Imagine if an ostensibly human individual walked up to you and requested a recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You’d be all, “Hey, are you new to Earth? Everything you need is literally right there in the title. It’s a sandwich, so, bread. And the other nouns you just articulated are all you need!”
At least I hope you would so I could continue to look at you with a modicum of respect. While we’re on the subject of things you don’t need recipes for, let’s talk about avocado toast.
You don’t need a fucking recipe for avocado toast.
Frankly, I find the phrase “avocado toast recipe” to be a completely fallacious collection of words. There is no such thing as a “recipe” for avocado toast, just as there isn’t a recipe for cereal and milk or bread and butter. Everything you need to know is right there, folks.
The necessary ingredients are already in the name of the dish. Literally no more information is needed!!!!
Sure, you can add other accoutrement to make your avocado toast a bit more exciting, but you do not need a step-by-step recipe for that nor do you need any other instructions. “Avocado toast with an egg.” Ok! Again, right there in the title.
Food bloggers on the internet and those who read them, it seems, are not aware of this blindingly obvious fact.
Hey, so that’s just called avocado toast? The inclusion of salt in a savory dish should not be treated as some sort of special ingredient. This is deeply worrisome because how are you not regularly putting salt on your food? There should just be an unspoken assumption that salt is going to be be added to your food because food is better when it’s edible.
Again, still, this is just avocado toast with rather generic seasoning.
Using a different type of bread that can easily be toasted does not make this avocado toast different from avocado toast, nor is it worthy of a distinct set of instructions. If you can’t make the jump from how to make avocado toast with regular old sliced bread to how to make avocado toast with a baguette, you probably shouldn’t be operating a toaster!
Just some well-seasoned avocado toast, people. Literally nothing to see here and certainly nothing to break down into a set of instructions.
Another issue I have is when people start mixing shit in with the avocado. That no longer makes it avocado toast. That makes it some kind of dip on top of a piece of toast.
For example, as stated, this is guacamole.
This, too, is guacamole.
And then there are some avocado toast extras that completely betray the beautifully simple idea of avocado toast.
This is a breakfast sandwich.
This is poke.
This is a frightening-looking sandwich.
This is a super unwieldy sandwich.
Not sure what this is.
I feel a little bad including it because I very much enjoy this food blog but come on.
The ability to make it in a short period of time is implicit in the very idea of all toast!
I get that avocado toast is trendy right now, but fucking relax, people. I suspect that in an effort to remain competitive, food bloggers turned to souped-up avocado toast to satisfy the incessant demand for new content. I sympathize with them, I do, but this is not the way. Stop making people think avocado toast is more complicated than it is!
There is beauty in simplicity and if avocado toast was meant to be toast, avocado and a bunch of shit on top, we’d call it that.
The world is already a completely insane, terrifying place. Just let us have this uncomplicated, tasty joy without mucking it up with your bizarre, desperate ideas. Let us be. Let the avocado toast be.
Lede image via Shutterstock/Africa Studio.