How to Ripen an Avocado Quickly
Give 'em a little help without ruining the taste and texture.
If you’ve ever Googled “how to ripen an avocado,” you most likely have seen a slew of hacks and techniques that promise ripe avocados in just 10 minutes! Reading further, though, proves that the results are less than satisfactory. Some of the techniques can even ruin the fruit altogether. So if your grocery store is like mine and you can only ever find rock-hard avocados, I’ll show you how to speed the process up just enough that you can still make guacamole this week, but not so much that it loses all the flavor and texture that makes it so delicious!
1 GATHER YOUR GOODS
To encourage your avocado to pick up the pace and ripen already, put it in a brown paper bag with an apple or a banana. While avocados produce a little something called ethylene gas—which causes fruit to ripen—apples and bananas produce more. Putting these fruits together in a brown paper bag will help the avocado ripen faster.
2 BAG IT
Place your avocado and your apple or banana in the paper bag.
3 SEAL IT
Be sure to fold and/or roll the bag closed. This traps the ethylene.
4 WAIT
I know! Believe me, I know. Waiting is hard. But in just two or three days, you will have that perfectly creamy, buttery, delicious avocado you were hoping for. This is the method most often recommended by avocado growers. So, all shortcuts aside, they are most definitely the experts. A perfectly ripened piece of fruit is definitely worth the wait.