Avocado is one of the familiar, popular fruits, very good for health. Many people have the habit of buying avocados in large quantities to use gradually, but do not know how to ripen avocados quickly and still ensure the deliciousness and richness of avocados. Some people want to buy green avocado and ripen it themselves to avoid chemicals and the condition of the avocado being bruised. But, with unripe avocados, what if you want to use them from 1 day, 2 days, 3 days? KITCHENBAR will share with you how to ripen an avocado in the article below!
How to Tell if an Avocado is Ripe?
Actually, how to identify ripe avocado is not difficult, you can completely rely on the color of the peel, press on the fruit or see the stem of the fruit. Check out the ways to tell if your avocado is ripe below to see if your avocado is ripe!
Based on the color of the pods
There are many different types of avocados in the world, so the shape and color of the avocado skin is also different. The most common are two types of avocados with a green skin when ripe, the skin is still green and the type when ripe, the skin turns red or purple.
Color is the primary method of determining the ripeness of an avocado. Although this method is not the easiest way to recognize, it should be the first approach to recognize.
As with many other fruits, the color of an avocado is an easy visual method to determine whether it is ripe or not. With the type of avocado when ripe, the skin will turn red or purple, we will easily recognize. However, with avocado when ripe, the skin is still green, we need to pay more attention. The color of the fruit in different stages is as follows:
- Light to dark green: Not ripe
- Dark green to dark brownish green: Ripe to, start to ripen, at this stage the avocado is delicious!
- Dark brown to black: Be careful as the avocado may have already begun to spoil.
You can judge by the color of the skin whether your avocado is ripe or not. If you still can’t figure it out, go the next way.
Lightly press to determine ripeness
By gently pressing on the avocado you can completely check the ripeness of the avocado.
If the avocado is not ripe, the flesh of the avocado is hard and cannot be pressed, and pressing hard will not affect the avocado meat. If you press lightly, you can feel the soft soft flesh of the avocado, that means the avocado is ripe. However, if you can clearly feel a slight slide under the skin and the flesh of the avocado is sinking, then your avocado is overripe.
Note, when gently pressing the avocado, it is best to hold the avocado in the palm of your hand. Press with your fingertips to distribute the force evenly, this will prevent the avocado from turning brown. Do not place the fruit on a hard surface and then press it as this will darken the flesh of the avocado.
Gently shake the avocado
A great way to determine if an avocado is ripe is to shake the avocado. As the avocado matures and begins to ripen, the flesh and seeds of the avocado will separate. So when you shake the avocado gently, you will hear a slight knock. It is the avocado seed that has loosened and moved inside the avocado. However, there are some types of fruit whose flesh is quite thick and dense, so even if the avocado seeds are split, they cannot move.
Check the avocado stalk
After applying the method of determining ripe avocado through color and pressing the flesh, it is still not clear whether the avocado is ripe or not. You can resort to checking the avocado stem.
Use a knife to cut a bit of the stem and observe the meat inside:
- If it is green, the fruit is not ripe.
- If it is yellow green, the fruit is ripe and ready to eat.
- If it is golden brown or brown, the avocado is overripe.
- If it is almost black, the fruit is rotten.
While checking the stem of the avocado will determine if the avocado is ripe or not, you should not apply too much. You should only apply after the above methods do not produce results. Because after removing the avocado stem, the avocado will ripen unevenly and will spoil faster.
How to Ripen an Avocado?
If you have purchased green avocados but want to quickly eat avocados, you can refer to the following ways:
Let the avocado ripen naturally
If you are not in a hurry to enjoy the avocados. You can let them ripen naturally and without any impact. You just need to wash them, dry the shells and leave them on the table. At room temperature green avocados can ripen from 4-7 days depending on the age of each fruit. You can check your avocados regularly by gently squeezing and observing the skin.
Ripen an avocado with rice
Using rice to brew ripe fruit is probably a way too familiar to many oriental people. This is very effective. Ethylene – a gas emitted from fruits, ripe fruits with the effect of stimulating ripe fruits, even the way to make avocados ripen quickly also follows that mechanism. Avocados ripen well when the amount of ethylene gas it absorbs is stable and uniform throughout the avocado. This is also the reason why round avocados will ripen more evenly than long avocado lines.
The rice barrel is considered to be the best place to keep ethylene gas as well as a place where the temperature is stable, which is considered one of the ideal environments for ripening avocados. Here the avocado receives enough ethylene gas to cover the whole fruit that it needs for the most delicious and natural ripening of the avocado.
- Step 1: After buying avocado, soak it in water for about 5 minutes, then rinse and drain
- Step 2: You bury the green avocado in a bucket of rice, if possible, let the rice cover all of the avocado. Then close the lid of the rice bin.
- Step 3: 1-2 days later, you open the box of rice to check the avocado. If you see that the ripe avocado is soft, then start enjoying them. If the avocado is still hard, leave it and let it rest.
