There are few tastes in this world equal to or better than fresh guacamole.  That is just all there is to it.

I haven’t blogged about food in a while, which is odd because I’ve been cooking a great deal.  I just bought a new 20 lb roaster yesterday (it was on sale for $3.47) and I am anxious to use it.  I might buy a turkey this weekend just to roast something!

Back to guacamole.  If you buy that garbage they sell in the grocery store that is pre-made, you are making a terrible mistake.  Guacamole is so much yummier freshly made and it requires almost no skill to make.  There is no excuse for eating nasty guac.

Here is my simple recipe.

You Will Need:

• 3 mid-sized to large ripe avocados (4 if they are small)
• 1 red onion (which is actually purple)
• 1 bunch of green onions
• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 large red tomato
• white vinegar
• lemon or lime juice
• garlic powder
• salt
• pepper
• chili powder

What to Do

Start with washing the fresh veggies.  Dice the tomato and put it in a bowl.  Strip the cilantro leaves from the stems (this is important!) and then dice the cilantro as fine as humanly possible.  Put it in the bowl with the tomato.  Peel the red onion and use half of it.  Keep the other half for something else.  Dice the half onion, put it in the bowl with the tomato.  Chop the green onions, completely, but not as fine as you did the cilantro and put it in the bowl with the tomato.

Pour about 1 1/2 teaspoons of vinegar over this mixture then dash in about a teaspoon of chili powder and garlic.  If you do not want this spicy at all, you can cut back on the chili powder and garlic or go with a dash or two, taste it, and then add more if you desire.  It is completely based on your own likes.  Stir.

Peel your avocados and put them in a separate bowl.  A quick note on when an avocado is ripe.  It is ripe when, as you hold it in your hand, it dimples, or gives, to light pressure from your finger.  If you are working with hard avocados, that means they are not ripe.  You need to wait until they are ripe.  Peel avocados by cutting through it to the core, then sliding the knife around it so that it is bisected.  Then you pull it apart, pop out the seed and push the hard nasty rind off.  If you need to, use a spoon.

After you peel the avocados, splash in a half teaspoon of the lemon or lime juice and a little salt and pepper.   If you really like garlic, you can put a little more garlic powder into the avocados, but not too much.  Remember this golden rule of cooking–you can always add spices later, but you can’t take them out!  Use a hand blender (I use a Braun-multipractic hand blender which I received as a wedding present many many years ago) to break down the avocados.  If they are ripe enough, this can be done with a fork but I always use my hand blender because it is so much fun!

Fold the mix from the veggie bowl into the avocado bowl and mix well.  Do not blend again!  Guac should be chunky for crying out loud, not creamy.  Creamy guac is gross guac.

Taste it with a tortilla chip and decide what it needs more of (more garlic, more salt, more chili powder) or if you’d like to kick up the heat a bit with some Tabasco.  It’s totally up to you.

Put it in the fridge, but you need to eat this dish within 24 hours, because after that, it turns a nasty blackish gray.  The lemon juice helps with that a little, but that is just what avocados do when they are peeled.  So eat up, and never make too much in one batch.