Beef Chili

Came up with this chili recipe myself, craving some real beef chili this cold winter.  Just started putting the things I love into it until it became perfect. It's very beefy, pretty healthy and taste amazing and really easy to put together. I think it's one of the best chili's I've had. Give it a try sometime and let me know your thoughts!

Ingredients:
1.75-2 lbs Ground Beef
1 large sweet onion (yellow), cut in smaller chunks to fit in food processor
2 Red Peppers, cut in smaller chunks to fit in food processor
2 Jalapenos, I left the seeds in for the heat, so I just cut off the top of the pepper. Seeds are up to you.
3 cloves Garlic
28 oz can diced tomatoes
4 Tbs Chili Powder
1 Tbs Smoked Paprika
1 Tbs Ancho Chili Powder
1 Tbs Chipotle Chili Powder
1/2 Tbs Salt
1/2 Tbs Cumin
6 oz beer (I used a New Belgium Ranger IPA), you get to drink the other half.
2 cans Black Beans

Put a couple Tbs. of olive oil in your chili pot, and warm on Medium heat.
Add in your ground beef, and break it up as it cooks.

While it's cooking, toss your Onion, Red Peppers, Jalapenos and Garlic into a food processor and pulse chop them until the pieces are very small, but before they get too mushy and watery. The ground beef becomes very small little pieces and I wanted these about the same size, so the flavors are there, but the whole chili gets a similar texture.

As soon as all the pink is gone from the ground beef, drain out all the fat if you're going for the healthy version and then add in the items from the food processor and the contents of the can of diced tomatoes, mixing with the beef and cooking for a few more minutes.

Add in all your spices and mix to spread them out evenly. Cook 2 more minutes to release the flavors of the spices and really mix them around.

Add in the beer and cans of black beans if you're down with beans.

Cook on low for a few hours. Eat then, or store and reheat the next day. It's always better the next day after the spices have really melded in the pot.

I got all my spices from Penzey's, so they're top notch.

Give this one a try and let me know your opinion!

Chicken Chili

Looking to beat those winter blues, here's an easy dish that will keep you warm and fulfill those New Years resolutions to get healthy or stay healthy! It's far from conventional chili, but has a little chili like heat and well, it taste like a delicious enchilada in a bowl, so give it a try! I like to kick it up with more chili powder and usually habanero chili powder instead of the normal kind. This should feed you at least a few days out of the week before you'll want to make more. I wanted to share this with you because it's so good, so healthy and it's so easy!

Taken from Ina Garten : Food Network

Ingredients

• 4 cups chopped yellow onions (3 onions)
• 1/8 cup good olive oil, plus extra for chicken
• 1/8 cup minced garlic (2 cloves)
• 2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded, and large-diced
• 2 yellow bell peppers, cored, seeded, and large-diced
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more for chicken
• 2 (28-ounce) cans whole peeled plum tomatoes in puree, undrained
• 1/4 cup minced fresh basil leaves
• 4 split chicken breasts, bone in, skin on
• Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Cook the onions in the oil over medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the bell peppers, chili powder, cumin, red pepper flakes, cayenne, and salt. Cook for 1 minute. Crush the tomatoes by hand or in batches in a food processor fitted with a steel blade (pulse 6 to 8 times). Add to the pot with the basil. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Rub the chicken breasts with olive oil and place them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast the chicken for 35 to 40 minutes, until just cooked. Let cool slightly. Separate the meat from the bones and skin and cut it into 3/4-inch chunks. Add to the chili and simmer, uncovered, for another 20 minutes. Serve with the toppings, or refrigerate and reheat gently before serving.

We love it on a little rice, with some cheese and sour creme. Go light on all those things if you're counting calories. The chili is really healthy, but the rice is full of carbs and sugars and the cheese and sour creme full of fat and all that equals calories which equals packing on the pounds. Everything is ok in moderation, just learn to control yourself and make healthy choices!

Enjoy!

Spinach & Ricotta Stuffed Shells

Here's an easy way to spice up your midweek meals by making something different. It takes a little work, but it's not that bad and once you get the hang of it, you can whip this up pretty quickly.

Ingredients:
Box of large shells
1 Jar pasta sauce (24-26oz)
1 lb. Fresh raw spinach leaves (big rectangular plastic box)
16 oz. Ricotta cheese
1 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. salt
some olive oil to saute the spinach

Steps:
Preheat the oven to 350.

