Love avocado toast but starting to think maybe you should learn how to make it at home instead of paying $12 or more for someone to mash up an avocado and serve it to you on a slice of toasted bread? Well, I do love my avocado toast from the little restaurant around the corner, but making it at home is easy and cheap, plus it is healthy, one of my favorite go-to snack ideas for a quick and nutritious meal at breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack time.
Making it at home is four moves: toast the bread, rub it with a cut clove of garlic, mash the avocado with salt and spread it on. That’s classic avocado toast, and every variation below is that same base with something good piled on top, so one bowl of mash gets you all six.
Of all the avocado recipes I’ve ever tried, classic simple avocado toast remains at the top of my list. There is just something magical about the combination of textures and flavors. However, recently, I decided to try a few new variations on the classic avocado toast recipe, and now I must say I am conflicted about which one is the best. Depends on what I am craving at any given moment now, as in addition to the tried and true basic avocado toast recipes, I found an awesome spicy version I love to make for brunch on the weekends, a super healthy version with lots of protein via the addition of a hard boiled egg, caprese style tomato mozzarella and balsamic recipe, a loaded bagel that I just have to say “must try immediately” and a creative everything bagel version of avocado toast that has become a morning staple around my house. It is always the right time of day to make avocado toast!
If you’ve seen avocado toast on a restaurant menu lately but do not want to pay the high prices people are asking for it these days, learn how to make avocado toast at home. It’s super simple to make and like me, you will probably be wondering why people pay $15 to $20 for this when dining out.
The buttery texture and flavor of avocado balances so well with toasted, crusty fresh bread. If you also love classic avocado toast and want to learn how to make it, we will show you here. There are a few simple tips to learn to make perfect avocado toast every time. Don’t stop there, though. You can create various creative variations with your basic avocado toasts by adding just a few more ingredients.
If you need some new lunch or snack ideas, some Instagram worthy appetizers to take to a potluck or dinner party or a healthy alternative to what you’ve been eating while watching TV, avocado toast 6 ways just may be what you’ve been looking for. You can substitute the regular bread for gluten free or even low carb keto style bread if you like. Get creative with your add ons and end up with equally delicious results if you like your avocado toast healthy.
How to Make Avocado Toast – Recipe Video
That’s our YouTube video of all six, and the garlic rub makes a lot more sense once you’ve watched somebody actually do it.
6 cool new ways to make avocado toast. If you’ve never learned how to make avocado toast at home, now is the time. With simple, easy to prep ingredients, you will have lots of options with these amazing avocado toast recipes.
Classic Avocado Toast Recipe
What is avocado toast, anyway?
Is it really just avocado and toast? If you’ve ever wondered what the answer to this question is, read on. You are not alone. Avocado toast really is just that, yet it is served in some restaurants like a prized delicacy, or at least it seems so to me. Sure, you can get extra fancy with it and some chefs do quite the stellar job, but making your own homemade avocado toast at home is really very easy, inexpensive and quick, you just need to know a few basics to get best results.
Avocado Toast Recipe Ingredients
Once I learned how easy it was to make avocado toast, I was kicking myself for ever spending money on it at restaurants. Even if you don’t know how to cook at all, you can make this recipe, I promise. The secret is getting good bread, I like buying mine from a local bakery, but homemade bread is of course, fantastic, as is low carb, gluten free keto bread if you are trying to go super low carb and high fat in your diet. No matter which bread you choose, make sure you cut a good size chunk or slice of it and toast it until it is golden. You can also now add butter to the bread if you like, which sounds super weird to some since you are adding more fat to what is about to be topped with avocado, but trust me, you will not regret trying this with a big smear of Kerry Gold or your favorite butter. Next, I highly recommend you then swipe the bread with a fresh garlic clove to add some depth to the flavor of your homemade avocado toast. Minced garlic, applied lightly will also work, but I don’t personally recommend using garlic salt or powder here, the best flavor comes from non-powdered garlic 😉 and you will not find any in my kitchen…
One more thing about that swipe: do it while the toast is still hot and rough, straight out of the toaster. The dry, craggy surface works like a grater, so the clove wears away into the bread and you get the flavor all the way through without ever biting into a chunk of raw garlic. Cold toast just gets a nice garlic massage and shrugs the whole thing off.
