Find out How to Ripen Avocados: 4 Best Ways

Avocados are pear-shaped fruits, dark green and have light green flesh, with one massive pit in the internal cell walls.  Also known as butter fruit or pear alligator, they are creamy, delicious, and versatile. You can use them in salads or heart-warming soups.

You must carefully nurture the avocado for perfect ripeness and its creamy texture and tenderness. So, the question arises of how to ripen avocados or how it is ripe.

How to Ripen Avocados

Avocados are used in many recipes for the unique flavour it gives.

One such recipe is guacamole. Imagine that you are ready with all the ingredients to prepare guacamole, but your avocado is not. 

So, before preparing guacamole recipes, you have to buy avocados, but you can not buy ripe avocados because they ripen really fast or get rancid faster too.

Secondly, if you buy an unripe avocado, you first need to wait till they get ripened before you can use them. The unripe avocado is as hard as rocks. The wait for ripening avocado can be unfruitful sometimes. So, how to find out ripen avocados?

1. Home Remedies

There are many home remedies by which you can ripen avocados quickly.

1.1 With the help of certain fruits:

To ripen an avocado, wrap it in the brown paper along with some fruit like bananas or apples, and then leave it in a sunny spot for almost one day. 

Certain fruits like bananas and apples are ethylene-producing fruit; hence the ripening process fastens. And you can get fruit like bananas easily on your kitchen counter.

1.2. Sunlight

The other way of the avocado ripening process is to place avocados in a paper bag or brown paper bag and leave it in a sunny window.

It is the most effective way to ripe avocados. Still, this process will take more time for the ripened avocados, almost three to five days.

1.3. Oven

Another process is to plastic or foil wrap it and bake it in the oven for ten minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. You can also place the unripe avocado in the preheated oven, but be sure to check it every five minutes.

Do not microwave the wrapped baking sheet avocados. It has the ability to ruin their texture and taste.

1.4. Lime juice:

Now imagine a situation you bought some avocados. Without checking, you cut those avocados, and then you find that the avocados are unripe, so, not to worry, you still have a trick to ripen an avocado quickly.

Rub some lime juice and place those two halves back. Lemon juice is an acidic agent and prevents it from becoming too brown and mushy.

Now, tightly wrap the avocado in two halves in a plastic or paper bag. A paper bag is more suitable. Place these packed avocados in the refrigerator for one day until they do not soften. Keep monitoring the ripe avocados.

1.5. Sea Salt

Another way to ripen an avocado quickly is to cut the stem and create a tiny opening.

Fill this opening with sea salt and place the cut top back like a lid to seal the avocado. Your perfect avocado will be ready in a day.

1.6. Uncooked Rice

A quick way to ripen the fresh avocados is to use a simple staple like an uncooked rice bowl, which can help fasten the process.

Place your avocado in a bowl full of uncooked rice. Be sure that you have covered it from all sides.

2. How to Observe a Ripe Avocado

Here are some ways to check if avocados are ripened, perfectly ripe, or unripe—the easiest way is to scrap the stem or cap of the avocado.

• If the stem comes off easily, and then a creamy, green texture reveals itself, that indicates that your avocado is perfectly ripe for devouring.
• If the avocado is too soft and has a nutty flavour, it’s probably overripe
• If it is rock-hard, that means your avocado is unripe.

3. Characteristics of Ripen Avocados

There are three most important ways to check when determining the ripeness of a fresh avocado: colour, firmness, and texture.

3.1. Texture:

The tiny bumps on the outermost layer indicate the ripeness of the avocado. The ripened avocados’ texture should be slightly bumpy.

3.2. Color:

The colour of an avocado can also tell if an avocado is ripe or not. a perfectly ripened avocado will have a dark-green colour to a deep purplish, almost black.

While unripe avocados are bright green.

3.3. Firmness:

You can check firmness by placing the avocado in the palm and gently squeezing it.

• A ripened avocado is softened when squeezed.
• If the avocado is rock hard, it means it is unripe.
• If the avocado bends and is mushy in your hands, it means it is overripe.

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Why Are Some Avocados Too Hard?

Avocados that are ripe will normally be very dark green in colour, feel hard when squeezed, and have a slight give. On the other hand, if the avocado is very hard and bright green, it is underripe but still edible.

2. How Do I Make Hard Avocados Soft?

Along with a banana, apple, or kiwi, place an avocado in a paper bag and fold the top shut. These fruits generate ethylene gas, a ripening hormone produced by plants. The gas is trapped inside the closed brown paper bag to speed up the ripening process. Or you may use any of the above-mentioned tricks.

3. After Being Chopped, Can an Avocado Continue to Ripen?

There is a really easy way to ensure that an avocado still ripens with plenty of taste if you cut it too soon. Just rub some lime or lemon on it. And put the avocado back together.

Conclusion

You must know how to ripen an avocado. It is a natural process, just like any other fruit, or we can say the ripening of avocados happens naturally.

Still, in some cases, when we want to ripen an avocado faster, we can either plastic wrap them and keep them in direct sunlight to ripen naturally, or we can use the earlier techniques to ripen unripe fruit (avocado) naturally.

The bright green underneath of the wrapped avocado fruit tells it is ripe, and brown spots on the avocado tell it is unripe.

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