Avocado Recipes

By Food & Wine
Updated March 12, 2018
Credit: John Kernick
These delicious recipes include gooey cheese-topped guacamole and chilled avocado soup with crab.
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Persimmon-and-Endive Salad with Honey Vinegar and Avocado Oil Vinaigrette

Credit: Con Poulos
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The combination of buttery avocado oil and bracing honey vinegar (made from mead) makes for a fantastic vinaigrette in this crunchy, colorful and delicious salad.

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Spicy Avocado and Pea Tea Sandwiches

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These vegetarian sandwiches from F&W’s Ben Mims feature avocado two ways—mashed and in a chunky salad. Both are tossed with a tangy chile-herb dressing.

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Hearts of Palm and Avocado Salad

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This Brazilian-style salad might taste a bit rich—with creamy avocado and a mayonnaise dressing—but it’s really quite healthy.

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Avocado Chimichurri

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Inspired by chimichurri, a classic Argentinean herb sauce for grilled meats, this chunky avocado salsa is seasoned with lots of parsley and oregano.

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Avocado Hollandaise

Credit: CHRISTINA HOLMES
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Luscious, rich and lemony hollandaise gets completely re-imagined here in a light, supremely creamy puree of avocado, lemon juice and olive oil.

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Avocado Toasts with Oaxacan Sesame Sauce

Credit: Christina Holmes
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Food writer and stylist Karen Gillingham makes this spicy, fragrant sauce inspired by a version she discovered at a hole-in-the-wall café in Mexico. She likes spooning it over toasts topped with mashed avocado, but it’s also great with eggs and grilled fish.

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Avocado-Hummus Dip

Credit: CHRISTINA HOLMES
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For a new twist on the usual hummus or guacamole, try this delicious mash-up of the two. It's great with crudités, crackers and corn chips, or as a sandwich spread.

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Avocado Pissaladière

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This pizza-like tart, pissaladière, is a specialty of Nice, France. The traditional toppings include caramelized onions, anchovies and olives but here, creamy slices of avocado are added as well. Using store-bought pizza dough makes quick work of the crust.

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Avocado-and-Shrimp Salad with Red Goddess Dressing

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Chef Jonathan Waxman makes his tangy goddess dressing red instead of the classic green, using red bell peppers for color and flavor.

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Avocado-Green Pea Salsa

Credit: PHOTO © CON POULOS
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This unusual, colorful salsa from chef Jose Enrique combines green peas and creamy diced avocado with a hit of lime. It’s outstanding with baked rice dishes like arroz con pollo.

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Avocado, Feta and Cherry Tomato Salsa Flatbreads

Credit: CHRISTINA HOLMES
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Chef Charlie Hallowell—a Chez Panisse alum—makes the dough for his colorful flatbreads, topping them with a fresh tomato salsa instead of sauce. Store-bought pizza dough works perfectly well, too.

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Avocado Tartare

Credit: © Christina Holmes
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This clever recipe treats avocados much like steak tartare, dicing them very fine and tossing them with capers, onion, mustard and Worcestershire sauce.

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Avocado-Tarragon Dressing

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This multipurpose dressing makes a perfect dip for crudités and a great go-with for grilled steak, or swap it for the mayonnaise in chicken salad.

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Pink-Grapefruit-and-Avocado Salad

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This pretty salad from the iconic Alice Waters is best in the winter, when grapefruit is at its prime.

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Chunky Guacamole

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Mexico City native Richard Sandoval makes his guacamole in a volcanic-rock molcajete (mortar and pestle) and serves it with hot, superthin corn tortilla chips and two kinds of salsa: avocado-and-tomatillo and fresh tomato.

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Chilled Avocado Soup Topped with Crab

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Here is one ingenious way to use Grace Parisi's smoky guacamole: in a cool, summery soup.

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Fresh Tuna Salad with Avocado

Credit: © Frances Janisch
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Nan McEvoy created this salad after falling in love with the incredible olive oil-poached tuna prepared by her friend, chef Paul Bertolli. McEvoy uses albacore tuna here, but any fresh tuna will do. In addition to spooning the salad into avocado halves, she also uses it as a sandwich filling and a topping for crostini.