1. Boil a large pot of water in order to cook your shells. Follow the instructions on the box and cook them till they're just tender, roughly 10 minutes. You'll be handling them after, so once they are done rinse them under cold water to prevent them from sticking to each other and to cool them off for stuffing them.

2. Heat some oil in a large everyday pan (12" with a lid), over medium heat. Once ready, cook half your spinach down for about 5 minutes, stirring to rotate around the leaves. They should cook way down, and look appetizingly done.. nothing like the frozen stuff. Set aside batch one and cook the other half the same way.

3. In a large bowl combine your ricotta, spinach, basil, garlic, onion, salt and half of the Parmesan. You should wind up with a mixture similar to this picture.

4. Dump your jar of sauce into a 9x13 glass baking dish.

5. One by one fill the shells with the mixture and place in the glass dish. Use a metal spoon to get a good amount, and while the shell is cupped in your hand, scoop the mixture inside, using the lip of the shell to push the mixture off the spoon and keep it inside the shell. You'll get the hang of it after a few.

6. Sprinkle the remainder of the Parmesan over the top of the stuffed shells.

7. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes on the middle shelf. I like to then put the broiler on for around 4 minutes to put a nice brown on top.

Enjoy!

Cherry & Almond Galette

What the heck is a galette? I didn't know either.. but when I saw the picture of this desert in a magazine, I just had to try it out! Well, so it turns out a galette is basically just a big cookie and that's exactly what this turned out like. The crust was extremely delicious, conjuring one of my favorite cookies, shortbread, with a layer of fresh whole cherries and finely chopped almonds. The recipe called for nutmeg in the "filling" (which really is a topping in this case), but in bites without the cookie, I felt the nutmeg didn't really mesh with the cherries that well. Working with the dough after it was made was a little difficult, but I eventually got it into a form that I could put the filling on top and bake it. Everyone loved it, and I would definitely make it again. Here's the recipe if you want to give it a try.. you can thank Martha Stewart for this one, it's featured in her book "New Pies and Tarts".

Ingredients:

(For the crust)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

2 to 4 tbs cold heavy cream or ice water

(For the filling)

1/4 cup plus 2 tbs. sugar

1/4 cup whole raw almonds, toasted and cooled

1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg (I would leave this out personally)

1/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 pounds sweet cherries, pitted

2 tbs. cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk, for egg wash

1 tbs. heavy cream, for egg wash

A neat trick for separating a yolk from the egg white is to break the egg in two halves and over a bowl, gently pass the yolk back and forth between each half of the shell. The yolk should fall down into the bowl and leave you with the yolk in one half of the shell at the end. Takes a little practice, but it's very handy! I have both halves in 1 hand just to take the example picture.. but if you can do it with 1 hand, kudos to you.

Instructions

For the crust:

 Pulse flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor until combined. Add butter, and pulse just until mixture resembles coarse meal. 

Add yolks and drizzle 2 tbs. cream evenly over the mixture; pulse just until dough begins to come together, no more than 30 seconds. If the dough is too dry, add remaining cream, 1 tbs. at a time (I ended up adding 1 extra myself). Pat dough into a disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate 1 hour or up to 2 days.

  After the dough settles for an hour: On lightly floured parchment paper, roll out dough to a 16-inch-long oval, about 1/4 inch think. Transfer the dough and parchment to a rimmed backing sheet. Refrigerate until firm about 30 minutes.

Making the filling: 

 In a food processor, pulse 1/4 cup sugar, almonds, nutmeg (if you like), and salt until almonds are finely ground. Gently toss mixture with your pitted cherries.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spoon cherry mixture over dough, leaving a 2 inch border. Dot with butter. Fold in edges, pressing gently. Refrigerate until firm, another 30 minutes.

Egg wash:

Whisk egg yolk with cream and brush over edges of the crust. Sprinkle entire surface of the galette with remaining 2 tbs. of sugar. 

I didn't have much room left after I put on all my cherries.. so I couldn't fold the edge over much. If you can fold more and cover some of the cherries, that will look really nice.

Bake until golden, 45 to 50 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, let cool completely.

Enjoy!

