'The people wanted more': Mexican town breaks world record for largest guacamole ever

A massive, 10,961-pound serving of guacamole prepared in the town of Peribán in Michoacán, Mexico, is the largest ever, smashing the previous world record by more than a ton, Guinness World Records announced.

Peribán, a municipality of about 25,000 people, broke the record at its first annual avocado expo on Nov. 20. More than 400 people, including 40 chefs, helped prepare onions, tomatoes, cilantro and avocados to make the iconic Mexican dish for locals, according to Peribán official and event organizer Jorge Velázquez Vallejo.

A town called Tancítaro just 20 miles south of Peribán set the previous Guinness world record (8,351 pounds) in 2018.

Both towns are in Michoacán, Mexico’s largest avocado producer and exporter. Last year, the United States imported $2.8 billion worth of avocados from Mexico, which made up 92% of all avocado imports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

“We wanted the world to know that Peribán also produces high quality avocados,” Velázquez Vallejo told USA TODAY. “We wanted Peribán to become renowned internationally.”

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The avocado business has been the economic lifeline of Peribán since the 1930s, according to Velázquez Vallejo. Locals who worked in the U.S. introduced Hass avocados from California to the area in the 1960s, and since then, Peribán has produced some of the best Hass avocados around, Velázquez Vallejo said.

The town and its partners started planning the event over the summer, and ran into several snags along the way.

“At first, people didn’t think this project would be successful …There wasn’t a lot of support initially,”  Velázquez Vallejo said.

Some local avocado growers were skeptical, and didn’t want to contribute any of their harvest to the giant guacamole.

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At some point, Guinness told organizers the guacamole needed to include tomato even though the local recipe didn’t call for that ingredient, according to Velázquez Vallejo.

And they didn’t find a scale large enough to accommodate the giant pan until a day before the record attempt, Velázquez Vallejo said.

In the end, around 40 producers contributed roughly 55,000 avocados and a commercial guacamole maker helped with the recipe and proportions: 80% avocado (roughly 4.4 tons), 8% onion (about 882 pounds), 5% tomatoes (about 551 pounds), 3% lemon juice (about 40 gallons, which weigh around 333 pounds), 2.5% cilantro (220 pounds), 1% salt (110 pounds) and 1% serrano peppers (110 pounds).

The end result was “delicious,” Velázquez Vallejo said.

The guacamole was served in cups and on tostadas to the hundreds of participants and then to the thousands of attendees, he said. It was all gone within an hour.

There were enough ingredients left over to mix up another ton of guacamole, according to Velázquez Vallejo. Organizers didn’t make it all in one go because the scale would’ve maxed out.

But nothing went to waste.

“The people wanted more,” Velázquez Vallejo said. “So they started making more guacamole.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Largest guacamole serving: Guinness world record broken in Mexico