Rick Bayless Guacamole Class

[Music] well of course all guacamole starts with avocados but there's some things that you need to know about avocados number one is that they take a really long time to come to maturity one full year to come to maturity now in three or four months they'll get to this size but they won't have any oil content at all and that's what we love about avocados is that you can mash them into this really rich delicious mash okay so they'll take the rest of that year just to come to their full oil content but they'll never soften on the tree at all you actually have to pick them off of the tree and leave them at room temperature in order for them to soften up now if you pick them off the tree and you put them below 50 degrees they'll just stay rock hard you'll never trigger that softening process that's why when you go to the grocery store you're always finding a lot of rock hard avocados because they've been kept cold they've been brought to room temperature so that you could buy them but then they will take five to seven days to completely soften up and there's nothing much you can do about that yes i know people put them in paper sacks on the the countertop and they say that that speeds them up but the scientists tell us that that speeds them up by an hour or so so it's not yeah it does help because you're trapping ethylene gas that they naturally admit and that was kind of that will kind of uh speed them a little bit along but not very much really you're looking at five to seven days or you can go to a mexican grocery store where the clientele always demands ripe avocados or soft avocados and they will you will find them there so if you're making a lot of guacamole that's my number one recommendation now they will start softening at the top and they will end softening at the bottom so if you want to make guacamole you're looking for the ripest or the softest softest avocado that you can possibly have so you want to press it right there and if it gives under firm pressure then it's ready for your guacamole now there's two what i would call two stages of complete softness there's the sushi bar stage where the sushi chefs want to slice them very thin that's the stage before mashing to guacamole so we went absolutely absolutely soft when you buy them you want to find or you want to look for the little button end here but that's the first thing that you want to get out of there this helps to protect the top from any oxidation up there so you want to pull that off i'm going to make a batch of guacamole here for with three avocados it's a sort of nice amount i think to work with once you get the avocados ripe and you get the little button end out of there you want to cut the two sides apart and i always do that by starting up here at the stem end going down to the blossom end and then back around again and then twist the two sides apart like that okay i'm going to do that to all three of these guys here just cutting around them like that twisting the two sides apart you'll notice that these so far that i've opened up haven't had any bruises in them at all that's because these came from our restaurant and we don't ever take them out of the container that they are shipped in which the the shipping container for avocados has little nests for each avocado they are very tender if you dump a whole case of avocados out just like you would often see in a grocery store you can be guaranteed that wherever they hit they're probably going to be bruised okay so even if they're pretty hard when they go out there they will be bruised a little bit you don't have to worry about that bruise it's just discolored and it's not going to have affect your flavor very much so you can mix it in or you can use a spoon to get it out now our next step of course is that we need to to take the pit out and i use the standard prep cook version of this which is to lodge the knife blade the end of the knife blade like that into the pit but you could also just use a large spoon and get it out i find that they i am always chasing the pits around when i do that so my way of doing it is to just simply use the knife to wedge into it and then twist now with a large spoon because we're working here with haas avocados which is probably what you're all going to be working with because that accounts for about 90 some percent of all avocados grown in the world and they are the creamiest really um and they have a really tough skin so we can take a large spoon and go in here and scoop directly against the skin like that and the these are so beautiful and and perfectly ripe that this happens very simply you don't have you're not going to really mess with anything you're not going to struggle with anything that flesh just comes out right like that i noticed that this one right at the very top had some dark spots here right where the stem was so i can just put my spoon in just right there and then go around here and scrape out the flesh from the rest of all of that i think this piece looks like it's in good shape here okay so we've got now the flesh scooped out of the the skins of these haas avocados our next step and this is where you start making it your own guacamole i'm going to show you my guacamole in a super classic way but all guacamoles need to start with a seasoned base so there's two things that avocados don't have any of one is acid there's just no acid in them you think about a lot of other fruits and these are technically a fruit they will have a lot of acid in them so you might not have to add acid to them but avocados no acid so we're going to want to add some acid the second thing is that they are super low in salt so we want to make sure that we get it seasoned with salt and in this case lime you could use lemon juice but in mexico they don't really use lemons so we're going to use some some lime juice in it here so i'm going to sprinkle my my salt over the top of it i've got a lime here that i'm going to crush in the mexican lime juicer so open that up if you haven't used one of these things before i will tell you you need one in your kitchen because it's the best way to juice limes but you don't put it in there like it it looks like you would you don't set it that way you turn it upside down and then we're actually going to turn that lime inside out as we are crushing it here and as that juice comes out we're also crushing the skin which is where the all the the flavor of lime is in this the oil that's in the skin so i'm going to crush it here and i'm going to squeeze in some lime okay now here's where we got to have a little discussion about how much lime goes in there because in mexico it's zero to a tiny bit in the united states it seems like it's just massive amounts of lime and lime fights with the flavor of avocado it can obliterate it really fast so i'm going to encourage you to start with no more than a tablespoon of lime for three avocados and that will give you a basic place to start with if you're interested in the idea that lime will keep it from oxidizing turning dark during the party i'm going to ask you to just hold on that for a minute let's talk about flavor first because that to me is the most important thing now we're gonna season we've seasoned the base of the this guacamole now with the lime and the salt but we're gonna mash those seasonings into it and you can see here i'm just using like the old-fashioned potato masher which to me is the best piece of kitchen equipment to work with for making guacamole because just a few passes like that will give us this really chunky guacamole i like chunky guacamole i don't like pureed guacamole at all i think that the chunkiness allows you to really appreciate the avocado for what it brings to the guacamole okay so now in mexico for a lot of people this would be guacamole and i know that'll come as a surprise to a lot of you but in mexico they're going to use this as a condiment and so if you think about a perfect steak taco say and you've got a warm corn tortilla and you've got some grilled steak on top of that you've got a spoonful of this and then you get salsa let's go to one of the really classic salsas like salsa mexicana or what we would often call pico de gallo in the united states and it is four ingredients everyone can say what those