Art, Science, Guacamole.

I’m going to help you with something very important. I’m going to help you with your guacamole.

What makes guacamole delicious is grinding together plenty of minced-up garlic with plenty of kosher salt in and all around the sides of the bowl before you do anything else. Thoroughly smush it all up together with a fork. It will make a huge difference in the final product.

I have thought about this a lot, and now i will try to explain why this makes it so much better using scientific terminology.

I think it’s the difference between a solution and a mixture.

Perhaps if you get the salt very garlicky, if you actually impregate the salt with the essence of garlic, then, when the salt dissolves and becomes part of the food, you have actually inserted garlic into every bite rather than only the bites that are garlic. Does this make sense? It’s like creating a solution rather than a mixture. It is a chemical transformation, a new food, a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

And a whole greater than the sum isn’t math, and it isn’t science. It is art.

So this simple tip let’s you access guac as science, and as art.

After the lots of garlic and salt, add ripe chunks of avocado, a handful of minced red onion, and perhaps some chopped tomato. Juice a lime in there, and stir it up. And unless someone hates cilantro and you are trying to get on their good side, add chopped cilantro.

You might also add diced jalapeno or serrano or a shake of cayenne, but if you are trying to convice children that they like guacamole, I don’t recommend it.

* This is a trick that either my friend Jennifer or my friend Theresa, both excellent cooks who I often see together, taught me several years ago. They taught me this trick right around the time when my guacamole started to get really really good, and I considered putting it on my resume.