more salt if you cannot taste the salt yet > Stop when you are satisfied.
- Serve with some Nacho chips. If not, take that spoon and dig in..!
Notes
Tip:
(a) The most important aspect in preparing a Guacamole is “Ratio”. If any of the ingredients increases then it may result in a lop-sided flavor. So make sure that you don’t add extra tomatoes/onions/lemon juice or chillies. It HAS TO be just right.
(b) One Avocado serves one person.
(c) Picking out Avocados can be tricky. In order to prepare a Guacamole, we need the fruit to be slightly ripe. Extra-ripe means the fruit has already darkened and softened beyond our taste and Under-ripe means that the fruit is very hard inside and we wouldn’t be able to scoop it out completely. It wouldn’t even mash well. Picking the right fruit comes with experience of picking it several times. So don’t fret if you get it wrong the first time. The Avocado needs to press slightly when you buy it from the market.
(d) After scooping out the fruit do not leave it open for too long as Avocados have a tendency to darken when kept in the open just like Apples. The oxidation turns it brown. Hence we need to be quick here.
(e) Choice of Avocados is really important. I have personally experienced that Mexican or American Avocados taste better than the Kenyan or Ugandan ones. However, the former are thrice as expensive than the latter.
