Superfoods have had many people either excited or puzzled for quite some time. Their definition can be a little loose but simply put, a superfood is anything with exceptionally high nutrition.
But what about some rare and special combinations and recipes of superfoods? Here’s something quite unique that can transform your entire kitchen – avocado garlic butter.
Whether you’re on a vegan diet, you’re lactose intolerant, or you just want to eat more healthy foods, avocado garlic butter isn’t just “a vegan alternative” to normal butter – it’s much better in myriad ways.
Avocado garlic butter – the recipe
There are only a few ingredients for avocado garlic butter and they are usually present in most people’s households anyway:
- 2 ripe avocados
- 1-4 grated garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 3 tbsp melted coconut oil
- A pinch of chopped cilantro
- Sea salt to taste
- Aluminum foil and plastic wrap
Even if you don’t have some of these, they are all pretty easy to find in most if not all convenient stores. And now that you have all the ingredients prepared, here’s the recipe:
- Peel the avocados and remove the pits. Grate the garlic and melt the coconut oil. The amount of garlic you should use depends entirely on how sharp their taste is and how spicy you want your butter to be.
- Combine all the ingredients into a smooth mixture with a food processor or a hand mixer. Add some sea salt to your taste at the end.
- Places the aluminum foil and plastic wrap pieces on the counter – the wrap over the foil.
- Scoop the mixture in the middle of the plastic wrap and start rolling it up length-wise. Roll the foil after that as well for more structure until you form the butter into a nice, firm log.
- Refrigerate the butter for several hours (at least three) for the mixture to set and the flavor to come together. And voila, it’s ready to serve!
Why make avocado garlic butter?
Multiple reasons, including that it’s very delicious as well as fun to make. Most importantly, however, as with all other superfoods – it’s incredibly healthy. Explaining why that’s the case shouldn’t even be necessary. But for a bit more context, here’s what you get with avocado garlic butter:
Avocado’s awesome health benefits
Like butter, avocado has a smooth buttery texture and taste, and is very good at complimenting other flavors. Some people have an aversion to the avocado taste and that’s understandable as it’s pretty unique and needs to be prepared adequately – that’s what the recipe above is for.
Once you make it just right, however, you can expect dozens of amazing health benefits from this unique fruit:
- More nutritious than even many other superfoods (1). Here are just some of the nutrients in a standard 100-gram or 3.5-ounce avocado serving:
– Folate – 20% of the daily value
– Vitamin C – 17% of DV
– Vitamin K – 26% of DV
– Vitamin E – 10% of DV
– Vitamin B6 – 13% of DV
– Vitamin B5 – 14% of DV
– Potassium – 14% of DV (more than bananas)
– Additional noteworthy amounts of magnesium, copper, iron, zinc, manganese, phosphorous, and Vitamins A, B1, B2, and B3.
– 15 grams of healthy fats and 7 grams of fiber. - It’s amazing for the heart. With cardiovascular issues and deaths being one of the biggest health problems in the U.S. (2) the avocado is even more important. The avocado is a high-fat food (77% of its calories are from fat). However, that’s not just any fat. Most of the fat in the avocado is oleic acid – a monounsaturated fatty acid that’s also common in olive oil. This is a very heart-healthy fat. Plus, it’s relatively resistant to heat-induced oxidation, making it a healthy cooking option as well.
- Lots of fiber. 7 grams of fiber per 100 may not sound like much but it’s actually 27% off your recommended daily allowance. That’s great both for our metabolic health and for weight loss.
- It lowers cholesterol and triglyceride levels. This is another reason why avocados are so great for our heart health. There are almost countless studies proving the cardiovascular effects of avocados at this point but here a few (3) (4) (5) (6). Their consistent conclusions are that avocados significantly reduce cholesterol levels by up to 22%, reduce blood triglycerides b up to 20%, and increase good cholesterol by up to 11%.
Garlic’s awesome health benefits
Garlic may be known as a “vampire deterrent” but that’s likely just because it is symbolic with all its health benefits. Because of those health benefits garlic has been used as medicine in ancient cultures all across the globe – from Egypt and Babylon, through Greece and Europe, all the way to China. Today, we have a better understanding of why garlic is so healthy:
- Sulfur compounds. When chewed, chopped, or crushed, garlic produces a cocktail of various sulfur compounds. The most famous one of them is allicin but other healthy compounds include diallyl disulfide and s-allyl cysteine. Once digested, these sulfur compounds have medicinal benefits all across our bodies (7) (8).
- Very high nutritious benefits with very few calories. Like avocado, garlic includes a lot of goodies from our recommended daily allowance (9). Here’s what you get from a single 3-gram garlic clove:
– Vitamin B6 – 2% of the daily value
– Vitamin C – 1% of DV
– Fiber – 0.06 grams
– Manganese – 2% of DV
– Selenium – 1% of DV (10) - Sickness-combating capabilities. Garlic is very famous as a common cold remedy and it does help against all kinds of diseases. It’s more than just the placebo-effect too, as studies have shown (11). It has also been shown that high doses of garlic extract reduce the flu and cold sickness length by 61% (12).
- It’s also great for your blood pressure and general cardiovascular health. Multiple studies have investigated the positive effects of garlic on our blood pressure and heart health (13) (14) (15).
One study (16), in particular, found that a daily intake of 600-1500 mg of aged garlic is as effective as the drug Atenolol at reducing blood pressure over a 24-week period. - Garlic helps with cholesterol too. Multiple studies (17) (18) (19) have shown that garlic consumption lowers both bad and total cholesterol levels. It doesn’t seem to have any reliable effect on “good” cholesterol but that’s what the avocado is for.
- Contains a lot of antioxidants. Like avocado, garlic is also rich in antioxidants. This is great for Alzheimer’s and dementia prevention as well as against a lot of other health conditions, including cancer.
How does normal dairy butter compare?
Don’t worry, we’re not going to throw dairy butter under the bus just so we can talk avocado garlic butter up.
Dairy butter has been a staple in a lot of cuisines for millennia as well and it does have a lot going for it. It’s flavorful, it contains a lot of nice nutrients such as vitamins A, B12, E, K, and others. It’s also a good source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) which has been linked with the prevention of certain types of cancer (20) (21).
In conclusion
Dairy butter is likely still here to stay and that’s perfectly fine. However, avocado garlic butter can add a lot to your kitchen as well and is definitely worth trying out!