Easy Guacamole Recipe

This super easy guacamole recipe comes together in just a few minutes and has creamy avocado, lemon, garlic, salt, and pico de gallo. This versatile dish is an excellent condiment for your favorite Tex-Mex dishes and great as a dip!

Taste and Texture

Avocado has a creamy and mild taste, which makes it a great vehicle for seasonings and mix-ins. Its texture will depend on how much you mash it – it can be super creamy or somewhat chunky.

Pico de gallo, which is a mix of tomato, onion, jalapeño, cilantro and lime or lemon, adds some sweet acidity and crunch. And the minced garlic adds a really lovely umami that lingers and can feel almost prickly on the tongue – it’s what really makes this guacamole recipe stand out.

Guacamole Ingredients

This recipe has only five ingredients:

• Avocado: You’ll want to use ripe avocados. I have tips for choosing avocados and how to ripen them quickly if you’re short on time.
• Lemon juice: Most recipes use lime juice, but I like lemon. It has a very similar citrusy taste, but lemon juice is just a tad sweeter. I found this style of guacamole to be common when I was living in south Texas. Always use fresh, not bottled, juice.
• Garlic: This is the prickly umami flavor that lingers on the tongue. You’ll get the best flavor storing peeled whole cloves or freshly minced garlic in olive oil in the fridge (and the infused olive oil is divine).
• Pico de Gallo: A mixture of tomato, white onion, cilantro, lemon or lime juice, and salt. I have a recipe for homemade pico de gallo or you can find it in the produce section of grocery stores in the US.
• Salt: This ingredient is essential, but be careful – add in increments and taste each time as it’s easy to go overboard.

How to ripen avocados quickly

Avocados from Mexico has a pretty in depth guide to this, but here are the bullet points.

• Store them in a paper sack with bananas. Bananas release ethylene gas which gets trapped in the paper sack with the avocados and hastens the ripening process. This can happen as quickly as overnight, so check on them often.
• Submerge the avocados in uncooked rice. This also traps ethylene gas, but is a slower process, taking up to a few days to ripen.
• Place them in sunlight, like on a warm windowsill or counter that gets a lot of sun.

We do not recommend using a microwave, as this only softens the avocado, not ripens. Ripening is what gives it its special flavor, and the texture from an avocado softened in the microwave can turn a bit pasty.

Tips for Making

While this recipe is already simple to prepare, there are a few ways to make it even easier.

Use a fork, pastry cutter/dough blender or potato masher to mash the avocados. The tool you use will determine the size of the chunks left behind, so it’s all down to personal preference. Stop mashing just before the consistency that you want, as mixing with the other ingredients will continue to cream the avocado.

Taste the guacamole after each step to make sure it suits your taste. You might find that you like more lemon juice or more salt.

Place the prepared guacamole in an airtight container in the fridge 15-30 minutes before serving to really let the flavors mingle.

Storing and Serving

Storing guacamole without browning can be a challenge, but in this article from The Kitchn they test common solutions and find the best one. Here are a few options.

Cover the surface with lemon or lime juice. This one achieved the top rating from The Kitchn, for a 10/10 and 9/10 respectively. There was still some slight browning around the edges, but great overall.

Press some plastic wrap over the surface. This one is middling, with some brownness appearing after two hours, and when I personally use this method I find there is a layer of brown the next day.

Use small airtight containers – this is the method I find most effective and that I use personally. The key is to store in smaller containers that are filled to the brim, similar to packages at the grocery store. Once opened, browning will happen quickly, so the idea is to avoid opening until you’re ready to serve. I use the 8oz containers in this set (affiliate) which have flexible lids that are easy to press to the surface of the guacamole.

Ways to serve Guacamole

What else to serve with Guacamole

• Top it with some Chile con Queso and serve with chips
• Serve it with red and green salsas
• Add it to a sandwich to take it to the next level
• Use it to top loaded baked potatoes

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