Smoked Brisket

Broke out the old smoker last weekend during a break from this rainy weather, to put a good smoke to some beef brisket. Turned out delicious! Feast your eyes on these tasty pics!

Step 1: Dry rub the heck out of the brisket, especially on the side that doesn't have the fat cap (that big hunk of delicious white fat)

Step 2: Wrap it up good and tight in some foil, and maybe bag it in a plastic bag, just in case juices start to run all over. Let it sit overnight in the fridge, to really get that flavor in the meat.

Step 3: Brisket takes roughly 1 1/2 hours per pound to smoke, so 1 hour before the time I want to start it, I take it out of the fridge, still wrapped in the foil, I wrap it in a towel and put it in an empty cooler with the lid shut. This gives it an hour to slowly drop closer to room temperature, allowing the meat to start taking on the smoke flavor right away, and help shorten the cooking time some.

Step 4: About 20 minutes before you're ready to smoke, fire up your smoker, put in your wood chunks, fill your water pan (I use apple juice) and try to get the internal temp around 225.

Step 5: After it reaches temp, the smoke should be flowing or close to it, so it's time to put on the brisket. Put the fat cap facing up, so that when it melts it flavors and jucifies your meat! Yes, I just invented that word, Jucifies!

Step 6: Every 30-40 minutes your wood chucks will stop producing smoke, carefully, and with some fire proof mitts dump out the old coals and put in some fresh wood chunks.

Step 7: I like to pull my brisket at an internal temp of 190, wrap them in foil, then in a towel and put them back in the empty cooler with the lid shut. This will keep them warm and trap all the juices inside until you're ready to eat.. if you're not already ready!

If you get sick of waiting, you can wrap them in foil and finish the cooking in the smoker or in the oven if you want.

Step 8: After it's done, remove the fat cap, and slice against the grain and you're ready for some excellent eats!

Some equipment I use that really helps with smoking.

Grilled Skirt Steak with Salsa Verde

Well, if you couldn't tell from the 100+ degree weather nearly across all the states, it's still summer! That means there is still tons of time to get outside and GRILL! I found this fairly simple recipe in Food & Wine, and it turned out delicious. I just love sauces and this Salsa Verde is outstanding! You need to marinate the meat overnight, like any great grilled meat, so prepare ahead of time by getting the needed ingredients when you grocery shop! Doing this recipe and the Tomato Cilantro Marinated Chicken in the same week is a great idea! Fresh herbs in this recipe are a must!

Steak Marinade:
1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tbs. finely chopped rosemary
2 tbs. finely chopped thyme
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 lbs. skirt steak
Salt and black pepper
Smoked Paprika (optional)

Salsa Verde:
1 packed cup parsley leaves
1 packed cup basil leaves
1 packed cup mint leaves
1/3 cup capers, drained
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
 

After chopping your parsley, rosemary and thyme and mincing your garlic for the marinade, mix them in a bowl with the olive oil. Then rub the mixture all over your steak and put it all in a gallon sized zip lock bag to marinate. You can refrigerate the bag for a minimum of 4 hours, but I prefer to prepare the night before and let it marinate overnight.

When you're ready to grill the next day, carefully remove all the herbs from the meat. You don't want to cook them, because they'll just burn and be hard pieces on your meat. They've done their job already, providing you with some tasty flavor to enhance the meat, but not overpower it. Add a little salt and pepper to the meat for further seasoning.

 

Since grilling doesn't take that long, it's best to make the Salsa Verde now, but fire up the grill to high heat. In a food processor, combine the parsley, basil, mint, capers, garlic, mustard and sugar and blend until it's a paste, should only take a few seconds. Then while the food processor is running, very slowly pour in the olive oil. You're making an emulsion, and if you add the oil too fast, you're not going to have great results! Doesn't this look tasty!!!

 With your grill on high heat now, it's time to get down to business. Depending on how rare or well done you like it, you might want to adjust your times. I would grill for  4 minutes on the first side and another 3 or 4 on the other side. If you like it really rare, like in my picture below, it's about 3 minutes on the first side and 2 on the other. We tossed them back on for a little longer after I took the picture, it was a little too rare for us. That's what practicing is for, and the more you practice.. the more tasty food you get to eat!