If you don’t have a large bucket of rice at home or you run out of rice, you can replace the rice with flour. Cooking avocado with flour is similar to using rice. But we will put avocado in a paper bag and then pour flour into the bag. Only about 200g of flour is needed for 2kg of avocado.
You should check the avocado daily to make sure it’s not overcooked.
Ripen an avocado with bananas and other fruits
It sounds a bit strange to use one fruit to ripen other fruit. As shared earlier, when the fruit ripens they will release a certain amount of ethylene gas. Based on this mechanism, many people use this gas to stimulate the ripening of avocados more evenly.
How to make green avocados ripen quickly, people will often choose fruits such as passion fruit, bananas, apples, tomatoes… that contain a lot of ethylene gas when ripe. Of the four fruits above, passion fruit and banana are the two that emit the most ethylene gas, which ripens avocados the most.
- Step 1: When you buy avocado, remember to soak it in water for 5 minutes and let it dry. While waiting for the avocado to dry, prepare a thick paper bag (brown bag). If you don’t have this type of paper you can also use a paper bag made of newspaper or carton.
- Step 2: Put green avocados that need to be ripened in a paper bag, usually 3-4 avocados, put 4-5 fresh purple passion fruits that have not yet wilted, 2 ripe bananas or 1 apple in the same. You then seal the bag up somehow you can.
- Step 3: After 1-2 days you open the bag to check the avocado. If the avocado is ripe, it can be eaten.
Usually with this method, the avocado will be ripe for about 2-3 days. If you have a thick-skinned avocado, you can keep it for about 3-4 days longer. For ripening avocados with bananas, sometimes the avocado skin will darken quickly.
Ripen an avocado in the microwave
If you need avocado right away, you can use the microwave in your kitchen. Making avocados this way means that you can eat avocados anytime you want. But it is not guaranteed that the avocado will ripen as well as you want. Since this is “press ripening”, your avocado is forced to ripen due to heat.
- First, we cut the avocado in half and remove the seeds. Wrap each half with foil or microwaveable plastic wrap.
- Then you turn on the microwave for about 30 seconds on medium high
- When that 30 seconds is over, take the avocado out of the microwave to check if it’s soft as you want
- If so, you can leave it out, if not, continue to put it in for another 10-20 seconds.
- When the avocado is cooked to your liking, take it out, then let it cool. And you can enjoy ripe avocado.
Or another way to use the microwave to ripen avocados:
- You use a fork to poke around the avocado, put them in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds and then take it out.
- After turning the avocado in the microwave to the level you think is reasonable, take it out. Wait for the avocado to cool and then cook.
Ripen an avocado with the oven
A similar way to the microwave but we will use the oven!
- Cover the avocado tightly with aluminum foil and place in a baking tray.
- Turn on the oven and bake at 200 degrees F, checking every 5 to 10 minutes, until desired doneness is reached.
- Let cool, then remove avocado and process.
With two ways: microwave and oven cooked avocado, it is really recommended that you use it when you have no other way. Should only be used in case you are in a hurry and can’t find ripe avocado anywhere. Because we are essentially forcing the avocado to ripen while it is still green, after turning the ripe avocado, it will probably be as soft as ripe avocado, but it will definitely taste very strange, it will taste a bit foul. Chances are it will disappoint you.
How to Ripen an Avocado When Cut Out?
Even if you have halved or chopped avocados, you can still apply some simple tips to make them soft.
Use the oven or microwave
The simplest and most effective is to use an oven or air fryer. First, wrap the cut avocado with foil, wrap it up, and put it in the oven or air fryer. The time is about 10 minutes, the temperature is about 100 degrees Celsius (maybe higher).
When the time is up, if the avocado is not ripe, pop it a little more and check. The unripe avocado has been “enchanted” to become softer and more delicious than before. However, the avocado is quite hot so you need to be careful when removing it.
Use lemon to ripen an avocado
This method applies to the case of halving or partially cutting an avocado. You can rub lemon or apply lemon juice on the inside of the avocado, then apply the two parts as before, put in a sealed paper bag for the avocado to ripen quickly and put it in the refrigerator or apply the avocado incubation methods like a jar. Lemon helps prevent avocados from turning brown when ripe.
You can also keep the cut avocado with the onion in an airtight container to help prevent the enzymes from reacting with the air from damaging the avocado because the onion contains sulfur.
You can also do the following:
- Use cooking oil, or lemon juice to evenly coat both sides of the avocado
- Cover the two halves of the avocado with plastic wrap
- Then continue to incubate ripe avocados by the above natural ways (use bananas – tomatoes – ripe apples, flour) to incubate avocados.
Avocado is a delicious and nutritious fruit. However, green avocados can be bitter or have a strange taste. If you have unripe avocados, try ripening them using the recipes we shared above. We hope that you have delicious avocado dishes when you know how to ripen an avocado!