How To Pick A Ripe Avocado
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When the avocado is ripe and ready for eating, the skin peels away from the flesh very easily, and the inside of the avocado is soft and mashes easily with a fork. Ripe avocado is full of flavor – it tastes smooth and buttery. An avocado that is not yet ripe is tough and tasteless.
If you peel the avocado that is not yet ripe, there is no going back – you’ll have to eat it as is :) Therefore, before you peel an avocado, always make sure that this avocado is ripe! If the avocado is not ripe, just leave it on the counter – it will be ready to eat in a few days.
On the other hand, you certainly don’t want an avocado that is overly ripe (a.k.a spoiled)! While the unripe avocados can be eaten after several days, a spoiled avocado goes straight to the garbage can :)
Here’s how to tell if an avocado is ripe:
Step 1: Analyze How An Avocado Looks
The avocado skin should be uniform – without dents and bruises. The most common variety of avocado – Haas avocado – has a dark green skin with a black tint when ripe (like on the avocado picture below). When the Haas avocado is not ripe, it is bright green (like the leaves on a tree).
However, don’t judge the avocado simply based on its color as other varieties of avocadoes can be bright green even when they are ripe.
Step 2: Analyze How An Avocado Feels
Gently squeeze an avocado with your fingers. When I say “gently”, I mean it – don’t squeeze it so hard that the avocado gets smooshed :) Put an avocado between your thumb and pointer fingers, and give it a very gentle squeeze on the sides.
You should be able to feel the avocado flesh give a little when you squeeze.
The avocado that is not ripe is hard like a rock. The avocado that is spoiled is mushy and gives under your fingers way too much – spoiled avocado gets a permanent dent even from the gentlest squeeze.
After you feel enough avocadoes, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Perfect avocado-picking skills come from experience :)
The bottom line:
Hard like a rock = unripe avocado
Permanently dented from a very gentle squeeze = spoiled avocado
Gives under your fingers, but doesn’t have a visible dent afterwards = perfectly ripe avocado
Once you picked a ripe avocado, go make some guacamole using this quick and easy guacamole recipe
You don’t have to eat an unripe avocado as is or toss it if its open too soon, you just have to quickly make a new skin by wrapping it tightly in plastic wrap or aluminum foil and then wait a day or two as needed. Then you can reopen it to eat. The very very top of your cut might start to brown a bit but you can just cut that away. Now you have a perfectly ripe not at all wasted avocado.