Guacamole Salad
In spite of its ubiquity, guacamole was virtually unknown fifty years ago outside of Texas, California and Florida where the avocado fruit is grown.
Nothing is more quintessentially Tex-Mex as Guacamole and it is popular as both a dip and a salad, with the former only distinguishable by the omission of chopped tomatoes. It seems the Internet is a little confused about that. Many food bloggers post a Guacamole Salad as something with sliced or cubed Avocados along with other salad ingredients. They only exhibit mashed avocado if posting a Guacamole Dip. But this is wrong. The salad was here before long before the dip.
I grew up in West Texas in the 1950s where culinary lines were drawn between three food cultures: Steakhouses, Mexican Food and Barbecue. I think we had only one Italian restaurant and one Chinese restaurant in the town of 60,000 were I lived, but Mexican Food cafes, Barbecue joints were everywhere, and you could get a steak almost everywhere, even for breakfast. I was practically weened on enchiladas and tamales (not to mention barbecued brisket and char-grilled steaks). I can tell you that as a salad, the avocado in Guacamole was always mashed, perhaps left a little chunky, with tomato, onion, jalapeño and served on a small bed of iceberg lettuce, meant to be eaten as a salad.
The dip didn’t come about until the ‘80s when Frito-Lay introduced a shelf-stable jarred Guacamole Dip; about the same time, Wholly Guacamole came out with a fresh, refrigerated version in 1983. So, somewhere along the way, people got confused about what Guacamole is and what it isn’t. And it isn’t Guacamole if your avocados are not mashed. When left cubed, that’s just an avocado salad and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But the only difference between a Guacamole Salad and a Guacamole Dip is that the dip omits the tomatoes. And avocados are always mashed.
To make a great Guacamole, you need fewer ingredients than you think, and the key is to have perfectly ripe Haas avocados. The easiest way to determine if an avocado is ripe is to pull on the stem (which is more like a little navel on the bottom of the fruit). If the stem doesn't come out easily with a little flick of your thumb or finger, the fruit is not ripe. If it comes out easily with very little effort and it's green underneath, the avocado is ripe and ready to eat. If the color underneath is brown, or if the stem is missing, the fruit is over-ripe and will probably have some discolored spots when you open it. Whatever isn't discolored, however, is still good to eat.
The real secret to a great Guacamole other than having ripe avocados is to use fresh cilantro, never dried; fresh lime juice, never bottled; and fresh jalapeño, never pickled or jarred.
Guacamole Salad
Ingredients
- 2 ripe Haas medium-sized avocados
- course grained sea salt
- 1/2 cup red onion, finely diced
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, loosely packed
- juice from 1 fresh lime
- 1 small fresh jalapeno, cored with seeds removed, finely diced.
- 2 medium tomatoes, diced
- 2-3 hard shakes of Tabasco Sauce
- 3-4 grids freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Scoop out the avocado pulp from its rind into a mixing bowl.
- Sprinkle with the course grained sea salt, and then mash to your desired level of consistency. Some folks like their guacamole smooth and creamy; others, like it rustic with discernible chunks of avocado.. But there is no right or wrong way - it's a matter of personal taste.
- Put all the remaining ingredients except the tomatoes into the mixing bowl with the avocados, and then stir well to combine.
- Add the tomatoes in last and gently fold them into the mixture so as to not masticate them.
- Allow the guacamole to rest in the refrigerator about and hour before serving it, which will allow the flavors to amalgamate.
Notes
- To open an avocado, sliced length-ways around the hard inner pit. Twist the two halves in opposite directions to open the two sides.
- The pit will remain in one side. To extract it easily, use a soup spoon. Or, lay the avocado down on the counter, drive the blade of a chef's knife into the pit and twist to dislodge it.
