What’s Eating You: How to Add Avocado To Every Meal

What’s Eating You? is a weekly advice column where I answer all of your burning cooking questions. To get the ball rolling, I’ve asked some of my friends to send me theirs. If you’d like your kitchen dilemma solved, feed it to me here.

Matt is a 27-year-old So-Cal native. He cooks nothing and eats everything. He does so very slowly, and in huge quantities. His girlfriend, Caitlyn, asked this question about cast iron skillets. She once stopped him from pouring soap all over Phoebe’s. Phew.

I would classify a large portion of what I eat as “vehicles for avocado”, and sometimes I just go for them straight. Any suggestions for diversifying my avocado snacking? — Matt N.

 What an excellent vice! High fives all around. I know one of my issues when it comes to avocado snacking is that it’s so hard to store a half-eaten avocado and have it not look gnarly the next day. So I usually end up devouring the whole damn thing. One of the best methods I’ve found is to lay the avocado cut-side down in a shallow bowl filled with ½ an inch of water. This keeps the avocado looking as green and delicious and edible as can be.

But if devouring the whole avocado is exactly what you had in mind, I have some ideas for you and recipes to go with them.

1. Put it on bread. Mashed avocado with a little lemon juice is my favorite topping for a tartine or crostini. Add a couple radishes like in this recipe, and you’ve got the perfect snack.

2. Put it inside a quesadilla. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing better than guacamole as a topping. But you can make your avocado do double duty by sandwiching it in between the crispy gooey tortilla as well.

3. Use it as a topping for soup. I am obsessed with this vegetarian tortilla soup. The cool avocado is such a nice contrast to the piping hot (and spicy!) broth. You can try it on any veggie soup, really. Just dice up an avocado and toss it on top.

4. Make it into a condiment or sauce. If you’re really looking to use up that extra half, try adding it to green goddess dressing – you can find my recipe in here.

5. Wrap it up. This time of year, I’m really into making crunchy veggie wraps with everything I can find from the farmer’s market. Add some avocado and you have a nice smooth contrast to lots of crisp veggies.

If those weren’t enough, keep checking back to the recipe index for more avocado recipes.

Happy cooking!

Xo
Phoebe