After you're done grilling the meat, let it rest on the cutting board for another 3 minutes. This allows the juices to be reabsorbed by the meat. They are tasty and you don't want till spilling all over your cutting board instead of flavoring your meat. Slice the meat into stripes by cutting across the grain. Skirt steak has very obvious lines running in one direction through the meat, those are the grains. Cutting across them, makes each bite of meat much more tender.

Grilled steak is perfect with some grilled vegetables. Squash and zucchini are two of my faves!
Hope you enjoy!

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

I really needed a treat a few weeks ago after a workout, so I tried to take some delicious and relatively healthy ingredients and blend them with ice to make a nice frozen treat. I adjusted to taste and this is what I came up with. If you love peanut butter and bananas this will knock your socks off, especially with how low the calories are. On beautiful hot days like this, blend one up for lunch and enjoy the outdoors!

1/2 cup fat free skim milk
1 banana
2 tbs. chunky peanut butter
7 cubes of ice, add more one at a time if it's not thick enough.

Step 1: Throw all of these things into a blender and blend till smooth!
Step 2: Relax and enjoy!

Here's the best part:

Cals Fat (g) Carbs (g) Prot (g) Peanut Butter 200 16 6 7 Banana 105 0.4 27 1.3 Fat Free Milk 45 0 6 4 Totals 350 16.4 39 12.3

Tomato & Cilantro Marinated Chicken Kebabs

If you eat chicken at least five nights a week like I do, you're always looking for new ways to spice it up. This is a very simple dish to make, that turns out some tasty chicken, great for mid-week dinners. You do have to plan ahead a little, getting some ingredients for the marinade during your weekly shopping, and you need to marinate the night before.. but it'll be worth it!

Ingredients:
2 small plum tomatoes or 1 large regular tomato, grated on a box grater (large holes on cheese grater)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 lbs. boneless chicken breast, cut into 2-inch pieces
Some kebab skewers and a grill

Steps:
1. In a large bowl, combine the grated tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and cilantro.

2. Add in the chicken and coat it thoroughly.

3. Cover it in a container or zip lock bag and let it marinade over night.


4. The next night, thread your chicken on some metal skewers or wood skewers (soak the wood skewers in water to help prevent them from catching fire.), leaving some space between each piece of chicken when possible.

5. Brush the kebabs with a little olive oil and add some salt and pepper to your liking.

6. Grill over Medium-High heat, turning every few minutes, for about 15 minutes, until lightly charred and cooked through.

Simple as that! Server with some Pita or Naan from the store, maybe some hummus and tabouli, and you have yourself a really nice mid-week treat!

Smoked BBQ Chicken

Finally I get to write about my favorite food, barbecue! Nothing like cooking slow and low for many hours, imparting a lovely smoke flavor into the meat, breaking down all the fat into delicious flavor, turning even the toughest of meats into tender, juicy mouthfuls! Bringing you back to days of cowboys and the open range!

Smoking is not that difficult, and you do it on a grill using a wood chip box or in a smoker if you have one. I find you can get a lot more smoke flavor out a smoker, and after doing it a few times on the grill, I decided to invest about $200 dollars into a Landmann Smoker.

The $200 dollar one can hold 2 whole chickens or 3 briskets, or a whole lot of little things... which is usually plenty of room.

The $300 lacks the separate drawers for the water pan and the wood chip box, and opening the one door will let a lot of heat escape. This can be particularly troublesome when cooking around 225 degrees for 8+ hours and it can slow you down 30 minutes every time you open the door.

So, this time around I decided to smoke some chicken, drumsticks and thighs to be exact. I didn't have a lot of time, and these pieces of meat only need around 3 hours on the smoker to be completed.

Steps:
1. Brine in the fridge
2. Drain and rinse
3. Rub and let sit in the fridge
4. Fill the wood chunk box
5. Fill the water pan with apple juice
6. Put all your meat on the grates
7. Run the smoker around 225 degrees
8. Replace wood chunks when they stop smoking, roughly every 45 minutes.
9. Refill the water pan if it gets low, for a 3 hour smoke that wouldn't be nessasary.
10. When your meat hits the right temp (180 for chicken), Eat!!!

Some other meats require a little extra work, but I'll get into that in a future blog.

When I do chicken, I always brine the meat overnight in the fridge. This involves soaking them in a water and salt mixture, with some seasoning, to fill every tiny crevice with some moisture and flavor. Chicken can tend to dry out if you cook it slow and low for a few hours, so this helps with keeping the chicken forever juicy. It's best to use a food safe container and adjust the brine based on how much water you can fit in the container such that the chicken is fully submerged.
 
