Avocado With Soy-Lime Vinaigrette

By Mark Bittman

Updated March 2, 2023

Avocado With Soy-Lime Vinaigrette
William Brinson for The New York Times; Food stylist: Suzanne Lenzer. Prop stylist: Theo Vamvounakis.
Total Time
35 minutes, largely unattended
Rating
4(26)
Comments
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State Bird Provisions on Fillmore Street in San Francisco is the brainchild of a wife-and-husband team of native Californians, Nicole Krasinski and Stuart Brioza. At the restaurant, food is brought out on carts, as it is in dim-sum parlors. Although the concept is familiar to everyone at this point, these are laden not with the mostly brown and steamed food common to dim-sum places but with gorgeous, far-out, inventively served creations. Many of their dishes were too complicated for me to deal with. This dish, though, is representative of the restaurant's food, highly flavored, unusual, delicious.

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Ingredients

Yield:2 to 4 servings
  • ½cup lime juice
  • ½cup dark soy sauce (or usukuchi, white soy sauce, if you have it)
  • 1small clove garlic, minced
  • ½teaspoon minced ginger
  • 23-inch pieces kombu (kelp), wiped with a damp rag
  • ½cup bonito flakes
  • 1cup grapeseed oil
  • 2ripe avocados
  • Coarse salt
  • Togarashi or black pepper
  • Toasted sesame seeds
Ingredient Substitution Guide
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Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Combine the first 6 ingredients in a bowl; let sit as little as a half-hour and up to 2 hours; strain, pressing to extract as much liquid as possible. Whisk in the grapeseed oil to make a vinaigrette.

  2. Step 2

    Peel, pit and slice the avocados; arrange them on 2 or 4 plates; dress to taste. Sprinkle with salt, togarashi or pepper and toasted sesame seeds, and serve.

Ratings

4 out of 5
26 user ratings
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Comments

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MC

Delicious with lots of umami but way too salty, would reduce dark soy to a couple tablespoons next time. Didn’t have all the ingredients and used a tsp of dashi granules instead of both the kombu and bonito - tasty. Reduced dark soy to 1/4 cup bc I love acidity/vinegar/lime. Even then was way, WAY too salty. Also reduced oil to about 1/4 cup, based on another reader’s comment - maybe will add more to my leftover to experiment. GREAT with salmon and avocado on a salad, just too salty.

Corey

This is really special. I forgot the oil, so I just drizzled a bit of olive oil on after I’d drizzled the soy-lime sauce. Worked great!

Janice H

This is delicious--the vinaigrette is also wonderful on any kind of salad or slaw. However--I used much less oil than called for, and even then, I felt that the oil just diffused the wonderful tartness of the lime and soy. I want to try it using no oil; at most, I would add a tablespoon. This would make a great marinade as well.

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