Simple Guacamole with Veggie Sticks
A creamy 5-minute guacamole with lime and onion, served with crisp carrot and cucumber sticks for dipping.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Guacamole made the short way, with onion, lime, and salt and nothing else, served with carrot and cucumber sticks instead of chips. Four things in the bowl is not a shortcut, it is roughly what guacamole was before it picked up tomato, garlic powder, and sour cream along the way. With that little in it, everything rests on the avocados being properly ripe and the lime being squeezed rather than poured, and the whole thing happens in the ten minutes between walking in the door and needing something to eat.
Mash it to the texture you actually want rather than to smooth. Smooth is what a food processor does, and it turns guacamole into a pale, even paste that somehow tastes like less than what went into it. Leaving half the avocado in pieces the size of a fingernail gives a carrot stick something to pick up and carry, and it keeps the dip from sliding back off in one sheet on the way to your mouth. A fork and thirty seconds is the entire technique.
Avocado brings fat and fiber in the same bite, which is why a bowl of this settles an afternoon in a way that a handful of crackers never does. Two avocados across four people is a generous amount of both, and because the only other things in the bowl are onion, lime, and salt, there is nothing diluting them. It is also worth knowing that guacamole made this plain keeps better than the loaded kind, since tomato and cilantro are what turn a leftover bowl watery. Our Avocado Guacamole with Jicama Dippers swaps the carrots for jicama.
Ingredients
- 2 ripe avocados
- 1/4 onion, finely diced
- 2 tbsp lime juice
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 carrots, cut into sticks
- 1 cucumber, cut into sticks
Instructions
- Mash into the lime, not after it: Put the lime juice in the bowl first, then halve the avocados, take out the pits, and scoop the flesh straight in on top of it. Mash with a fork and stop while a good half of it is still in pieces about the size of a fingernail. The acid slows the browning, and getting it onto the cut surfaces immediately, before the avocado has had five minutes of air, is what keeps the bowl green instead of gray by the time you sit down with it.
- Dice the onion fine and rinse the bite off it: Dice the quarter onion as small as you can manage, then tip it into a sieve, run cold water over it for about ten seconds, and shake it dry. Raw onion keeps getting stronger in a dip as it sits, and by the second day it can be the only thing you taste. The rinse takes off the sulfur compounds sitting on the freshly cut surfaces and leaves the sweetness and the crunch behind, which is the part you actually wanted from it.
- Salt it, then taste it twice: Stir in the rinsed onion and the salt, then taste. Avocados vary enormously in size, so a quarter teaspoon is a starting point rather than a rule, and an underseasoned bowl of guacamole tastes like almost nothing. Taste it again a minute later, when the salt has dissolved into the mash instead of sitting on top of it, because the first taste tells you about the salt and the second tells you about the dip.
- Give it five minutes before you touch it again: Cover the bowl and leave it alone for five minutes while you cut the vegetables. The onion loses its raw edge, the salt draws a little moisture out of the avocado and loosens the mash, and the lime settles in behind both. It is the difference between a bowl that tastes like three separate ingredients sitting together and one that tastes like guacamole, and it costs you nothing, since you were going to be cutting carrots anyway.
- Cut the sticks thick enough to survive the dip: Cut the carrots and the cucumber into sticks about as thick as your little finger and four inches long, so they reach the bottom of the bowl without your knuckles going in after them. Thin sticks snap off and get left behind in the dip. Scrape the seeds out of the cucumber first if it is a standard one, since the wet core makes a floppy stick, and stand everything around the bowl rather than piling it on a plate, which keeps the sticks dry until they go into the dip.
Variations
- Add more protein: Put a hard-boiled egg or a few slices of turkey alongside; the turkey suits every version, while the egg is one the autoimmune protocol leaves out. Stirring anything into the guacamole itself only muddies it.