Rubbing a cut clove of garlic over hot golden toast before the avocado goes on. (Image credit: DIY JOY)
How to Choose the Best Avocadoes
You also need good avocadoes, which if time permits, I guarantee by purchasing the firm, not quite ripe avocados at the grocery store, before they have a chance to get beat up by all the other shoppers trying to squeeze them to see which ones are ripe. Wait a day or two and you will be glad you went this route. I never end up with bruised avocados when I follow this method.
If you want the long version on picking and ripening, the California Avocado Commission’s guide to choosing a ripe avocado goes deeper than I do here.
How to Make Avocado Toast Step by Step
The bread is handled. Here’s the avocado half of it, which is where all four of the things that actually matter live.
1. Halve it. Run your knife around the avocado the long way until you feel it hit the pit, then twist the two halves apart. If the knife has to argue with it, it isn’t ripe yet, and mashing it will be a workout you didn’t sign up for.
2. Scoop it out. Slide a spoon between the flesh and the skin and stay right up against the skin. The deepest green sits closest to it, and that’s the prettiest part of the whole toast, so don’t leave it in the peel.
3. Mash it with salt. Mostly smooth, with a few lumps left in for personality. The salt isn’t optional, no matter how good the avocado is. Unsalted avocado tastes like a very polite nothing.
4. Spread it to the edges. All the way out to the crust, because the bare crust is the bite everybody notices. And if your loaf has gone a day too far, our trick for reviving stale bread comes before any of this.
Classic avocado toast: garlic-rubbed toast with salted mashed avocado. (Image credit: DIY JOY)
That’s the classic, and the bowl’s already out, so keep going.
Variations on Classic Homemade Avocado Toast
First, master the basics of making avocado toast, then get creative with our five recipe variations. Now that I’ve found all these, I love making all six and taking a tray over to a friend’s house and even to dinner parties when I am in charge of the hors d’oeuvres and need a quick and healthy appetizer idea.
Avocado Toast Recipe With Egg
Go beyond the classic avocado toast recipe and add a sliced, hard-boiled egg to your toast for a high protein, healthy and filling breakfast to start your day out right. Watch the recipe tutorial video to see how easy it is to make this one. I was ordering this for take out at a restaurant, but now that I see how easy it is to make at home, no thank you to paying over $10 for something so simple and delicious when it is homemade.
Two things worth knowing. Slice the egg thin so it lies flat instead of sliding off on the first bite, and salt the egg itself, because the salt in the avocado doesn’t travel. Sunny side up works here too, if you’re a runny-yolk-into-the-avocado person, and it makes this a very good five-minute breakfast.
Everything Bagel Avocado Toast
Trying to cut back on carbs but love bagels? We make our everything bagel avocado toast with low carb keto bread for a high fat, low carbohydrate snack or take to work lunch. The sesame seeds combined with the poppy seeds on top of fresh, mashed avocado are simply a divine combination.
A teaspoon of everything bagel seasoning is the right amount, and put it on while the avocado is still tacky so the seeds stay where you put them instead of ending up in your lap. Bagel shop flavor, no bagel shop line.
Loaded Avocado Toast
This is the one for a fridge that’s a little too full: sliced green onion, fresh radish, jalapeno and toasted sunflower seeds piled on the base. Cut the radish paper thin, because a thick coin just rolls off the first time you bite down, and take the seeds out of the jalapeno if you want the crunch without the commitment. Crunch on crunch on crunch, with the jalapeno in there to keep you honest.