four ingredients are of course we start with tomato right and then there's some onion in it then there's some cilantro for herbiness and there's some kind of green chili for heat okay those are the four classic ingredients that if you're gonna make what would often times be called a guacamole compuesto or like elaborated with other things for a chip dip you're basically taking that steak taco idea and combining the guacamole that is a condiment with the salsa but each one of those ingredients brings something different to the end result so let's talk about what they are because this is where you start making this guacamole your own you make your own signature guacamole based on how much of each ingredient you like so of course the tomato brings a touch of sweetness to this guacamole the the white onion will bring a really nice fresh crunch and then the the green chili of course will bring heat and the cilantro will bring an herby quality after you get comfortable with those four ingredients you can start to play around not only with the quantities that you put in and see what you like but you'll also be able to start replacing some of them it's mango season where i am right now and so maybe you want to put some some mango in this in place of the tomato that'd be a kind of wacky guacamole but when i think about mango and that sweetness that it brings and it's so delicious with avocado why not and then the onion well mango and red onion go really well so maybe we'll change the white onion for red onion and instead of cilantro mint is spectacular in there and maybe if i like some spicy stuff and i wanted to add something that had that tropical element to it we could do a little bit of habanero chopped up in here so suddenly you see that guacamole is sort of like a foundation or framework kind of recipe and from that you can start to uh to be creative and to do your your own thing so let's make this very super classic guacamole right here let's start with the tomato and i would say that if you're going to put tomato in here i don't like a ton of tomato in in mine and so i'm going to say that someplace in the neighborhood of about a third of a cup but maybe you want to go all the way up to a two-thirds of a cup of tomato if you really like a lot of that in there but the one thing that i'm going to suggest that you do is to cut the tomato carefully so that it's not all mushed up because you want i think you want to contain the flavor of the tomato so that when you taste it you're getting little bursts of its natural sweetness so i'm taking each one of my slices here and cutting them crosswise and then into small little dice and that will be about enough for me it wasn't even a whole small tomato to get to my like third of a cup here so i'm going to put this now onto the mashed and seasoned avocado base then yeah again you have to decide how much chili you want to have in here in mexico they typically when making salsas will not take the seeds and the and the veins out the veins is the is the place where you're going to find all of that capsaicin or the hot part concentrated so if you want to make this less spicy but use a lot of that green chili flavor i suggest that you take the seed pod the veins and the seeds out but what i want is a small amount of green chili flavor and a good amount of heat so i'm just going to cut each one of these pieces or these halves of one serrano this is for me exactly what i would like to have i'm going to cut each one in three strips and then cut crosswise to make little tiny dice now with the chili some people don't like to have bite on pieces that are that big so you might want to do the final rocking and chopping like this to get those pieces much smaller just a few times back and forth on the the chili will give you a very very fine almost immense here in all of that okay so let's slide that up here and then let's do next our our cilantro this is washed in pretty dried cilantro it's still a tiny bit damp but we can i can still show you exactly the way that you would chop your cilantro in the classic mexican way and for good distribution of all of the flavors through all of this but i i want to make sure that my cutting board is really dry and free of everything else so i am going to basically take a handful of cilantro here and bunch it up at the top like that folding under the top pieces so that it's quite firmly bunched and then i'm going to do a very thin slice what you would learn in culinary school is a chiffonade and you're going to cut across the stems and everything and keep going with that until you run out of leaves which i've basically done there a couple of pieces didn't get very well chopped so i'll go back and get those now you'll see how beautifully light and fluffy this is the nice thing about this is chopped cilantro like this if you cover it with plastic wrap will last for more than a day in your refrigerator but of course we're going to use it right now now our last ingredient is the onion and of course in mexico they use white onions almost exclusively for salsas and for making guacamole so we've got this white onion here very different flavor much crisper cleaner brighter flavor than a yellow onion which tends to go sweeter and more complex but we're looking for brightness here and that's why in mexico they always use a yellow onion i mean a white onion and i want about i'm going to say about a quarter of a cup of this so i'm just going to slice off a piece of it because that will be enough for me for this particular preparation and then i'm going to cut across like this and then sort of utilizing the basic structure of the onion do my chopping by starting almost parallel to the cutting board and cutting crosswise and then raising my knife up when i get all the way to the top then i'll flip it over to the other side and do the same thing until i get all of it cut there now the one thing that i will say using a raw onion either in a salsa or in guacamole like this which is basically like a salsa we have created a sulfurous compound in this by cutting through the cell walls of the onion and having that sulfurous compound first of all it will spoil or sour really quickly it's what gives you onion breath it's what makes your eyes water a lot of people find it really indigestible and so you created it you can get rid of it i've got a simple strainer here and i'm going to scrape all of that onion into it and i'm just going to go to the sink and rinse it under cold water i'm just rinsing it off here so shake that once you've gotten it well rinsed some people actually like to soak this in cold water with a touch of lime juice or vinegar that almost slightly pickles it i don't think that's really necessary but rinsing i do think is necessary and then we'll put that there i don't think i'm even going to use all that i chopped up you can see my quantities here because we have our um our tomato green chili much smaller quantity the cilantro and the onions the rinsed onions there and then all of this just gets folded together and we'll give it a taste and see again all of those quantities are completely variable based on what you like this is the kind of guacamole that i like to make if i'm looking for that chip dip and then i'm going to give it just a little taste to make sure that we got enough lime enough salt and enough of everything else what i love about guacamole is good avocados and that's what's coming through here i haven't added so much of everything else that i ended up with a tomato salad with a little avocado in it that can be good too but i don't think it's guacamole i like to put it out um for everybody to dip their chips into so that's the way i've set this up here of course you can always put a little bit more chopped onion and cilantro on the top of it if you would like to do that i'm just going to take a little bit of cilantro here from the this batch of cilantro that i've got here just to lay across the top here and make it a really presentable because probably if you're making guacamole you're having a party and this is something that everybody loves at their party i hope you enjoy getting in the kitchen and making your signature guacamole and respecting that sort of structure of how a great guacamole is made but making it your own

