This Is the Only “quick” Way to Ripen an Avocado.
Avocados have a fan club that hates to love them. They taste great, can be sliced, mashed, or blended, and can be used to make everything from salad dressings to ice cream . But they like to be modest. Perfectly ripe in seemingly minutes, avocados spend most of their time on the countertop being hard or rotten. This fact has spawned a huge number of “quick ripening” avocados. If you are happy to hear them all, enjoy this feeling. It was good. Either way, these hacks don’t work. It turns out there is only one way.
In addition to the fact that the fruit should ripen on its own within a few days, there is another way to speed up the ripening of avocados. It’s faster , but it’s still not fast. Place the avocado in a paper bag or any enclosed space, ideally with another menopausal fruit that is already ripe (such as an apple or banana). It is recommended to use paper because it absorbs possible moisture causing mold, however this is only for one day so mold is unlikely to grow on the skin of an avocado. (And you can always toss a napkin or paper towel into a plastic bag if you run out of paper.) Depending on the current state of ripeness of the avocado before it goes into “time out”, it will take 12-24 hours to ripen. , and the other fruit will also move forward. Every other maturing hack I’ve come across turns out to be a mitigating hack. You have to think about what you really want from your little green goddess – maturity or that this damn thing is already soft.
The University of Maryland Extension elaborates that a number of characteristic changes occur as the fetus matures, and softening is just one of them.
The firmness of the fruit pulp usually softens, the sugar content increases, and the acid level decreases. Aroma volatiles are released and the true flavor of the fruit is revealed. The color of the fruit usually darkens, the skin and flesh soften, and the green background color disappears.
The only way to truly induce maturation is to chemically trigger the biological process with ethylene . Ethylene is a plant hormone that signals the maturation process, and no, you don’t have to buy it from Amazon. This is where a paper bag comes in handy. Climacteric fruits are fruits that can ripen outside the plant. They can be harvested before they are ripe and will continue to ripen in storage because they naturally release ethylene. Unripe fruits emit low concentrations of ethylene, but as they ripen, ethylene, among other things, will prevent other developmental processes and begin to release higher and higher concentrations of gaseous ethylene. Because the avocado is already releasing ethylene, placing it in an enclosed space (such as a paper bag, plastic bag, or cardboard box) blocks the ethylene and surrounds the fruit, signaling that it will release more and more ethylene. Left on the counter, this important ripening gas is lost in the room.
If the avocado is particularly green, the addition of a fruit that is already ripe, which gives off increased levels of ethylene gas, gives the avocado a quick start. Keep in mind that the ethylene container will also affect the fruit and will most likely overripe . The avocado capitalizes on another fruit’s advanced stage of life to reach the top of its game, while the innocent helper fruit shrivels and turns into mush.
Put the avocado in a bag and check every eight to ten hours to see how ripe it is, then take it out to slow down the rate of ripening. This ethylene container trick will work with any menopausal fruit (hard peaches, I tell you) and will really ripen the texture, color, and most importantly, the taste of the fruit. If you’ve ever ordered a dish that included a sliced avocado and received unripe pieces, you know how disappointing that can be. At my current stage in life, I can chew solid food quite well, but an unripe avocado tastes like watery nothingness.
Tricks to soften an avocado (like sprinkling it with salt, putting it in the oven, or simply chopping it in a food processor) may allow you to puree it, but the taste remains the same: not enough.
If you organized a football Sunday meeting and were in charge of guacamole, my best advice is to give yourself at least 24 hours of time on avocados in a bag. If you don’t have much time, you’re better off taking a couple of Sabras and secretly scooping them into your own Tupperware.