How to Ripen Your Avocado
See, the dark green fruit you picked up at the store is not remotely ready to eat. Give it a good squeeze and you'll see. It might as well be a bowling ball right now, except that a bowling ball is actually useful as soon as you buy it.
Congratulations, shopper! You've made a great choice.
Avocados are delicious with Mexican food, in guacamole, and just on their own. They're healthy, too: rich in fiber, monounsaturated fats, potassium, and more than a dozen other high-value nutrients.
Think you're feeling good now? Wait till you get some of that green, buttery avocado in your mouth. Now that's living!
No, seriously; you have to wait. Longer than you'd think. Longer than you'd like.
See, the dark green fruit you picked up at the store is not remotely ready to eat. Give it a good squeeze and you'll see. It might as well be a bowling ball right now, except that a bowling ball is actually useful as soon as you buy it.
Here's how you can get it ready:
- Put the avocado in a bag. It doesn't have to be fancy! You don't need to go to one of those foodie sites where they'll sell you a dozen bags made of minimally cruel hemp and beeswax produced by artisanal hives whose influences include Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dali. Honestly, just a regular paper bag is best.
- Leave the bag someplace that's room temperature. Don't try to microwave it! An avocado in the microwave is a recipe for disaster (prep time 3 minutes, serves twelve). Before you know it, that irradiated piece of fruit pretending it's a fossil will go bad. It will be selling slightly bruised peaches on the street corner, idly flicking a switchblade open and shut, ogling your daughters with a toothpick in its mouth.
- Speak gentle words of support to the avocado. It gets loneliest at night - who wants to spend the night in a brown paper bag? - so that's the most important time to be there for your meal-to-be. Say things like, "who's a nutrient-rich superfood? you are! that's right, you ARE, you big green testicle rolling around on my kitchen table" or "soon you're going to marry sassy Miss Onion and juicy Miss Tomato and get all busy with the salt and lime juice, oh yeaaaah, mmmHMMM that is going to be so HOT". Try to leave out any mention of slicing, dicing, peeling, or mashing. And if you drool on the bag, get a new one before you go back to bed. No one, animal, vegetable, or mineral, wants to sleep in the wet spot.
- Watch a couple of telenovelas. Honestly, there's some great storytelling on those shows, and you've been telling yourself you wanted to check them out. Now's your chance! Avocados age at a pace that makes glaciers impatient. (Glaciers were persistent masses of ice moving slowly downhill under their own weight, famously at a very slow or "glazierly" pace because of guild regulations.) Settle in, grow some popcorn, and enjoy.
- Master the lute. Again, you've got some time. Avocados take longer to ripen than most plants do to grow from seeds. So hit up the local luthier (luthiers are dry-nosed primates who have mastered the use of crude tools) and one of those guys who still markets music lessons using photocopied flyers with tear-off tabs. May I suggest you start by learning the Byrds' classic "Turn! Turn! Turn!"?
On about the fourth or ninth day, you shall look upon the avocado, and you shall see that it is good. When you press it gently with your finger, it should giggle coquettishly. You should be able to calculate its density using the formula m/v=p, where m is the mass of the avocado in kilograms, v is the avocado's volume in decibels, and p is the density of the avocado for some reason. (I mean, d is RIGHT THERE.) If the avocado's density can now be expressed without using numbers that remind you of Stephen Hawking, it should be ripe.
Cut the avocado in half with a sharp knife. Then use a dull knife to dig out the pit, which is the size of a golf ball and tastes only marginally better. Keep the avocado pit so you can grow your own avocados for your loved ones, continuing the circle of life. Scoop out the creamy green flesh with a spoon. Go back to the store to buy the rest of your ingredients again, since they probably went bad while you were waiting for the avocado to ripen.
And there you have it! You've ripened an avocado, and you are ready to serve it at either your retirement party or your funeral. (Or, more plausibly these days, both.)