Brine:
1 Gallon of Water
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp. Cajun seasoning
2 tsp. celery seed

After a good 10-20 hour soak in the brine I drain all the water and rinse the chicken a little. Then I apply a dry rub of seasoning, rubbing it onto all the chicken. I use my own secret blend, but Dinosaur BBQ has been nice enough to share their recipe. You could use any store bought rub you like as well.

Chicken Rub:

1/2 cup paprika
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated garlic
6 tablespoons granulated onion
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

This rub comes right out of the Dinosaur BBQ cookbook. One of the best cookbooks I own. I've had well over a dozen items out of it and all have been extremely excellent, from bacon wrapped meatloaf to mac & cheese shepherd's pie.

After rubbing the rub all over your chicken, wrap them up good and let them sit in the fridge for up to a day. This time I took them out of the brine the morning I was going to smoke, put on the rub and let them sit for 6 hours until I was ready to smoke the chicken.

I use what's called a vertical smoker and it has the meat door, and two drawers. The heat source is a propane tank hooked to a burner that's on the very bottom.

The top drawer is the liquid drawer. I use apple juice. The heat to causes the juice to vaporize and provide some moisture to keep the meats above it juicy. This is an advantage of a vertical smoker.

The bottom drawer is the wood chunk box. You place 2-3 wood chunks in here, and have to swap them out about every 45 minutes to keep continuous smoke being applied to your meat. When you stop seeing any smoke rise out of the smoker you know it's time for a change of the chunks.

You want to run the smoker around 225 degrees the whole time. Put in your wood chunks and fire it up. About the time you hit 225, you should start getting some smoke from your wood chunks.

You can get wood chunks online or at most places that sell smokers like Home Depot of Bass Pro Shops. I used Hickory this time, because it would impart a strong smoke flavor and with only 3 hours of smoking, it's best to use Hickory if you like a lot of smoke flavor. You can play around with different types of woods based on what you're trying to smoke.

Here is the smoker fully loaded with all my chicken, getting ready to be loaded with smoky deliciousness!

I use some meat thermometers to make sure the meat has reached the correct temperature. For chicken I let it hit 180 degrees internally. This thermometer also captures the temperature inside the smoker. It's specifically designed to capture low temperatures required for low and slow smoking.

Here is the chicken all done cooking! Bet you wish you could have some!

Slight smoke, juicy, bbq seasoned. Add your favorite BBQ sauce and you're good to go! So delicious!

Kung Pao Chicken!

Thought I'd give a couple new recipes a try this week. The first one a modification on Graham Elliot's Kung Pao Turkey Drumsticks featured in Food & Wine magazine. He's the culinary director for Lollapalooza where they serve this dish and you might have seen him as a judge on Masterchef recently.

This simple recipe produced some seriously tasty Kung Pao, and will put to shame much of what you've probably eaten from Chinese restaurants. I was blown away by how great it was!

I decided to use chicken instead of turkey, and breast instead of drumsticks. I grilled the chicken instead of pan fried. I used the breast whole, but after completing the recipe, i think I should have chopped the chicken into little pieces and tossed them with the sauce. That's what it's all about. Take a recipe, try it out, play with it, and make modifications as you learn!

Ingredients:
A honey glaze (optional, I don't think it added much to it, the sauce is so good you don't need this.)
1/3 cup honey
1 tbs. minced fresh ginger

Kung Pao Sauce
3 tbs. minced fresh ginger (an inch on ginger root is roughly a tbs. Peel the ginger then finely mince)
1 medium shallot, minced
3 garlic gloves, minced
2 tbs. mirin (I didn't have this, so I used 2 tbs. of cooking sherry and a tsp. of sugar as a substitute)
3 tbs. rice vinegar
6 tbs. soy sauce (we used low sodium)
2 tbs. hoisin sauce
1 tbs. sambal oelek or another Asian hot sauce

Meat
3-4 chicken breast, or any chicken or turkey pieces.

Coating
1/4 cup salted roasted peanuts, chopped
2 scallions, minced

However you want to cook your meat, you can get that started while you're working on the sauce. I just grilled my chicken with a little salt, for roughly 25 minutes.