Caprese Style Tomato Basil and Balsamic Avocado Toast
Two cherry tomatoes, sliced, a few torn basil leaves and a drizzle of balsamic glaze over the base toast. Tear the basil instead of chopping it, a blade bruises the leaves and they go dark on you in minutes. And use the glaze rather than straight vinegar, the thick stuff sits where it lands instead of running off the side and soaking into your crust. It’s a caprese salad that decided to become breakfast.
Spicy Avocado Toast, the Weekend Brunch One
Here’s the spicy one from up top. A teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil, a teaspoon of lemon juice, red pepper flakes and flaky salt over the base toast. The lemon wakes the avocado up and slows the browning, the oil gives it that glossy restaurant look and the pepper flakes make it look like you know exactly what you’re doing. It’s brunch, and it takes about as long as the coffee.
Spicy avocado toast with olive oil, lemon, red pepper flakes and flaky salt. (Image credit: DIY JOY)
Avocado Toast Recipe Card
Ingredients
For the base toast
- Avocado
- Bread of your choice, sliced
- 1 clove garlic, cut
- Salt
- Butter, optional
- Other seasonings, optional
With egg
- Hard boiled egg, sliced
Tomato basil with a balsamic drizzle
- 2 cherry tomatoes, sliced
- Basil leaves, torn
- Balsamic glaze
With a twist
- 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- Red pepper flakes
- Flaky salt
Loaded
- Green onion, sliced
- Fresh radish
- Jalapeno
- Toasted sunflower seeds
Everything bagel
- 1 tsp everything bagel seasoning
Instructions
- Slice and toast the bread to your liking.
- Cut a clove of garlic and rub it all over the toast.
- Cut open the avocado, scoop it out and mash it with salt and any other seasonings you like.
- Spread it on the bread. That is the classic.
- For the egg version, top the base toast with sliced hard boiled egg. Sunny side up works too.
- For the tomato basil version, lay 2 sliced cherry tomatoes on the base toast, tear basil over the top and add balsamic glaze.
- For the twist, add 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp lemon juice, red pepper flakes and flaky salt.
- For the loaded version, sprinkle on sliced green onion, fresh radish, jalapeno and toasted sunflower seeds.
- For the everything bagel version, add 1 tsp of everything bagel seasoning.
Notes
- This is a technique post rather than a measured bake, and our sources reflect that: most per-toast amounts genuinely do not exist and are marked rather than filled in.
- Bread can be swapped for gluten free or low carb keto bread.
One more way to put these out: set the bowl of mash on the table with the toppings in little dishes and let everybody build their own. Six variations, one bowl and nobody sending anything back. Line a few up next to our easy eggs benedict and no one asks where the pancakes went. And if you’re now stuck with avocados you have to use, we’ve talked this same fruit into crispy baked avocado chips and fudgy avocado brownies, both of which sound like a dare and are not.
What You Can Prep Ahead, and What You Can’t
Honest answer on the mash: it’s a make-it-and-eat-it situation, because avocado starts browning the minute it meets air. Everything around it is fair game, though. Boil the eggs, slice the radishes and tomatoes, toast the sunflower seeds and mix your seasonings the night before, and leave the avocados whole until the toast pops. If you do end up with mash left over, squeeze a little lemon over it and press plastic wrap flat onto the surface so there’s no air touching it at all.
A Few Questions That Come Up
How do I keep the avocado from turning brown?
Acid and air are the whole story. A squeeze of lemon or lime in the mash slows it down, and if it has to sit even a few minutes, press plastic wrap right onto the surface. It’s the air that turns it, not the fridge.
Can I make this dairy free?
Almost all of it, yes. Butter is the only dairy anywhere near the base, so leave it off and use a good olive oil instead, or nothing at all. The egg version is the one that can’t be talked into it.
What else can I pile on top?
Anything crunchy, salty or bright. The two I’d keep in the cupboard for this are everything bagel seasoning and toasted sunflower seeds, because they add crunch to something that’s otherwise all soft. After that, open the fridge and see what happens.
