Recipe: A Market-Style Guacamole That’s True to Tradition

Smooth or chunky. Spicy or mild. Bulked out with salty feta or entirely plant-based. The variations of guacamole are as broad as Mexican cuisine itself. This version, by Adelaide restaurateur Daniella Guevara Muñoz, skips the tomato entirely.

“When you go to the markets in Mexico, you will see big molcajetes (mortars and pestles) full of guacamole without tomatoes,” she writes in her debut cookbook, Provecho: Real Mexican Food at Home. “I guess it’s easier for the avocado not to turn – that’s my theory anyway.” In this recipe, she swaps out tomato for jalapeno chillies.

The key here, as with many traditional guacamole recipes, is to smash the aromatics into a base paste first. By masticating the onion, coriander, chillies and lime juice together before adding the avocado, you allow their flavours to really unlock – making for a far more flavoursome dish.

Guevara Muñoz grew up in Mexico City before moving to Australia. Underwhelmed by the two-dimensional representation of Mexican cuisine here, she quit her job as a marine biologist on the Great Barrier Reef to serve her own. In 2017, with no commercial kitchen experience, she and her husband opened La Popular Tacqueria in Port Adelaide. In 2025, she released Provecho – which is full of crowd-pleasing Mexican recipes like stuffed jalapeno tacos and bombshell barbeque prawns.

For more free recipes – from quick dinners to weekend projects – sign up for our Cooking newsletter.

Daniella Guevara Muñoz’s market-style guacamole

Serves 4 (makes 400g)

Preparation time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients

¼ white onion, diced

¼ bunch coriander, finely chopped

2 jalapenos or serrano chillies

Juice of 1 lime

Salt, to taste

2 medium-ripe avocados, halved, then chopped

Corn chips, to serve (optional)

Method

Add the onion, coriander, chillies, lime juice and salt to a mortar and mash with a pestle until you have a paste. Add the avocado, a little at a time, to the mortar and mash it through the mix, continuing until you again have a paste.

You can serve this guacamole with corn chips, but I prefer it as a topping for tacos.

Images and text from Provecho by Daniella Guevara Munoz, photography by Simon Bajada. Murdoch Books RRP $45.00.

Additional reporting by Gemma Plunkett.