Avacados

In my continuing attempt to expand my culinary horizons, I thought it would be fun to pick something that I've used a lot and try to find a new application for it. Since avacados were on sale at the grocery store this past week, I thought that would be the perfect ingredient to try to experiment with.

First, a lot of people don't know how to choose a rip avocado. The trick to getting one that's delicious and creamy is to simply give it a small poke. A ripe avocado should be soft, but not squishy. The outside should be black or dark green and bumpy. If the avocado still has a stem nub on the top, you can flick it off and check out the color of the avocado's flesh. Bright and green means good, while black or dark brown meals over ripe. Of course, if you're not the one flicking the stem bump off, this rule doesn't apply.

Anyway, I went and picked out a nice rip avocado and brought it home with me to experiment. I am a sucker for guacamole, so I thought that would be a good place to start. I mixed up my avocado with salt and lime juice, then added in some diced onion, diced tomato, chopped cilantro and a couple dashes of hot sauce. I know a lot of people use jalapenos in their guacamole, but I am partial to using Tabasco for the heat. Not to mention it instantly distributes the heat throughout the guacamole so you can enjoy it right away. :-)

So then I started wondering where I could use said guacamole. While I pondered this, I enjoyed some with chips.  Ok, so it was more than "some"... it was more like half of it. That was my best brainstorming session to date.

I know I like guacamole on sandwiches, so I started thinking about the next logical step up... hamburgers. Ah, my quest was finally starting to take shape.  I quickly Googled the combination and found that I wasn't the first person to have this idea.  With the knowledge that others had tried the combo and lived to blog about it, I went ahead with my experiment. I wasn't really sure what to put on the burger besides the guacamole, so I went with cheese, guacamole, lettuce and tomato. I omitted the other condiments as well as the pickles because that just seemed yucky. I know my guacamole already had tomato in it, but I really heart those red globes of deliciousness.

The end result was nothing short of a victory. Guacamole not only makes a good sandwich condiment, it also makes an excellent burger condiment. Try it the next time you get a craving for a hamburger and see what you've been missing out on!