Sunday, April 18, 2010

Minimal guacamole

I own Betty Crocker's Best oh Healthy and Hearty Cooking and I've been using it to do calf raises – it's a fine sturdy surface for such activity. On a whim, I decided to look thru it for something to try my hand at, and lo and behold I am inspired by the very first recipe – guacamole.
But as I'm scanning the recipe, the number of ingredients seems too many for such an innocuously simple-looking item. And that got me to thinking about a minimal guacamole recipe.
The lowest-hanging answer would be simply mashed avocados. But is that too simple? Would that not more properly be best described as just "mashed avocados"? [I am ignoring the chips for the sake of this post; the ubiquitous existence of the phrase "guacamole and chips" supports its independence anyways.]
Some ingredients from Betty's recipe we can safely exclude: tomatoes, jalapeños, and pepper. These are definitely optional in my experience.
The contentious ingredients in regards to a minimal recipe: onion, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, and salt.
Starting with just the mashed avocados, which would we add to our skeletal recipe first?
A tentative list:

  1. Salt
  2. Lime juice
  3. Cilantro
  4. Onion
  5. Garlic
Now I need to perform the experiments and collect the data. Who wants to help?

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