Growing up in Southern California, we have a simple, safe, and sane approach to eating avocados. Hack into the side with an extremely sharp knife, twist it into the avocado's heart in a circular cut, and then slash up the flesh, maybe mixing a little leftover taco truck salsa straight into the avocado then dipping a tortilla or some bread inside.
All of which is to say, we find it just slightly hilarious when out-of-towners come down with avocado-hand or devise weird ways of handling avocados, and downright murderous if anyone calls it "Guac." These are not tough coconuts or mangoes with humongous seeds, after all. Just soft, buttery fruits that are ridiculously finicky about getting ripe.
Speaking of weird ways to handle avocados, The New York Times has one. They broke the internet yesterday by showing us how to make guacamole, according to them, faster. Instead of slicing avocados open and scooping them out with, say, a spoon that can be easily cleaned with your tongue before being placed back gingerly in the family utensil drawer, chef Ham El-Waylly has come up with a quick and curious way to do it.
Dude takes a cooling rack and simply smashes his avocados against it, allowing beautiful, light green, equally-sized chunks of avocado to fall into his bowl. Okay, okay. It's certainly not inefficient as a solution to a problem that didn't exist.
Until that is, you witness, in horror, all the precious green gold still left over on the rack, and consider the lengths one will have to go to scrub that sheet clean if they have a sink 1/8th the size of a major publication's test kitchen.
We get it. Millennials need their #lifehacks and must satisfy the world's demand for viral content and stunt food. And really all he promised was "the fastest way to make guacamole," and not a "way to demean a cooking rack." Which was fulfilled.
Still, we're officially labeling this one "dumb." And seem to have plenty of agreement in the comments.
The great Vero Castro immediately reacts with "Nope Nope Nope," while one Manumoreno501 notes the "80% yield," and Fabiana Pigna backs us up on "Another thing to clean 😢."
There are supporters, too, of course, who are racing to remove their racks and get to squashing. And maybe we're just old-school avocado fanatics who don't trust The New York Times to tell us anything about California-living unless the writer's first name is "Tejal" and their last name "Rao."
In any case, the video is below for you to decide whether this technique should stay or blow.