- Add more vegetables: Endive leaves, jicama sticks and thick cucumber rounds all scoop well. Cut them sturdy enough that they do not snap in the dip. Bell pepper strips work too if you are not avoiding nightshades.
- Make it spicy: Grate a little fresh horseradish or ginger into the mash, which brings heat without the nightshades the autoimmune protocol leaves out. A minced jalapeno does the job if peppers are fine for you.
- Make it fuller: Fold in torn cilantro and diced cucumber, or a spoonful of chopped radish. Either turns a plain mash into something closer to a salad, and both skip the tomato if you are avoiding nightshades.
- Char the onion first: Blister the diced onion in a dry pan for a minute before it goes in. It loses the raw bite and leaves a smoky note behind.
Storage & Leftovers
Guacamole browns because cut avocado meets air, so all the storage advice comes down to keeping the air off it. Press a sheet of plastic wrap flat onto the surface, right out to the edges of the bowl, before any lid goes on, and it holds its color for a day and sometimes two. The pit trick does nothing beyond shading the small circle of guacamole sitting underneath it.
The vegetables keep far longer than the dip does. Carrot and cucumber sticks stay crisp for three or four days standing in a container of cold water in the refrigerator, drained and patted dry on their way to the plate. Cutting them the night before is the part of this genuinely worth doing ahead, and it brings the work on the day down to opening two containers.
A brown layer on top is oxidation rather than spoilage. Scrape off the discolored quarter inch, stir what is underneath, and taste it: still bright and limey means it is fine. A sour or faintly fizzy edge means it is done and should go in the trash. With this little in the bowl there is nothing preserving it, so two days is the practical limit however well it is covered.
Notes & Tips
- Lime first, everything else after: Mash the avocado with the lime juice before anything else goes in. The acid is what keeps it green.
- Pick ripe avocados: A ripe one gives to gentle pressure and the little stem cap flicks off to show green underneath. Brown underneath means it is past it.
- Ripen them faster: A paper bag on the counter with a banana in it will bring a firm avocado around in a day or two.
- Leave it chunky: Mashed to a paste it loses its texture and starts to taste flat. A fork and a light hand are enough.
- Store it under wrap, not under the pit: The pit trick does nothing. Press plastic wrap flat onto the surface so no air touches it.
- Salt last and taste: Avocados vary a lot in size, so the amount here is a starting point rather than a rule.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The avocado, the lime and the raw onion balance one another. The avocado is soft and rich, the lime cuts through it and keeps the color bright, and the onion gives a sharp bite that stops the bowl from going flat.
- Avocado is unusual among fruits in being mostly fat, and that monounsaturated fat is what lets it spoon up so creamy, arriving alongside fiber and a generous amount of potassium.
- Carrot sticks stay sweet and snappy raw, and the beta-carotene in them needs fat to be absorbed, which the avocado riding on the end of each stick is quietly taking care of.
- Cucumber is cool and full of water, which is exactly what you want against something this rich, and leaving the skin on gives each stick a little more crunch and a faint green bitterness.
- Lime juice is doing two jobs, brightening the bowl and keeping the mashed avocado green longer, and a pinch of salt is what pulls everything forward and makes the avocado taste more like itself.
- As you eat, feel the cold snap of the vegetable against the soft dip and the lime coming through behind it, and let the bowl last longer than a few minutes standing at the counter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is guacamole AIP if it has no tomato?
Classic guac often skips tomato anyway, and this version stays AIP by leaving out any peppers or spices from the nightshade family.
Can I make it ahead?
You can, but avocado browns quickly, so make it within a day and store it well-covered.
How long does it keep?
Two days for the guacamole, with plastic wrap pressed onto the surface, and it will brown on top before that. Three or four days for the sticks, kept in cold water in the refrigerator. Cut the vegetables ahead by all means, but mash the avocados the day you intend to eat them.
Is this gluten-free?
Yes, this recipe is made without gluten-containing ingredients. As always, check that any packaged items you use are certified gluten-free if you are highly sensitive.