Can You Freeze Guacamole? – How To Store Guacamole
Quick Answer
Yes, you can freeze guacamole for up to 4 months without losing its texture or taste. Follow these steps to freeze it effectively:
- Airtight storage method: Use a heavy-duty freezer bag or airtight container.
- Flatten the bag, removing air, and add a bit of lemon or lime juice.
- Seal tightly, label, and date before freezing.
Read on for more detail
Taco Tuesday is one of our favorite days of the week. You just can’t beat a good Mexican food night.
In fact, you can’t beat a good Mexican food dinner any day of the week. It doesn’t even have to be Tuesday to justify enjoying your tacos and other types of Mexican cuisine. And the best part? Guacamole!
But the challenge with guacamole is keeping it fresh and tasty when you store up the leftovers. So what can you do to preserve it longer and keep it from separating or discoloring until you are ready to use it?
Can you freeze guacamole? Yes, you can freeze guacamole for up to 3 months without losing its texture or taste. Frozen guacamole won’t turn brown, while it will only last a few days in the fridge.
In this guide, we will walk you through how to freeze your guacamole from beginning to end.
We will cover a lot of groundwork and talk about various tips for storing your guacamole to keep it from turning brown. Keep reading to learn everything you should know about freezing guacamole and more.
Your Guide to Freezing Guacamole
Guacamole is one of those foods that you just never really know how to store. It always seems like guacamole either separates or turns brown within hours of putting it in the refrigerator.
It’s such a pain because you just want to be able to enjoy the rest of the delicious guacamole!
Not to worry, we’ve got you covered with some insight and some great tips to help you store your guacamole so you don’t have to worry about it turning brown. Unfortunately, you can’t always control it but there are definitely things you can do to try to prevent it.
Guacamole
One of the best things you can possibly have are dips – whether you like salsa, queso, or guacamole, you simply can’t go wrong! You can make your guacamole in many different ways.
But some people don’t like guacamole, even if they like avocados. Then there are people who don’t care for avocados but love their guacamole.
Of course, there are also the people that love it all. Guacamole is great. It can be used as a dip or even for some cooking purposes.
Guacamole is a Spanish term. It is made primarily of avocado and is a common food when it comes to Mexican cuisine. Guacamole can be used as a dip, a salad, a condiment, a spread, or many other things.
You can find guacamole in many different varieties. It can be made with various additives and ingredients and can have various flavors as well. You can find mild or spicy guacamole and you might find it with tomatoes and onions or without.
Here are some great usage options for guacamole.
- Spread on toast
- Add to a sandwich of any kind
- Top your soup
- Use for a salad dressing replacement
- Loaded potatoes
- 7-layer dip
- Dip
- Top your burgers or patties
- Add to burritos or tacos
- Use to replace tartar sauce with fried fish
- Use to stuff mushrooms or peppers
- Top hot dogs
- Add to chicken dishes
As you can see there are a lot of ways you can enjoy your guacamole. It has always been viewed as primarily a dip or a topping for Mexican food but there are so many other things you can do with guacamole.
If you like guacamole, you can use it as a topping or additive for just about any type of dish you want to. The key here is that you simply find unique and creative ways to enjoy your guacamole. Let your imagination soar so you can get the most out of your guacamole.
How Guacamole is Made
There are a lot of different ways to make guacamole. If you do a search on the internet you will find hundreds of recipes and they all vary in some way. You can find so many varieties and most of them are catered to individual tastes.
Just know that you can search out a recipe that is to your liking. And aside from that, you can tweak any recipe you use to match your preferred flavors or ingredients. If a recipe calls for onion and you don’t like onion, you can just leave it out and your recipe will still be successful.
We are going to share with you a traditional guacamole recipe but we want you to keep in mind that there are plenty of other variations and options that you can use. You should also know you can make your guacamole as smooth or as chunky as you’d like.
It’s great! How you make your guacamole is totally up to you, as long as you have the avocado.
