I like to think that I make a pretty decent guacamole. I’ve received pretty positive feedback from those people who have indulged in the guac that I’ve made in the past, and I’m typically pleased with it myself when I make small batches for the house.
Over the holiday weekend, I volunteered to bring some tortilla chips and some of my homemade guacamole to a party I went to. Prior to the date, I went to the store to purchase ingredients for the dip, and was disappointed when I got to the produce section, and found out that every single Hass avocado available was not yet ripe. I know there are ways and methods to accelerate the ripening process of Hass avocados, but even those typically take a day, and at the hardness of these particular avocados, probably two. I did not have two days.
So, I ended up picking up some, what I’ve learned that the proper designation were, Hall avocados. The giant, more limey-green colored avocados that are almost twice the size of a Hass. They were soft and ripe, and I figured that they couldn’t be that much different from going with Hass, and in a guacamole with a couple of other ingredients in it, it might hide the imperfections.
How wrong I was. How tragically, horrifically wrong I was, to assume such a naïve thing like a Hall avocado being a suitable substitute for a Hass.
Using Hall avocados made my guacamole into shit. A complete and utter disappointment. On a scale of not having enough milk for your cereal to not being able to secure a prime hotel room for Dragon*Con, guacamole made with Hall avocados was somewhere around the disappointment felt when someone spoils an episode of The Walking Dead over Facebook. It just made me sad, and really bummed out that my friends who might have enjoyed in the past, my guacamole, were subjected to this flavorless, runny, miscolored excuse for guacamole.
It got me thinking, why the hell are there variants of avocados aside from Hass? I can’t say I’ve tried any other than Hall, but if they’re as defiantly different from Hass, frankly I don’t see any purpose for their existence.
Heaven help me, if it can be avoided, I’m never using any avocado other than Hass again. I’m simply convinced that there’s no way any of them can be as remotely good as a Hass, for any culinary pursuit.
