What Goes in Guacamole? The Classic Mix, the Regional Versions and Ours

In Mexico it's a salsa first. Larousse Cocina puts it on tacos, next to rice and beans at the midday meal, and in a bowl as a snack with totopos, the fried corn chips. It's eaten nearly everywhere in the country, and the classic mix leaves plenty of room to argue.

What does guacamole mean?

Avocado sauce, in Classical Nahuatl: āhuacatl is avocado and mōlli is sauce. So guacamole and mole share a root, and so does molcajete, the three-legged stone mortar that comes from molli plus caxitl, a bowl. Avocados are native to the highlands of Mexico and Guatemala. None of our sources gives an exact Aztec recipe, so we don't either.

How did avocados get here?

The California Avocado Commission places the fruit's origin in south-central Mexico, somewhere between 7,000 and 5,000 B.C., with cultivation in Mexico as early as 500 B.C. Spanish speakers turned the Nahuatl word into aguacate, and English turned that into avocado. The first English mention it cites is from 1696. Judge R.B. Ord brought trees from Mexico to Santa Barbara in 1871, and the commission counts that as the start of avocados in the US.

What goes in regional guacamole?

More than you'd guess. Larousse lists fruit like peach, grape or pomegranate; aromatic herbs like avocado leaf and pipicha; and insects, jumiles (stink bugs) or chapulines (grasshoppers). So when our Cantina guacamole comes out with pomegranate, it isn't as far off the map as it looks. Grasshoppers are still on you.

Which avocado should you use?

Hass, most likely, because that's what the store has. It has a good story, too. Rudolph G. Hass was a Southern California mail carrier who planted a seedling in La Habra Heights in the spring of 1926. He tried to graft it over to Fuerte, then the leading variety, and failed. He nearly cut it down. A professional grafter told him the young tree was strong, so he let it be, and his kids liked the bumpy fruit it gave. His Plant Patent 139 of August 27, 1935 calls the original tree a "Guatemalian seedling of unknown parentage." A 2019 genetic study later put it at about 61% Mexican and 39% Guatemalan. It's now about 95% of California's crop.

A ripe Hass goes dark, nearly purple-black, and gives a little when you press it gently. If it's hard, leave it on the counter for a few days. If it's squishy, it's past the point of good guacamole.

How do you make it?

No secret here, and no single right answer. The California Avocado Commission notes that one grower family's version is just avocado and garlic salt, while others run to a dozen ingredients. For the classic:

1. Start with the sharp stuff. Pound the chile, onion and cilantro with a little salt in a molcajete, or chop them fine.
2. Add the avocado. Mash it as rough or as smooth as you like. Rough holds up better on a chip.
3. Fold in the tomato last, so it stays in pieces. Add lime if you want it. In Mexico the word is limón, and it means the small green fruit Americans call a lime.
4. Taste it on a chip, not a spoon. The chip has its own salt.

Why does guacamole turn brown?

Avocado cells contain an enzyme, polyphenol oxidase, that reacts with oxygen in the air and makes a brown pigment. Larousse says a few drops of lime help stop it. For guacamole, the California Avocado Commission says to press plastic wrap directly on the surface and refrigerate it. If the top still turns brown, it says to scoop off that layer and throw it out.

What are totopos?

They're what you scoop with, and they're older than the bag. The word comes from the Nahuatl totopochtli, toasted. Larousse says the original is from Oaxaca's Isthmus of Tehuantepec: a crisp tortilla of coarse-ground corn with small holes in the middle, cooked against the wall of a big clay pot called a comiscal. Elsewhere in Mexico, the word also covers plain fried tortilla pieces, the same thing most Americans call chips.

How ours line up with the chart

The names, prices and descriptions below come straight from our menu, so you can check each one against the chart.

There's also spicy guacamole on the Picadera para Dos, a platter for two. For what goes well after that, see the tacos and margaritas.