Here’s how to make homemade guacamole:
- For this recipe, you will need avocado (ripe ones), red onion, cilantro, jalapeno, lime juice, sea salt, garlic, ground cumin, and tomatoes if desired.
- Start by mashing your avocados and dicing your onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, and cilantro to desired sizes. Mash your avocado in a mixing bowl using either a spoon, fork, or mashing tool.
- After you have mashed your avocado to the desired consistency, add in your other chopped ingredients. Mix well.
- Add cilantro, salt, garlic, cumin, and lime juice. Stir well until everything is combined.
- Sample the mixture and adjust to taste if needed. You can easily adjust flavors by adding more salt, jalapenos, lime juice, or cilantro to the mixture.
- Serve up and enjoy!
As you can tell, making guacamole is incredibly simple. You use all fresh ingredients for the mixture with a few added seasonings. The best guacamole comes from using very fresh avocados.
From this point of making your guacamole, you can proceed to then using it or storing it however you see fit.
Storing Guacamole
Storing your guacamole can be challenging. The liquids sometimes separate from the mixture. This is easily solved with a bit of stirring when you’re ready to use it. Additionally, another challenge is to store your guacamole without it turning brown. This is the hardest thing to contend with.
However, there are simple solutions that are designed to help with these issues and they work relatively well if you carefully follow all of the steps.
1. Freezing Guacamole
Now, let’s get to the important part. Guacamole stores perfectly in the freezer and will not lose its taste or texture if thawed properly. If you want to use this method to preserve your guacamole for later, we have the steps below.
Steps for storing guacamole in the freezer:
- As a reminder, you will need an airtight storage method. You don’t have to worry as much about guacamole turning brown in the freezer but you can be proactive and add some lemon or lime juice to be on the safe side. You can use an airtight container, but for the freezer, we recommend a heavy-duty freezer bag.
- Scoop the guacamole into a heavy-duty freezer bag. Flatten it out and spread it evenly through the freezer bag, releasing as much air as possible. Add a small amount of lemon or lime juice to the top. The lemon juice will keep it fresh.
- Release as much air as possible from the bag again. Seal tightly.
- Label and date the bag.
- Store in the freezer for up to 4 months.
Freezing guacamole is the perfect way to make sure you always have some on hand when you need it.
We also recommend freezing your guacamole in portions so that you don’t end up thawing too much at a time and being unable to re-freeze it.
We do not recommend refreezing guacamole, or any food for that matter, as this can not only cause unpleasant changes to the texture and flavor but also heighten the risk of bacteria growth.
2. Refrigerating Guacamole
First, let’s talk about storing guacamole in the fridge. If you plan to use it within 2-3 days, just pop it in the fridge.
As you prepare your guacamole for the fridge, don’t forget your added step for trying to prevent brown guacamole. If all else fails and your guacamole IS brown on top, just scrape off that layer and enjoy it anyways.
Here are some steps and tips for storing guacamole in the fridge:
- You need to remember two things as you prepare your guacamole for refrigeration. First, you need your guacamole to be protected from air. Whether this means you double layer for storage or seal it in a bag. Next, don’t forget your brown fighting methods.
- For your refrigerator storage, we recommend leaving the guacamole in an airtight storage container. Stir your guacamole and flatten it into a single layer.
- Top about ½-inch of water on top of guacamole. Do not stir.
- Seal with plastic wrap.
- Seal again with an airtight lid to the container.
- Place in the fridge for up to 3 days.
- When ready to serve, remove lid and plastic wrap and dump or drain water off the top.
- Stir and serve.
You can also store regular avocado in the refrigerator if it’s on a sandwich. Learn how by reading this article.
Guacamole doesn’t store as well as avocados do in the fridge, but this is an acceptable method if you’ll be using your dip within the next day or two.
Using Guacamole After Freezing
When you are ready to use your guacamole, you will probably need to let it thaw out or defrost. We definitely do not recommend microwaving it unless you are desperate to use it quickly.
If you need a quick defrost, you can microwave it slightly but you don’t want the guacamole to get warm as it will not go over well. Microwave only slightly to defrost but let the guacamole remain slightly icy.
