What is better than guacamole on a hot summer evening?

This chipotle corn and black bean guacamole.

I don’t know about you, but when I make guacamole it is usually my meal. Not the best of habits since it’s hardly balanced, unless you’re using vegetables to dip in your guacamole (but I wholly admit that I am not).

At work this week we had a dip contest (pics of which are on my flickr), and I never set out to lose anything so I collected all my creative juices to reinvent my guacamole recipe for this year’s event. Last year, we had a category of guacamole, and when I was the only one who made it, they lumped it in with all the savoury dips.  Guacamole is great, but it doesn’t compete at the same level as general savoury because, let’s face it, cheese-based dips will probably always win (speaking of which, I will have a reinvented cheeseburger dip in an upcoming post that was this year’s winner on creativity).

I can’t help but think I will never make the other version of guacamole ever again because this one is so good. With the smoky chipotle, it is just…yum…and surprisingly addictive.  Or maybe not surprisingly since guacamole is great.

It requires more ingredients, but it’s no more complex to throw together than the original version. I also recommend if you’ve never made guacamole in a vitamin before to try it sometime and you may be surprised how easy it is. If you’ve never hand-mashed an avocado before, it’s simple and easy and you won’t even break a sweat.

And I’ll be adopting this one as my new picnic staple.  So come on people, let’s have some picnics!

A couple of notes: I love cilantro but I opted for parsley to accommodate those who think cilantro tastes like soap. For not wasting the whole jar of chipotle peppers, I use the brilliant method from Our Best Bites to process the rest of the can and store it).  The lemon juice will help prevent the guacamole from oxidizing. Saving the whole avocado pits and keeping them in the guacamole will also help. Just remove the pits when you’re ready to serve.