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 441,417

Rating: 4.9041963 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: VUz3wG0Wzws

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SteazGaming]

I make my guacamole with red onion.

[u/BushLeagueMVP]

I cannot believe this guy's brother is Skip Bayless - polar opposites in terms of demeanor (although it's very possible Skip acts hotheaded for the cameras).

[u/neeeeonbelly]

Frontera Grill is still one of the top 5 dinners I have ever had. The Sopes were off the hizzle, as they say in Mexico.

[u/_JohnnyUnitas]

Riiiiyyuuuk

[u/mothertruck]

the real guacamole masterclass, in my opinion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KjWFcIi4_8

[u/mr_mf_jones]

Ugh, he never came back to the guac browning problem. Will that little bit of lime keep it green?

[u/nyrothia]

"i sprinkle some salt..." proceeds to kicking off an avalange of the side of the himalaya.

that looked much. is it something with kosher/non-kosher salt that they are differently salty?

[u/Star_Tropic]

I work in a kitchen.

DON'T take the pit out of the avocado the way he does if you're holding the avocado in your hand. I have seen a person miss by a fraction of an inch. The blade slips on the pit and goes right into your thumb. The person I know of almost lost the functioning of their thumb because it cut the tendon. They had to have surgery to repair it. So please place the avocado on the counter top first.

[u/sammymammy2]

Good video. Especially the idea of mango in the guac and how that would play off a series of changes of ingredients were quite nice.