Cinco de Mayo alert! Buy your avocados now, and 25 recipes
Cinco de Mayo is Sunday, and if you are throwing a party you really only have one urgent, pressing responsibility.
Get. Avocados. Now. Like, today!
Everything else -- the beer, the tortillas, the tequila -- can wait. But if you are going to make guacamole, or tuna tostadas with a chipotle mayo, or carne asada tacos, you will need avocados that are soft and creamy and ready for action this weekend.
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Times Food editor Russ Parsons suggests buying avocados that are quite firm, even hard, and allowing them to ripen on your kitchen counter. “It’ll take only a couple of days, and it will keep you from getting stuck with fruit that’s been badly bruised by overenthusiastic shoppers.â€
Badly bruised avocados do not make good guacamole.
If you buy avocados today, you can breathe easy. You still have a few more days to plan out the rest of your party menu.
To help you do just that, here are 25 Cinco de Mayo recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen. We’ve got everything you need to throw a party, including margaritas, salsa and chicharrones de queso -- basically, cheese fried into a chip! -- and an orange juice-infused flan that is sure to be a hit.
What are you serving at your Cinco de Mayo party? If you make any of our recipes, we want to see photographic proof. Upload your images to our site so we can enjoy them as well.
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