Even if you could make guacamole without fresh cilantro and lime juice, really why bother? Those characteristic ingredients give the distinctive tanginess to this all-time Mexican favorite. And together with the creamy avocado make it maybe the best known dipping sauce in the world.
Oh, and one more thing. Please don’t buy pre-made guacamole sauce for your binge-watching nights, Superbowl weekends let alone grill parties. You’ll see in this recipe how easy it is to make your own stuff. And this is real food with real ingredients. A vitamin bomb, freshness in itself. Why bother poisoning yourself with some canned version of the periodic table then?
Ingredient Tips
To make delicious guacamole, you really need fresh ingredients, and must use cilantro and freshly squeezed lime juice. Optionally you can substitute the latter with lemon juice, but that’s just like a last relief if you can’t get hold of fresh lime. And unfortunately no substitute for cilantro leaves.
Other than this, a delicious guacamole sauce is really a matter of taste. As always, I suggest that you try my version described below in the recipe, it’s pretty amazing (really, and this is not only my opinion). Then you can experiment with your own interpretation.
Here are a couple of tips to make a guacamole that you’ll love
I used a total of 800 grams (28 oz) of whole avocados (with seeds and skin) for this recipe. This resulted in 520 g (18 oz) avocado flesh, about 2 1/4 cups when mashed.
For this quantity you’ll need 2-3 regular tomatoes. Cut them in 4, take out the seeds and dice them. A total of 1 cup of diced tomatoes is what you need.
You’ll also need 1/2 tbsp minced garlic, which equals to about 2 cloves.
I used 2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro leaves, about 5-6 stems. You don’t need the stems, remove the leaves first and chop those.
Change the quantity of the chili according to how hot you prefer your guacamole. If you take out all the seeds it will give extra flavor and freshness to your dish without being too intrusive.
You can serve your guacamole sauce right after fixing it, but it’s best if you leave it in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Guacamole traditionally is eaten with tortilla chips, but you can also serve it with toast or crackers.
As a dipping sauce, you would serve it in a smaller or medium sized bowl. But I find it’s pretty eye-catching to serve your guacamole in the halved skins of the avocados, as you can see in the pictures. This ensures a magnificent presentation for this fantastic food.