How To Make Traditional Guacamole

The great Mexican sauce is guacamole. It has greater versatility than you might care to image. I tried it on sour dough because it makes a fine spread for whatever you might fancy as well as an authentic thick sauce for pretty much any type of Mexican food. It’s also a good dip for tacos and other crispy nibbles at a party. 

The key ingredients are the avocado, tomato and limes. Hass avocadoes are one of the best varieties to use here. It’s extremely healthy too and makes a fine vegan dish. You need garlic to give it plenty of oomph but just watch your breath. Add some strong chili such as cayenne to give you a bit of a kick or kicking for that matter but it is not an absolute requirement.

The level of chunkiness is a matter of taste as well as texture. You can blend the whole lot to make a pale green sauce after step 2 in the preparation phase or if made by hand it can be left quite chunky. The original was no doubt a good thick sauce with all the pieces showing.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 avocados, (Hass) peeled and chopped
• 1 load of juice from a lime
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup diced onion
• 3 tablespoons of chopped fresh coriander/cilantro leaves and stems
• 2 plum tomatoes, diced. These are also known as roma types. If not just use ordinary like Shirley or Alicante types. They’re all good!
• 1 teaspoon minced or mashed garlic otherwise garlic powder will just about do but do not over do it as it were!
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce!
• 1 pinch ground cayenne pepper or some chili flakes (Optional)

Preparation:

1. Mash the avocados, lime juice, Worcester sauce and salt together in a suitable bowl.
2. Add the tomato, onion, garlic and coriander/cilantro.
3. Add any chili or cayenne but guacamole also looks great with a fine sprinkling of chili powder.

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Commercial Processing and Packaging For Guacamole

Commercial preparations of guacamole are produced using virtually all the ingredients that you see in the ingredient list. Generally, the shelf-life of these preparations will be but a few days because of the need for minimal processing to prevent the green colour from turning to a highly unpleasant brown muddy sludge. Lime juice is our friend here because the drop in pH reduces the rate of all those browning reactions that are occurring in the freshly broken cells of the avocado pulp.

Throughout the process, manufacture of guacamole occurs in chill rooms so that all food reactions are kept to a minimum. This is intended also to keep spoilage from bacteria and yeast to a minimum. Normally, it would be usual to use some form of heat pasteurization to kill off bacteria in particular. Heat processing is not recommended but with the advent of high-pressure processing (HPP) it has become feasible to extend the shelf-life even to a month at least. It is a cold pasteurization method and not a sterilization method that kills microbes. An additional method employed is to pack in vacuum-sealed plastic tubs and pouches or to remove the air and replace any oxygen with carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The presence of oxygen is also an agent that produces loss of colour, flavour and desirable texture. To bolster the antioxidant level in the sauce, product developers add vitamin C and/or citric acid.