While Mexico doesn’t consider its victorious Battle of Puebla during the French-Mexican war a national holiday, here at StreetEasy we do it big and with lots of guacamole. This Cinco de Mayo marked our first “Guac Off,” which is a long-standing tradition adopted from our Trulia mates.
Thirteen contestants whipped up their favorite recipes in hopes of winning a $50 Visa gift card. Each contestant was provided with the basics: avocados, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and limes. Then they were free to add whatever special ingredients they wanted.
Fifty-five avocados and roughly three gallons of guacamole later, we had a winner. StreetEasy mobile product manager Justin Metzler produced the winning guac dish, nabbing the top spot, followed by StreetEasy developer Helen Nayfield in second place with Zillow Group’s Brad Benson and Zillow designer Suzy Krahenbuhl tied for third place.
And what went into Justin’s winning guacamole recipe? “It’s really something we iterated on through recipe books and The Food Network. But, you can explore any combination of these ingredients (below) — it’s definitely an art. For this contest, I deviated from what we typically do and wasn’t feeling particularly confident about this version, but something worked.”
Here’s Justin’s winning recipe:
- Avocados
- Lime
- Lemon
- Red onion (you can use white also)
- Jalapeños and/or Serrano
- Cilantro
- Garlic
- Salt
- Pepper
- Garlic salt
- Cumin
- Paprika
- Cayenne pepper
- Sugar
- … and a secret mix of additional spices for extra heat!