A Healthy Guacamole Recipe – Loving Avocados

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Guacamole – not Turkish food at all. Mexican, in fact.

But in the winter months, on the fruit and veg stalls around Fethiye fish market, the big Tuesday market and the Sunday market in Çalış, avocados are more prevalent than usual and they are lovely and ripe!

And soft, ripe avocados make for a perfect guacamole recipe!

Why would we want to be making guacamole when there are so many Turkish recipes to experiment with, eh?

Well, we all need a little bit of something different every now and then. And, to be honest, it makes a lovely addition to your meze table.

Hmm, and if you’re having a bit of a film night, a few bread sticks with a serving of spicy Antep ezmesi, a dunk of natural yoghurt and a bowl of homemade guacamole dip; happy days!

Let’s make some…

Our Easy Guacamole Recipe

It feels a bit topsy-turvy making guacamole in the winter months as the ingredients are all so summery and fresh – but ’tis the season of the soft plump avocado and we’re not letting them go to waste just because it’s a bit nippy outside.

If you get a rock hard avocado, it’s going to taste bitter – not pleasant – and you’re not going to get that pulpy texture so look for the soft ones.

You can still get a chunky guacamole, if that’s what you like, from the softer fruits – we often leave a few chunks in for some extra bite – and the flavour is so much better.

So, when you do spot them, don’t be shy to pick them up and hold them in your hands. The softer, the better.

And even if they look like they might have seen better days and are a bit brown; well, these are the ones that are going to be good for your guacamole. Buy them up!

Guacamole ingredients

Right, that’s the avocados sorted. What else are we going to put into our guacamole mix?

Ohh, the colours and the flavours. You can see what we mean when we say it just feels like such a summer recipe.

(Guacamole is Barry’s kitchen time, by the way. There are dishes that each of us makes that the other one leaves well alone. This is one of them.)

We love colour so rather than using white onions or spring onion, we use finely chopped red onion.

Some people like their guacamole without tomatoes. Well, we’re very much in the with-tomatoes camp.

Cherry tomatoes, if possible. Cherry tomatoes are also prevalent on the markets of Fethiye in winter so it all matches together well, as does the citrus part…

Yes, we know lime is traditional in a guacamole recipe. However, we’re using local seasonal ingredients from Turkey and so this is guacamole without lime.

Limes are nigh on impossible to lay your hands on in Fethiye, anyway (and very pricey when you do see them), and lemons are right in season at the moment, so lemon it is.

Coriander, anyone?

And now for the greenery.

Where do you stand with fresh coriander leaves? Apparently, it’s in your genes as to whether or not you can stand the flavour of fresh coriander.

Fortunately, we both must have the same coriander-loving-gene and we can’t get enough of the stuff.

So, it’s a good-sized handful of that, which goes into our guacamole recipe. If you’re in the can’t-stand-the-stuff camp, a bit of chopped flat leaf parsley will give you some fresh herby flavour.

And the fresh chillies? Optional.

A bit of heat as a contrast to the cooling flavours of the avocado and the coriander, however, is delightful. We’d recommend between one and three chillies for this guacamole recipe.

Do a taste test after one, just to check how fiery things are getting. Some of the chillies we’ve bought in Fethiye recently have been super feisty!

Storage & Serving Suggestions

Once you’ve made it, it keeps easily in the fridge for a few days so you can use it with different meals.

As well as a guacamole dip like we mentioned above, we also like to eat it for a light lunch.

Guacamole and egg

Another excuse to add some ‘Turkishness’ to this recipe. We love our guacamole as part of a dürüm (wrap).

One leaf from a green marul lettuce, bought from the market. A liberal helping of guacamole dolloped all over your lettuce leaf.

One hard boiled village egg, with beautifully yellow yolk, cut into quarters and laid down the centre.

Avocados and eggs are the perfect couple so your guacamole also tastes fabulous with eggs. Fold the bottom over, roll your dürüm and devour!

Guacamole and chicken

Oh, did we just say eggs and guacamole were a great match? Let’s add chicken to that, too.

Chicken breast pieces in a spicy marinade and then grilled. Guacamole is a great side to this. And, of course, they’d go perfectly together in a dürüm, too.

The photo from this particular day, though, was taken on a day we were being good and having a day off bread.

We’re big bread eaters so we do have the odd day off…very occasionally.

How To Stop Guacamole Turning Brown

There are lots of tricks that people pass on for how to stop guacamole going brown.

The main thing to know is, if you do put your guacamole in the fridge and return to it the day after, only to find your vibrant green dish now resembles a murky mud, well it just looks a bit unsightly.

However, you can still eat it.

If you want to stop your guacamole from going brown, a common method lots of people talk about is to place the avocado stone in the centre of it before you put it back in the fridge.

We always do this before covering and our guacamole has always remained fresh-looking.

However, not sure what it was that made me do a little bit of research before writing up this guacamole recipe – perhaps a bit of urban myth suspicion?

Yes, apparently it’s all to do with oxygen. Avocados, like apples and potatoes, turn brown as soon as the flesh inside is exposed to oxygen. Stop this from happening by covering your guacamole with cling film or a tied plastic bag.

This is what we do…complete with avocado stone, just for good measure.

Well, it looks pretty, doesn’t it?

How To Make Guacamole – Ingredients & Method

As you can see, it’s all very quick and simple – you get huge reward for little effort because guacamole is just so tasty and it’s versatile, too.

Guacamole Recipe – Extra Info

• Because we don’t use sour cream in our guacamole recipe, it is suitable for vegans as well as vegetarians.
• If you want to add some variation and a bit of a fruity twist, you can swap one of your avocados for a chopped mango or a peach. This will give you a more chunky guacamole.
• Some people stay away from avocado, thinking it will make them gain weight. It is a calorific fruit – around 160 calories per 100g – and it is high in fat. However, these are healthy monounsaturated fats that do the body good and they are absolutely rammed with vitamins and minerals. Avocado is actually considered a super food because of the potential health benefits from eating them.
• Deforestation in Mexico has become a problem because of the demand for avocados. If you are buying them from supermarkets to make your guacamole, check the label to see how and where they have been grown. In Fethiye, we are fortunate that avocados are grown locally. We buy ours from the same market stall each time.
• Whilst we do mainly cook Turkish dishes at home, naturally, we sometimes fancy other foods, too. Here are some of our other foods from around the world we like to cook.

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