AskMeCha: Food question concerning avocados... →[More:]
I love avocados. But I find that I will buy a few and then let them rot on my counter. And when I do eat them, I find that 1/2 of it goes to waste. I could solve this by buying avocados no more than a day or two before I intend to eat them, but I usually make weekly grocery store trips and I'm not going to make any more.

So...I once watched an episode of Good Eats where Alton made this avocado-butter thing, which he froze. I found the transcript online and cut'n'paste the recipe below. So, mechazens, my question is: is butter necessary to this recipe? Could I make something similar w/o butter, freeze it and then cut of chunks to use on sandwiches and other applications where I'd use slices fresh avocado? I could stand some loss of quality/freshness for the big gains in convenience/efficiency this could bring.


Avocado butter recipe:
Besides salt and pepper to taste, out first experiment will require one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice, one clove of garlic, minced, two teaspoons of dried cumin, one tablespoon of chopped cilantro, two ounces of unsalted butter, and six ounces of ripe avocado meat.
1 Tbs. Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
1 Clove Garlic, Minced
2 tsp. Dried Cumin
1 Tbs. Freshly Chopped Cilantro
2 Ounces Unsalted Butter
6 Ounces Ripe Avocado

Now you don't want to harvest the flesh from these until the very last moment, which would be now. Those go in [to the food processor] last, clamp on our lid, and pulse to combine. Now you might be wondering, why in the world do I need to use butter if I've got all the wonderful fat in avocados? Well the truth is, I need more saturated fat than the avocados can offer. That's because I want this butter to set up solid and then melt very slowly and smoothly. The only thing that can really do that is butter. So we'll use butter.

Now once you've got this almost worked into a paste, go ahead and add a few pinches of salt, and a few pinches of pepper. You can always add more later.

Slide in a piece of parchment paper or wax paper and deliver your guacamole butter right into the middle of the vessel. Get as much of it, of course, as you can. Then, simply fold over one edge to the middle, keep one hand here [on the end], take the edge of your pan, and slowly squeeze outward. There, until you get a nice log shape. Then carefully roll up the rest of the way, twist the ends, and chill.

This will keep nicely in the refrigerator for about two weeks. When you need some, just cut it off, and then push the paper back over the end. Now if you want to look at long-term storage, then you're going to need to think about your freezer, and you'll need to wrap the butter in at least two layers of plastic in order to keep out any funky flavors.

Application possibilities, nearly endless. I put this stuff on just about everything that comes off of my grill, from pork chops to bread to tomatoes to corn, salmon, burgers, you name it. Now that's good eats.