5 Minute Healthy Party Food: Holy Guacamole!

Our guest writer Jessie (aka mscooksalot) has loved cooking and exploring recipes for as long as she can remember. Passionate about real food, she wants to know what’s in it and where it comes from.  She believes that food is one of the greatest pleasures in life and can transform your experiences from the forgettable to the sublime. 

And this is the perfect recipe  for a sunny soiree. 

Guacamole is a brilliant recipe to have up your sleeve. It takes all of about 5 minutes to put together, tastes amazing and serves as the perfect party food for dipping tortilla chips or crunchy veg into. (A bit like my hummus recipe from a few weeks ago!)

The main ingredient is of course avocados. Hass avocados are the best type and it's worth looking in your local greengrocers for them, but supermarkets sell them now too. They are dark skinned, almost black in colour, with a rough knobbly surface. Greengrocers and delis tend to sell them when they're already ripe, whereas supermarkets tend to sell harder, chilled ones that need a few days at home in the fruit bowl to finish ripening.

Avocados are full of vitamins and minerals such as potassium, folate, Vitamins E, C, and B. They are very creamy (it's all that healthy monounsaturated fat that can also be found in olive oil), and they are a great substitute for animal fats, hence their nickname of "nature's butter". Their creamy, bland texture needs livening up though, with plenty of citrus and other seasonings. Like a dummy, I forgot to buy fresh chillies for this recipe, so I substituted with dried chilli flakes. As always, adjust the spices to suite your own palate.

This recipe will make approximately 1 cup or 250ml, and is best served immediately.

• Ingredients

1 large ripe Hass avocado

1 or 2 limes

1 or 2 cloves of garlic

small bunch of fresh coriander

1 small red onion or 4 scallions

sea salt (I like the flaky kind best)

ground cumin

dried chilli flakes or 1 fresh chilli

• Method

Roughly chop the coriander. Peel and finely chop the red onion. Peel and crush or mince the garlic. If you're using a fresh chilli, finely chop that now too, with or without the seeds. 

Carefully cut the avocado in half and remove the stone. Scoop the ripe flesh out into a shallow bowl.

Add the chopped onion, garlic and coriander to the bowl.

Add a generous pinch of sea salt (about half a teaspoon) and a pinch or 2 of cumin and the same of the dried chilli flakes - if you're using them too.

Roll the lime on the counter first to get more juice out of it, then squeeze the juice into the bowl of ingredients.

Depending on the lime - you may need more than one - aim for about 3 or 4 tablespoon’s worth of juice.

With the back of a fork, mash up the avocado and mix in the other ingredients to combine it all. Don't mash the avocado too forcefully, as it's nice to leave it a bit chunky.

Decant into a smaller bowl to serve.

This is perfect with some salted corn tortilla chips, but PLEASE buy the plain salted ones, not the branded ones covered in artificial flavourings!

Serve immediately with some cold beers. Perfect party food for BBQ season! 

Enjoy!

If you are an avocado fan and are partial to a fancy lunch, pop on over to Jessie's blog for this mouth-watering Smashed Avocado on Toasted Sourdough with Lemon & Sea Salt recipe. Nom. 

Are you tempted to try out this recipe? Do you have any easy-peasy recipes that never fail to impress? We’d love to hear all about them!