Easy Guacamole Recipe

I learned to make guacamole from a friend of mine who was lucky enough to grow up with an avocado tree in her backyard. Over time, I've toyed with the recipe and, in my opinion, I've perfected it. To me, the most important (and most often overlooked) ingredients are cilantro and lime juice. Also, I like my guacamole to be chunky, so I rough chop all of the vegetables and make sure that they can hold their own when mixed into the avocado.

Ingredients:

2 ripe avocados

1 medium/large tomato

1 small onion (I like red onions to add the purple color)

1 or 2 limes

1 bunch of fresh cilantro

1 clove of garlic

Salt, ground cayenne pepper

Procedure:

Halve the avocados, dice each half while inside the skin, then scoop out into a medium mixing bowl, setting pits aside. Mash the diced avocado with spoon. Squeeze the juice from half a lime over the mashed avocado. Mince the garlic clove, and stir into avocado mixture. Rough chop the onion and stir into avocado mixture. Dice the tomato and stir into avocado mixture. Chop the cilantro (leaves only) and add to mixture until you are satisfied with the taste (I usually add at least half of a normal-sized bunch of cilantro from the grocery store -- probably 1/3 cup or so). Squeeze another half of a lime (or a whole lime) over the mixture and stir it all together. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve with tortilla chips.

When it's all mixed, I often add more lime. If stored over night, the avocado can turn brown. Lime juice helps prevent this, and you can also put an avocado pit back in to store it and help keep the green color.

Preparation time depends on how fast you chop. This recipe should make about 2 1/2 cups of guacamole, depending on the size of the vegetables.