camp meals

Grilled Avocado with Mango and Chili

Avocado halves face-down on the grate, filled with mango, lime, and chili. A side dish for the night you carried a cooler.

calories
330
weight
8 oz
cal / oz
41
protein
3 g
serves
4, scales
prep
10 min
cook
6 min
total time
16 min
water
none
cost
$$

Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.

  • Dinner
  • Snack
  • Grill grate
  • Campfire coals
  • Car camping
  • Basecamp
  • Canoe / raft
  • Vegetarian
  • Vegan
  • Gluten free
  • Dairy free
  • Nut free
  • Real dishes
  • Grab and go
  • Day one only
  • Basic

Ingredients

Avocados 4 firm-ripe, not soft; soft ones collapse on the grate
Mango 1 diced small
Red chili 1 finely chopped, seeds out if you want it mild
Lime 1 juiced
Neutral oil 1 tbsp
Fresh cilantro 3 tbsp chopped

Method

  1. Get a bed of coals or a gas grill going with a hot zone and a cooler zone off to one side.
  2. Halve the avocados. Tap the knife into the pit, twist, and lift it out. A spoon works if that makes you nervous.
  3. In a cup or small bowl, stir the mango, chili, lime juice, oil, and cilantro together.
  4. Lay the avocado halves cut side down over direct heat for about a minute. You want grate marks, not a cooked avocado.
  5. Turn them over, spoon the mango mix into the hollows, and move them to the cool side of the grill. Cover or leave them for three to four minutes.
  6. Pull them off and eat with a spoon, straight out of the skin.

Avocado over fire is mostly about heat management. Direct heat for a minute gives you char on the cut face; any longer and the flesh turns to warm paste. The rest of the cooking happens off to the side, where the fruit only has to warm through and the mango has to soften slightly.

The lime and chili are doing structural work, not decoration. Avocado is fat and almost nothing else, so it needs acid and heat to read as a dish rather than a spoonful of grease. This one is day-one food: whole avocados and a fresh mango are cooler cargo, and neither survives a hot pack for long. Everything except the lime and the avocados can be prepped at home.

Packing

Avocados travel badly under other gear. Put them on top of the cooler or in a hard container. Dice the mango and chop the chili and cilantro at home into one sealed container, and everything at camp is one stir plus the lime.

Variations

  • Add a can of black beans, drained and warmed on the grate, to make it dinner instead of a side.
  • Swap the fresh mango for chopped dried mango soaked ten minutes in the lime juice. Then it keeps past day one.
  • It goes with anything else already on the grill, especially chicken or pork.

https://www.matprat.no/oppskrifter/sunn/grillet-avokado-med-mango-og-chili