I don’t follow sports yet always know when the Super Bowl is approaching. It seems that in the week before the game, every grocery store puts avocados and tortilla chips on sale. I just bought large, not-yet-ripe ones yesterday, so it seems an apt time to share my guacamole recipe in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.
For shoppers, avocados no longer have a season, as various countries cycle through their growing seasons and ship their harvest to the United States. Because they’re picked while hard and underripe for long transport, I look for unbruised avocados that have dark skin (for the variety) and an intact stem. Once you can easily push the stem free with a fingertip and see bright green flesh underneath, the avocado has hit its peak ripeness. Check for this after you’ve taken the avocado home and let it ripen on the counter for a few days, until it gives slightly under gentle pressure; popping off the stem too early affects the ripening process.

Ripe avocados have the best flavor, especially in a mild dip like guacamole. As I explain in this week’s column, mixing them with onion and garlic that have mellowed and sweetened on the grill enhances their taste.

Learn more about making flavorful guacamole and get the complete recipe for Grilled Onion Guacamole in my column.

Make it, share it.
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Twice as Tasty

I’ve long made guacamole by mixing it in a bowl with a fork. But since I began writing about kitchen tools for various websites, I’ve discovered a few products that have upped my guac game a bit.

Most recently, I wrote about the best grill gloves for Allrecipes. Like too many people, I bought my first grill and oven gloves only after burning myself. I use them indoors too, especially when lifting a hot bowl off of a loaf of sourdough bread or collection of buns midbake. Whether you’re just grilling the onion and garlic for guacamole or regularly cook over open flame, I recommend checking out my grill glove article for reasons you should add a pair to your barbecue collection and some of the best options available.

For The Spruce Eats, I tested and wrote about mortar and pestle sets, from small ones ideal for spices to a large 4-cup granite molcajete that made beautiful, creamy guacamole. I made guacamole in each of the sets I tested and found that regardless of size, the creaminess of avocados mashed by a pestle couldn’t be matched by a fork. If you already own a mortar and pestle, I encourage you to pull it out for your next batch of guacamole, mashing just one avocado at a time if it’s on the small side. You can read about the other ways I use a mortar and pestle and my top picks in this article.

Once you cut into an avocado or mix up a batch of guacamole, keeping it green becomes the biggest challenge. Avocados oxidize as quickly as apples, but the dulling of their green tends to stand out even more harshly. I tested a collection of avocado keepers for The Spruce Eats, including one designed to keep guacamole bright green for days. Even a week after I first made the guacamole and pressed it into this container, it remained green and tasted fresh. If you make a lot of guacamole to eat over a few days, I recommend checking out this keeper. You can read more about it, and the other tools I tested that keep halved avocados green, in this article.

You can find more recipes that use these tools in the recipe index and more of my work off the blog here.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.