Guacamole is like chili: Everyone has their own secret, best-ever recipe.
And I’m not here to mess with that. Go ahead and keep making guac your favorite way—I’m sure it’s excellent.
I am here to share with you a little trick for taking your guacamole, whatever your formula may be, to new heights. It’s a trick I learned from a good friend, who regularly hosts me for fish taco night. His tacos are otherworldly, but the star of dinner is always his avocado salsa. A San Francisco native, he uses the recipe from Cindy Pawlcyn’s Fog City Diner Cookbook, which is tucked into the page on Grilled Stuffed Fresh Pasilla Chiles.
Pawlcyn’s avocado salsa calls for the delicate mixing of diced avocado flesh with jalapeño, red onion, scallion, and cilantro—but the real innovation comes in the form of dressing. She has you whisk together 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar with 6 tablespoons of olive oil, plus salt and pepper, and add it to the mixture. The dressing just sort of hangs out in the serving dish, pooling around the salsa. As a result, every bite begins with a hint of delightful, lightly seasoned tang, balanced by the roundness of olive oil, right before you get to the creamy avocado. It has the same layered-flavor appeal as salting a rim, or dipping an artichoke leaf in melted butter.
And to me, it’s been revelatory. So much so that I began using this same tactic not just with delicate avocado salsas (chunkier and less homogenous than guacamole in nature) and avocado salads (like this wonderful-looking one by Melissa Clark), but with any old guacamole I was whipping up. Taking 30 seconds to combine acid and oil, and then pouring that dressing over my guacamole creates that same layered effect I adore in Pawlcyn’s salsa—and even more so, in my opinion, because the mashed texture lends itself particularly well to being coated in vinaigrette.
Here’s my simplest go-to formula, based on Pawlcyn’s original dressing ratio:
Just the Best On the Planet Guacamole Recipe!
My Simple, Go-To Guacamole
View Recipe
Ingredients
| | | | | 2 | ripe avocados | | 1 | lime, plus more as needed | | 1 | teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed | | 1 | shallot, finely minced, plus more to taste | | 1 | jalapeño pepper, diced (optional) | | 2 | tablespoons rice vinegar (unseasoned, or a half-and-half mixture of seasoned and unseasoned depending how sharp you like dressing) | | 6 | tablespoons olive oil | | 1 | small pinch pepper, plus more as needed |
| | | | | 2 | ripe avocados | | 1 | lime, plus more as needed | | 1 | teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed | | 1 | shallot, finely minced, plus more to taste |
| | | | | 1 | jalapeño pepper, diced (optional) | | 2 | tablespoons rice vinegar (unseasoned, or a half-and-half mixture of seasoned and unseasoned depending how sharp you like dressing) | | 6 | tablespoons olive oil | | 1 | small pinch pepper, plus more as needed |
I love to experiment and riff with the vinaigrette component—lime juice, lemon juice, and sherry vinegar all work well as the acid. Sometimes, I dial up the sharpness by reducing the amount of oil or increasing the amount of vinegar or citrus juice. I’ve played around with different spices and chopped herbs based on whatever I have on hand. When I reached out to Pawlcyn to ask how she riffs on her original dressing (for which she uses unseasoned rice vinegar, never seasoned), she said she often uses fresh lime or lemon juice, too. “We [also] do a salad with alternating slices of avocado and papaya. Sauce again on top, often with papaya seeds blended into the vinaigrette so it’s peppery,” she notes.
No matter what you’re working with, it really does take any guac to the next level. And the one after that.
