For a period of time I was traveling to Chicago every week for work. During that time, I discovered Rick Bayless’ Frontera Grill and became a regular. A couple of times each week, you’d find me sitting at the counter overlooking the kitchen, watching the cooks’ every move. One of the things I learned was how to make great guacamole.

It’s common for most people to add a lot of stuff, trying to make it taste like something else. There’s a Midwest restaurant chain called Cozymel’s where they make their guac at the table side. There are 11 ingredients in their guacamole. It’s good, but I argue it’s not guacamole. With that many ingredients, why bother putting the avocado in it?

So here’s my recipe. It was gleaned from my experience at Frontera Grill. It can be doubled, tripled, whatever to meet your needs…

1 poblano or pasilla pepper
1/2 lime
1 large ripe avocado (diced)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Turn a burner on your stove to high. Wash the pepper and place directly on the burner — Gas burners are best but this will work on an electric burner or outdoors on the BBQ grill. Use tongs to turn the pepper, cooking until it’s fully charred. Put the pepper into either a paper bag or into one of those ZipLoc containers with a lid. Leave it alone for 10 minutes. What it will do is steam itself. Take out of the container and remove the charred skin. Do not put under running water… just brush off the skin. Dice the pepper and put into a bowl. With a fork, squish the pepper a bit to release some juices. Add the avocado, juice from 1/2 of a lime and the salt. Mix with a fork but make sure to leave the avocado kind of chunky.