We Made Chipotle’s Famous Guacamole Recipe. Here’s How it Turned Out. - Thrillist
Guac's not extra when you end up making it yourself.
COLE SALADINO/THRILLIST
When Chipotle released its guacamole recipe late last month, the world was... well, nonplussed, to be honest. It’s as easy to prepare a simple guacamole with a few ingredients as it is to jazz up with endless extras. So while it was kind of nice of Chipotle to add its recipe to the growing list of companies doing the same, it did seem just a bit unnecessary.
But absence, as they say, makes the heart grow fonder, and many of us have grown accustomed to fast casual and fast food flavors that are a little hard to come by these days. Any guac is great guac, and nothing beats homemade, but as you spend more and more time limited to the signature flavors available in your own kitchen, you may find yourself with a hankering for the eerily specific tastes you can only find at the friendly neighborhood chain. That’s why we tried Chipotle’s guacamole recipe. Here’s how it turned out.
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What you’ll need
Chipotle posted its guac ingredients to Twitter in advance of an Instagram tutorial with Executive Chef Chad Braze. Here’s what the post said you’d need:
- 2 ripe Haas avocados
- 2 tsp lime juice
- 2 tbsp cilantro (chopped)
- 1/4 cup red onion (diced)
- 1/2 jalapeño including seeds (diced)
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Now, with that list alone you can just mash everything up and eat it, but Chipotle's Twitter thread helpfully goes on to explain how to mash everything up and eat it. But I wasn’t about to wait five days for my avocados to soften up to merely mash them up and eat them, so I procured the ingredients and bided my time until I could mash right along with Chef Chad. That’s when everything went off the rails.
How to assemble, according to Chef Chad
Chef Chad’s video starts with him wearing a baseball hat, so I put one on, too, as he promised we would be making guacamole “just like we make it in the restaurant,” but in a smaller batch. Reducing and/or increasing a recipe is harder than it looks, but I had no reason to doubt.
We got to work. Chef Chad likes to use two bowls, one for mashing, and one for aromatics like your red onion, cilantro, and jalapeño. His preferred tools for this task are a whisk (but a fork is fine, too) a spoon, a sharp knife, and a citrus squeezer (your hands are fine). Chef Chad’s avocados are a nice deep green and have a touch of give, just like mine! But he has a lot more avocados than I do. I have two, like the posted recipe promised I would need.
Chef Chad pivots away from avocado chat, and explains that he will use 1/3 of a jalapeño (which he claims is enough to bring heat, but I'm dubious), red onion, and lime. He says you can use any kind of onion -- or none at all! -- which is unfair to those of us who prepared for this lesson. He also talks about cilantro all casual-like, as though it weren’t the most divisive herb known to guac.
It becomes clear that Chef Chad has afforded himself three avocados, which is rude, but I am trying to stay calm even though I am unhappy to have been put in this position. His three avocados to my two would mean that we’d be operating with different proportions across the board. But it would be fine, I reminded myself. I would simply abide by Chipotle's previously posted, appropriately-proportioned-for-two-avocados recipe. Chad would just be here for company, and to humble me with his devil-may-care knife skills.
Once Chef Chad had fancy-cut his THREE avocados and placed them in his mashing bowl, and I’d regular-cut my TWO avocados and placed them in my mashing bowl, we each used a whisk to get mashin’. But not too much! We each mashed the avocados into half-to-one-inch chunks, or, a 50/50 creamy/chunky mix. Then we choppie choppie chopped and bowlie bowl bowled our red onion before we moved onto our jalapeño -- his vibrant and fresh and mine, sadly, jarred, because that’s all they had at the market. I envied Chef Chad’s perfect jalapeño and worried whether my pre-sliced variety would lack heat, when he rinsed out the seeds, which is the whole point of a jalapeño. I get it -- cooking for the masses and all, but it was a little hard to watch.
Then, Chef Chad julienned and diced his newly pointless jalapeño, chopped a mighty bunch of cilantro, juiced what seemed like an awful lot of lime even for what he kept pointing out were “three avocados” (for YOU, Chad!), gently macerated the aromatics, tossed a bit of salt into the avocados, and folded it all together. Chadzie dutifully tasted his three-avocado guacamole, noting that sometimes he might add garlic and/or tomato for personal guac, but not today. Not. Today.
“That’s Chipotle-style guac,” Chef Chad said into the camera, before preparing to turn it “super extra” with pomegranate, superfood, and ranch versions. I closed the tab.
How it turned out
As we agreed, any guac is good guac, and nothing beats homemade. Being that this was 1. guac, and 2. made in my home, it was terrific. And the first bite immediately evoked that familiar Chipotle flavor for reasons I’d never had occasion to interrogate before: it was too limey. Avocado is beautiful on its own, especially when you get a good batch and have the patience, and luck, to slice into it at its peak. Why gild the lily with a ton of lime? A spritz or two will do if you must, but the two teaspoons to two avocados Chipotle’s posted recipe called for masked the lovely avocado flavor, and there was no way to walk it back. I can see why chain guac would need to lean on lime as a natural preservative, but it had no value in my home version.
What I’d do differently next time
This was very good, but, even apart from the excess of lime, I could have predicted that it would not be exactly to my taste. I like a lot of heat, so next time, I’ll double the jalapeño (the fresh kind) and add garlic. I’ll also wait until after five so I can better apply all that lime to a nice margarita.
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Amber Sutherland-Namako is an editor at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter @AsaSutherland.
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