Need To Ripen Avocado At Home? Try These 5 Easy Tricks!

Tarishi Shrivastava

Updated:Aug 01, 2024

Avocados are healthy, packed with healthy fats and essential nutrients, making them a great addition to your diet. If they are not ripe, they cannot be eaten. But why miss out on avocado smoothie or avocado toast, and why not ripen and perfect avocado at home with just these 5 simple tricks:

Need To Ripen Avocado At Home? Try These 5 Easy Tricks!

Image Credit: Freepik

Avocados are a delicious fruit from the avocado tree, known as Persea Americana. When ripe, they develop a creamy texture and a mild, nutty flavour that is perfect for a variety of dishes. However, it is difficult to find perfectly ripened avocados in the market. Often, they are bright green and very hard, making them difficult to slice or mash for a salad, sandwich, or toast. Ripe avocados are perfect to be used in various dishes; you can add them with eggs for a nutritious breakfast, blend them for a smoothie, or enjoy them on toast.

Image Credit: Freepik

What Are The Health Benefits Of Avocados?

Avocados are packed with nutrients like vitamins E, K, C, and B6, as well as potassium and magnesium. Here are some of the avocado benefits:

Avocados are good for heart health because they are rich in monounsaturated fats.
They help with digestion as they are high in dietary fibre.
The fruit contains antioxidants that can help reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, which is detrimental to health.
The fruit consists of zeaxanthin and lutein, which are phytochemicals found in eye tissue. They offer protection and help minimise eye damage, including ultraviolet rays.

5 Tips To Ripen Avocados

Ripe avocados should be soft. If they are hard or squishy, it means they are either raw or overripe. Here are some avocado ripening methods you can use at home!

1. Keep Them In Warm Places

Avocados are to be stored in a warm place to help them ripen perfectly. Place them in a bowl and store in a warm place; this is a natural method to ripen the fruits. The only drawback of this method is that this process is slow and might take a few days or weeks for the avocados to ripen fully.

Image Credit: Freepik

2. The Paper Bag Hack

Avocados produce ethylene gas, a plant hormone that plays a key role in inducing the ripening process for many fruits. Surrounding an avocado with air full of ethylene gas can increase its ethylene production and speed up the ripening process. So, putting avocado in a paper bag can trap ethylene and help it ripen faster.

Image Credit: Freepik

Also Read: Avocado Fries and Avocado Tacos Recipe

3. Store It With A Banana

Bananas are a climacteric fruit; this means bananas can continue ripening after being separated from the plant. The ethylene gas this fruit emits can speed up ripening. All you must do is keep raw avocado with bananas and wait for at least two days.

Image Credit: Freepik

4. Put Avocado In Uncooked Rice

Put avocado with uncooked rice in a container. Make sure the fruit is nicely covered with the rice. This helps to build an ethylene gas trap that will help to ripen avocados in about two to three days.

Image Credit: Freepik

5. Use A Cotton Cloth

Use a clean cotton cloth to ripen avocados. Put the washed and dried cloth on a flat surface and place the avocados on top. Space them out, then cover the avocados with another piece of clean cloth. This will also take a few days to ripen the fruit.