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Crab-and-Avocado Toasts

Credit: © Lucy Schaeffer
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Gerard Craft grew up in Washington, DC, eating lots of Maryland blue crab. Here, he creates a very simple and delicious starter by tossing sweet crabmeat with fresh mint and lime juice, then spooning it over mashed avocado on toast. You can make the toasts or buy store-bought ones to save time.

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Chicken-and-Avocado Soup with Fried Tortillas

Credit: SUSAN SPUNGEN
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Here's a silky soup that doesn';t rely on cream for its creamy texture; pureed avocados do the job nicely. It doesn't rely on long cooking for its full flavor, either—the soup's in the pot for less than ten minutes.

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Roasted-Beet-and-Avocado Salad

Credit: © Simon Watson
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A surprise ingredient—a puree of the squat Italian cipollini onion—thickens and sweetens the mustard dressing on this wintry salad of earthy roasted red beets and chunks of silky avocado.

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Cumin-Glazed Ribs with Avocado-Pineapple Salsa

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Cheese-Topped Guacamole

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In this play on nachos, chef Gonzalo Martinez of Casa de Sierra Nevada tops a chunky guacamole with gooey melted cheese. Tip: Mild queso oaxaca is the best cheese for melting.

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Avocado-and-Onion Salad

Credit: © Lucy Schaeffer
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Since people in Cuba don't usually have ready access to salad greens, Lourdes Castro says, many will start a meal with this simple avocado salad instead. Cubans tend to use Florida avocados, which are widely available in the Caribbean.

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Guacamole with Charred Jalapeño and Scallions

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F&W's Grace Parisi invented this smoky guacamole.

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King Crab and Avocado Shooters

Credit: © Frederic Lagrange
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Zapallar, the small Chilean beach town where the Huneeus's family villa is located, has a wonderful fish market where Valeria Huneeus buys excellent fresh crab. She loves tossing it with sweet and soft avocados, a little coconut milk and fresh ginger, then serving it in a glass, shooter-style, with a thick slice of avocado on top.

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Curried Tofu-and-Avocado Dip with Rosemary Pita Chips

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To create this tasty dip, Lee Anne Wong blends soft or silken tofu (which has an especially custardy texture) with high-potassium avocado and a little bit of low-fat sour cream and yogurt. For extra fiber, she serves the dip with raw vegetables and rosemary whole wheat pita chips.

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Fried Chicken Tacos

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“Right in Tijuana’s red-light district sits Kentucky Fried Buches, where cooks fry chicken necks, skin on, to fill soft corn tortillas. I can’t stop eating them,” says Andrew Zimmern. “At home, I fry skin-on chicken thighs until they’re supercrisp, then eat them with avocado-tomatillo salsa, my family’s favorite.”

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Chilled Cucumber-Avocado Soup with Spicy Glazed Shrimp

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Douglas Keane is such a fan of chilled soups that he puts at least one on his menu every season including winter. The combination of cucumber and red wine vinegar in this recipe reminds him of the wonderful Greek salads he had growing up outside of Detroit, Michigan, home to a huge Greek community.

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Mexican Shrimp-and-Avocado Salad with Tortilla Chips

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This recipe is loosely based on fattoush, a Middle Eastern salad in which toasted bread is moistened by other ingredients, like tomatoes and cucumbers. Here, tortilla chips soak up the delicious salad juices.

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Chunky Guacamole with Cumin

Credit: © Tina Rupp
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Marcia Kiesel's take on everyone's favorite dip has subtle tartness, balanced heat and a creamy-chunky texture.

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Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dogs with Avocado

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The late-night hot dog spot Crif Dogs is locally famous for its franks. This one, which goes by the name The Chihuahua, is wrapped in bacon and topped with sour cream and avocado. It's also available at the adjoining cocktail lounge, PDT.

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Avocado, Orange and Jicama Salad

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Feta is a fun, briny addition to this salad's Mexican mix of jicama, avocado and cilantro.

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Spicy Avocado-Cucumber Soup

Credit: PHOTO © JOHN KERNICK
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This tangy, luscious soup is an excellent make-ahead dish: Simply puree everything except the garnish, then chill. For a milder version, scale back on the serrano.