The best way to ripen an avocado (tested!)
You want to make guacamole, but the avocado is so hard you could crack someone’s skull with it. And mashing it onto your hipster avo-toast for breakfast isn’t going to work either. How do you get that green friend nice and soft and ripe as quickly as possible? Don’t panic: we got you.
Sorry, but there’s no hack that will make your avocado perfectly ripe within an hour, so tonight’s guacamole isn’t happening. But you can speed up the process by a few days. That way, for example, you’ll avoid completely forgetting about those avocados, so they don’t end up brown and mushy in the green bin.
A little banana
The Kitchn headed into the kitchen with a few rock-hard avocados and most of the hacks they could find online. Storing one with a banana in a paper bag is the best-known method. The story goes that the mysterious substances released by a banana turn an avocado buttery soft. Is that true? Yes, thankfully, it has finally been established more or less objectively: it works like a charm. Within a day and a half, that inedible green avocado became a soft, spreadable one. And it tasted good too! Bonus: even the banana was still edible.
Kitchen chaos
What does not work at all: storing the avocado in a bag of flour. It took the avocado four days to ripen, making it the slowest avocado in the test—even slower than an avocado that was simply left to ripen on its own on the counter. The flour can’t be used afterward, says The Kitchn. Besides, they found it messy: open bag, test avocado, close bag again, wipe away flour, oh no, it’s on your fingers, oh no, now it’s on your sweater. Maybe that’s not such a problem if you’re not as clumsy as the editors at The Kitchn, but still.
Fruit bowl
Surprising methods: putting an avocado and a kiwi in a bag (perhaps someone who didn’t have a banana in the fruit bowl and thought: why not a kiwi). The avocado also needed three days to ripen this way, just slightly longer than the avocado that made it through the test in a bag of rice. Not exactly impressive, but still better than the flour and the avocado on the counter.
An apple works too
Conclusion: bananas are magical, storing an avocado in flour is complete nonsense, and perfectly ripe avocados are a myth anyway. And don’t like bananas? Ta-da: an apple works just as well, The Kitchn discovered. Make the most of it!