The very best thing you can do to prepare your guacamole is to let it thaw overnight in the fridge. This will keep it cool and preserve the properties. Then when you are ready to serve the guacamole you can pour it into a serving bowl, drain off excess moisture, stir, and enjoy.
What you need to remember most is that once it has thawed, it will be susceptible to turning brown. Do not try to refreeze the guacamole. Refer to previously shared anti-browning techniques to attempt to protect and preserve the guacamole until you use it from this point.
If you follow the provided tips and techniques, your guacamole will be just fine. We are quite sure your taste buds will thank you later when you’re enjoying that guacamole.
What Makes Guacamole Turn Brown?
If you’ve worked with avocados very much you know the struggle is real when it comes to keeping them green. Once they have been subjected to open air, it’s like an open invitation for the meat of the avocado to discolor.
It’s the same with guacamole. Even with lime juice and the other ingredients in the mix, your guacamole can still turn brown.
There are multiple fruits and vegetables that this happens to. Some examples you might recognize the trait from are potatoes and apples.
The good news is you don’t have to toss out the whole bowl just because some of the top layer turned brown. You can scoop out the top layer and the rest is still edible. After you scoop out the brown layer, give the mixture a good stir.
What causes the browning? Technically, it’s the oxygen that causes the browning to occur. There’s a specific enzyme within the avocado makeup that when touched by air (oxygen) causes it to discolor. The top layer might turn brown but what is under there is still perfectly delicious.
Here is how to prevent guacamole from turning brown:
- Baste the top layer of your guacamole with lemon or lime juice. Don’t stir it in, simply coat the top with it. Then when you are ready to serve the guacamole, you can dump off the juice so it doesn’t affect the flavor dramatically.
- Try protecting your guacamole from open-air or oxygen by placing a layer of plastic wrap directly on top of your guacamole before sealing it in a container and placing it in the fridge or freezer. This will protect it from that air that turns it brown. This can be hard to make effective.
- Pool water on the top surface of the guacamole and then cover it and store it. Again, do not stir the water in, simply layer it on top. When you are ready to use the guacamole, dump off the water and proceed to using it.
Studies and trials have shown that the lemon/lime juice and the water pooling tend to be the most effective methods. However, you can try any of these tricks to try to prevent your guacamole from turning brown.
Related Questions
We hope that you find this guide to freezing guacamole to be helpful and informative. Guacamole is a challenging food to properly store and if you miss one little thing, you have to deal with the brown. The good news is you can easily work around any browning sections.
We invite you to take a look at the following question and answer section to see if any of the information might be useful for you.
Will Adding the Pit to the Guacamole Keep It from Turning Brown?
The pit can help protect your guacamole from turning brown.
The downside to this method is the pit only protects a small surface area and may not keep all of your top layer from turning brown depending on how large your dish is.
Is Guacamole Healthy for You?
Everything in guacamole is whole and natural. Guacamole is considered a healthy dish.
Of course, the overall health value depends upon how you use the guacamole. For instance, if you eat a full bag of tortilla chips with your guacamole it is no longer healthy.
Apart from that knowledge, guacamole is full of nutrition. Avocados are a healthy fat and the other vegetables can also provide health benefits for you. Guacamole is low in cholesterol and high in fiber.
Additionally, guacamole has been credited with reducing risk of hemorrhoids while also reducing the risk of various heart diseases and even heart attacks.
Now that you know everything about storing and freezing guacamole, it’s also important to know how to store those chips to go with! Read this article to learn how to keep chips fresh.
How Do You Pick a Ripe Avocado?
Generally, ripe avocados will be a dark purple/brown color. If you lightly press on the top of the avocado, it should squish slightly but still be slightly firm. You don’t want an avocado that’s too firm or too soft.
Here’s a simple tutorial from the ABC Australia channel on YouTube explaining how to tell if an avocado is ripe as well as tips for which avocados will taste better than others.
Up Next: Can You Eat Avocado Skin?