If you’re craving avocado toast but your fruit isn’t quite ripe, there’s a quick solution.
Avocados are extremely versatile – the go-to brunch food. Perfect in a salad, sandwich, wrap or smoothie, this fruit is extremely popular and for good reason. The only problem with avocados is that they only have a short maturity period. Avocados are supposed to be deliciously creamy. However, an underripe avocado may be bitter or tasteless, while an overripe avocado may be discolored, smelly, and not at all appetizing.
Often avocado lovers wait days for their fruit to properly ripen, but what if you need an avocado ready to eat now? All you need in this case is an avocado, a microwave, and two minutes. It is indeed possible to ripen an avocado “super quickly” – but this only works if the avocado is not quite ripe but not hard either.
Cut the avocado in half, remove the pit and wrap each half in microwave-safe plastic wrap. Next, put the avocado halves in a microwave and heat them on high for two minutes. Let them cool until they can be held without burning yourself, then run the wrapped halves under cold water – this will stop the cooking. Unwrap the avocado halves and… it’s ready! Put it on toast, slice it in a wrap, blend it into a smoothie or make the ultimate guacamole.
If your avocado is rock hard, you will have to wait a little longer. Place the avocado in a paper bag with an apple. Pierce the bag with a toothpick in several places and leave at room temperature. The avocado should be ripe in 1 to 3 days. Why ripen avocado in a bag? Apples, kiwis and avocados all produce natural ethylene gas, which speeds up ripening. A paper bag retains the ethylene and helps the avocado ripen quickly.
Finally, one last tip, here are the signs that an avocado is ripe (or overripe): Hass avocados have a grainy skin that turns from green to black as they ripen. Choose fruits with very dark (or black) skin, that are heavy and do not have softer or flattened spots. Other avocados (those from Florida, for example) have a moderately green, shiny skin that does not change color as it ripens. If it yields under light pressure, it is ready to be sliced. If the avocado has a small bump after being juiced, it is too soft to slice but just soft enough to mash. If there is a large dent after being squeezed, it is overripe and the flesh is spoiled. Think you have a good one? Try detaching the top rod. If you see brown, put it down. Green and shiny? It’s good.