Avocado on toast with garlic roasted tomatoes
The most basic of brunches: avocado on toast is taken to the next level with garlic roasted tomatoes. Start your day right with my recipe below.
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Let’s make brunch
There are tonnes of jokes about how us Millenials are OBSESSED with avocado on toast. And you know what? There’s no smoke without fire. I DO love avocado on toast, because it’s a delicious, nutritious dish that is easy to make and perfect for anyone following a plant based diet. And, I know that lots of other 20 and 30 something’s feel the same.
How to make the best avocado on toast
Avocado on toast appears on brunch menus EVERYWHERE. But how do you take it from good to great?
Here are my top tips for making the perfect avocado on toast every time.
Choosing the best ingredients
When you’re making something so simple you need to make sure that the ingredients you use are to quality. Freshly baked bread take your avocado toast to the next level. Sourdough is a classic but I also like a slice or two of a seeded, multi-grain loaf. The seeds give extra flavour and extra crunch.
If you want to learn about how to make your own sourdough then check out my posts on creating a sourdough starter and how to bake your first sourdough loaf.
Picking the perfect avocado isn’t quite as easy as selecting fresh bread. The most common variety in the UK is the Hass avocado – it makes up roughly 90% of avocados in the market!!
You will know they are perfectly ripe and ready to mash for your toast if they are nice and dark. Green flecks suggest it’s not quite ripe yet. As well as the colour you should look at the texture of the avocados skin. The skin will be more bumpy the more ripe it is but big thumb size hole suggest it may have been bruised or damaged.
Some varieties of avocado such as the Fuerte, Ettinger, Reed, and Sharwill stay green when they are ripe, so it’s important to know the type of avocado that you’re looking at.
When you hold the avocado in your palm, give it a gentle squeeze. If it gives in to the pressure and is a little soft then it is ripe. But, if it’s super soft it’s likely to be overripe and mushy. At the other end of the spectrum – if it’s hard then it’s definitely not ripe yet so you will have to wait for your avocado on toast!
My top tip for checking if an avocado is ripe, is to peel back the stem at the top of the avocado. If it’s bright green underneath it’s not ripe yet, if it’s darker in colour or goes darker shortly after removing the stem it’s ripe! If it’s black it’s probably overripe.
Toasting bread
Making toast is the most basic of kitchen tasks and also quite a personal thing. How crisp you like your toast will be personal preference. I normally like my toast quite pale in colour and not too crisp at all. My partner jokes it’s really just warm bread.
But, for avocado on toast, crispy bread is essential. I’d recommend making sure you toast the bread until it’s golden in colour and the crusts have crisped up nicely. The reason for this is that once you add the mashed avocado it will soften the bread slightly. We want to counteract this by only adding the avocado at the last minute and making sure the bread is well toasted (but not burnt) in the first place.
Get mashing
There are two types of people who make avocado on toast: those who cut it into beautiful thin slices and create elaborate avocado roses and other edible works of art; and those who like their avocado mashed.
I firmly believe the best way to make avocado on toast is to mash it. Although avocado roses are pretty (you can see what I mean here) they are impractical to eat, take more time to make and the soft, mashed avocado lends a much better contrast to the crisp toast underneath.
You don’t need to mash the avocado too fine, some chunky pieces are good. And no fancy gadgets are required. Just get roughly mashing with a fork and you’re good to go!
Season liberally
Every cook knows that seasoning is essential and never more so than when you are cooking a dish like this with so few ingredients.
I will mash zesty lemon juice into the mashed avocado itself but I will season the whole dish with a big, chef’s pinch of sea salt and a healthy grind of black pepper immediately before serving.
If I’m not serving with the garlic roasted vine tomatoes I will sometimes also add a sprinkling of paprika or hot chilli flakes – delicious!
Garlic roasted tomatoes for topping avocado on toast
Although avocado on toast is a beautiful thing by itself, sometimes I like to turn it into a more decadent breakfast, brunch or lunch. I do this on special days or just when I need to treat myself after a particularly stressful week.
My garlic roasted tomatoes are packed full of flavour. The tomatoes are roasted on the vine to retain the flavour of sunshine, stored in the stems. As the cook slowly their flavour intensifies and their skins wrinkle and their juices get sticky.
Nestled in between the tomatoes are gloves of garlic. As they cook slowly in the tomato juice they become soft and sweet with their flesh becoming more mellow as it caramelises.
When added to the avocado on toast these garlic roasted tomatoes add depth of flavour and make a light dish much more filling and even more nutritious!
The recipe
Avocado on toast with garlic roasted tomatoes
Ingredients
- 7 cherry tomatoes still on the vine
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 slices sourdough bread
- 1 avocado ripe
- 0.5 lemon juice only
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Pre-heat your oven to 160 C/ /gas 3.
- Put the tomatoes into an oven dish with the garlic cloves.
- Drizzle with the olive oil and season with a little salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 45 minutes or until the tomatoes are cooked through and the garlic is soft.
- Toast your bread exactly as you like it.
- Cut the avocado in half and carefully remove its stone. Scoop the avocado flesh out of the skin and into a bowl. Squeeze in the lemon juice and then mash with a fork.
- Take two of the roasted garlic cloves and spread these over the toast followed by the mashed avocado.
- Top with the roasted tomatoes and remaining garlic cloves.
- Season with salt and pepper and serve.
Nutrition
More brunch inspiration
If you like this recipe, you’ll love these other brunch recipes.
The full breakfast archive
For the full recipe archive catering to a range of different diets and tastes, check out the breakfast recipe archive by clicking the image above.