Ina Garten’s Guacamole Hack Is a Recipe Game Changer — and it Adds Zero Prep Time

Ina Garten is the queen of kitchen hacks for small but meaningful life upgrades: Consider her tip for using stale bread uber-deliciously. Or her friendly PSA that you've been cutting cauliflower wrong your whole life. (You're welcome!) 

And her easy hack for improving guacamole will take your recipe to the next level — almost no extra effort required. (Hat tip to BuzzFeed for digging up this tip out of Garten's archive.)

In an old clip from her show Barefoot Contessa, she shows off how to make guacamole chunky, with that just-right texture that feels substantial, homemade, and without the consistency of a bland store-bought puree.

First she combines the ingredients in a bowl — in addition to avocados, she uses freshly squeezed lemon juice, hot sauce, chopped garlic, and red onions, plus salt and pepper. But then when all the ingredients are in, she combines them with a chef knife — slicing the avocado right in the bowl. (Just be prepared for some nicks and imperfections in that bowl as a result — but what else is it for, really?)

"This is the secret to really good guacamole," she says in the clip. "I don't puree it. All I do is cut into it just like this so it's really chunky. It mixes the ingredients together, and it stays really chunky.

She explains, ”Just run your knife through the avocados. This results in a guacamole that's nice and creamy yet still has defined chunks of avocado — because nobody wants textureless guacamole, am I right?”

You are so right, Contessa. As always.

Watch Garten walk you through step by step: