Product Review: Can the Guac-Lock Keep Guacamole From Turning Brown? We Found Out.

by Lisa Elbert, Tastemaker in Residence

Allow me to introduce you to the Guac-Lock: a container designed to keep guacamole fresh and combat the age-old dilemma of turning brown. I love a good kitchen experiment, but testing the Guac-Lock was a difficult assignment to take on because honestly, what kind of monster doesn’t finish a bowl of guac in one sitting? I persisted because I wanted to see if the Guac-Lock could defy science—there’s an enzyme in avocados that causes them to brown when exposed to oxygen—and prevent guacamole from browning after 24 hours.

Hypothetically speaking, the Guac-Lock should keep its contents, guacamole or otherwise, fresher than your standard tupperware, thanks to its suctioned, air-tight seal. To determine if this claim is true, I tested the Guac-Lock on three different dips: hummus, smoky baba ghanoush, and of course, guacamole.

Here’s how the container works: Pop, lock & guac it.

1. Fill ‘er up and level ‘er out, making sure the contents are even across the container and there are no air pockets (this is important, we’ll get to that in a minute).
2. Place cover on top and snap the three closures into place, but leave the lock open.
3. Place the main compartment onto the “elevator” and slowly apply pressure; contents will be pushed to the top of the container, removing air. This is why the leveling is important—if it isn’t level, you’ll be left with air pockets, thus defeating the whole purpose of the Guac-Lock!
4. Lock it.

I am happy to report that after 24 hours in the Lock, all dips still thrived. After 48, all dips had remained edible, though you could tell they were not freshly made. The Guac-Lock's pièce de resistance, the guac, was definitely greener after a day in the fridge than if it had been stored in a standard tupperware, but alas, nature prevailed and my guac had begun to brown after a mere 24 hours in the lock.

A tupperware, for your guacamole!

Browning aside, the Guac-Lock is a surefire way to increase the lifespan of party dips, but nobody’s perfect, and it comes with its fair share of shortcomings. For starters, when you press the contents up against the container’s ceiling, they stick to the top—Guac-Lock-ers, if you’re reading this, throw a spatula into the packaging! Every time I broke the seal, the contents that snuck into the crevases had dried out, creating a ring of dried dip pieces around the Lock. That could be operator error, but I doubt it.