If you want to make the honey glaze:
In a small saucepan, bring the honey and 1 tbs. of ginger to a simmer. Let cool and then strain into a bowl. Basically you're making some ginger infused honey to drizzle over your chicken or turkey.

Kung Pao sauce:
While mincing all your minced items, heat 2 tbs. canola oil over low heat. Add the shallot and cooking over low heat, stirring until softened, about 4 minutes. Add in the garlic and 3 tbs. fresh ginger, cooking over low heat for 2 minutes. Stir in the mirin (or substitute) and vinegar and simmer until slightly reduced, around 2 minutes. Add in the soy sauce and hoisin, simmering until slightly thickened, around 1 minute.

You should end up with something like this:

Then stir in the hot sauce. I didn't have any sambal oelek, but I had some of this stuff.. so I used a little. You could leave it out, use a little chili flakes, or get some Asian hot sauce, whatever your taste.

You can leave your sauce on simmer or low while your chicken is finishing up.

The original recipe called for pan frying turkey drum sticks, but I decided to grill some chicken breast instead.

When your meat is done, toss it with the sauce and get it nice and coated. The idea is then to roll it in the chopped peanut and scallion mixture in a bowl or pie tin. Without skin, my sauce didn't stick that well to the chicken, so I ended up pouring it on top and then applying the peanut and scallion mixture.

 
If you're going to chop up the chicken like I will do the next time I make this, just toss your chicken with the peanut and scallion mixture. If you make the ginger honey, drizzle it on top too.

The sauce is outstanding, and goes really well on rice too, so it's a great pairing to make together.

Try this sauce, it will blow your mind and is well worth the little effort to make it. You won't believe it. Spice up that everyday chicken!

Moley, moley, Guacamole!

I don't know if you've ever had store bought guacamole, but it's pretty disgusting. I've broken down and bought a couple in my life, not wanting to put in the effort to make my own, and they were always so terrible I couldn't eat them. Many people think they hate guacamole, because that's all they've had. This fresh, homemade version will win over anyone.. well, at least if they like avocados even a little bit. Creamy, yummy, fatty.. how could you not love them?

The hardest part of making guacamole is getting nice, ripe avocados. This is an art. Squeeze them a little... if they're hard, they need to sit on your counter for a week. If they're super soft.. too late, don't buy them. It's right in the middle where you want them, if you're going to eat them today. Often you have to plan ahead because at the grocery store, they are usually in the hard stage and need a good week to ripen. Once you have 2-3 ripe avocados, you're good to go!

When making guacamole I recommend you hand chop everything, getting the ingredients pretty small.. they're all just complements to the avocado, and the end result should be somewhat smooth and not have huge chunks of tomatoes or onions, or wet mush if you use a food processor.. so work on your knife skills and hand chop those ingredients tiny.

What you need:
3 Ripe Avocados
1/2 Tomato, chopped into tiny bits
1/2 medium red onion, chopped into tiny bits
2 Garlic cloves, more if you like a lot of garlic.. it's good for your heart! chopped into super tiny bits
1 Jalapeno (2 for hotter, 0 for no heat)  I use 2. Remove the seeds and rinse the pepper, then chop into tiny bits
1/4 cup Cilantro, chopped into tiny bits
A little lime juice, to taste, roughly 1 tbs.
A little salt, to taste, roughly 2 tsp.
    "To taste" means you have add these a little at a time, mix up your guacamole each time, and taste.. best part of being a chef!

It's pretty simple, chop everything, mix it, add lime juice and salt to taste, and you have homemade guac!

Chop your onion.

Chop your jalapeno.

 

Chop your tomato.

 

 Chop your garlic.

This is a good estimate for the amount of Cilantro.

Chop it up finely, you don't want leaves in your guacamole.

Cut the avocado in a circle around the pit, then pop out the pit using a spoon or knife, carefully!

Carefully cut cubes into the avocado down to the skin, this will make it easier to mush in the next step. Then scoop it all our with a spoon.

Combine everything together in the bowl, and use a fork to mush the avocado into a relatively smooth puree, leaving little chunks of avocado in there. Then season with lime juice and salt to taste.

Voila! Home made guacamole.. it's really pretty simple, and always a hit. Once you make it a few times you'll be able to breeze through the recipe!