Avocado Hacks That Will Change Your Life

If you love avocados, there's nothing worse than getting hit by a monster craving and having to wait three long days to dig in! Help is on the way. These avocado life hacks will short circuit the ripening process, and turn an avocado that's not quite ripe into something edible in fifteen minutes or less.

Every trendy restaurant has avocado toast now, and the web is full of recipes that put avocados into smoothies and mayonnaise and on top of salmon and chicken.  Avocados are everywhere and they are delicious. And we need them to be ripe right now.

The perfectly ripe avocado is a little soft but not too soft, and once we cut into it the green part is easily mashed or sliced with the edge of a spoon.  Sometimes getting into an avocado at peak ripeness is an adventure in patience and we'll end up canceling Saturday night plans because the avocado on the kitchen counter is finally hitting its peak and we don't want to miss the moment.  We need a life hack to gain back control of our lives.

Taste of Home says, "If your avocado is not quite ripe but not hard, either, cut the avocado in half, remove the pit and wrap each half in microwave-safe plastic wrap. Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Let it cool until easy to handle, then run the wrapped halves under cold water to stop the cooking. Unwrap and use as normal."

If the avocado is rock hard and green and it looks like you're at least a week away from guacamole, Taste of Home says you can "put the avocado in a paper bag with an apple. Poke the bag with a toothpick in several spots and leave at room temperature. The avocado should be ripe in 1 to 3 days."  This works because the paper bag holds in the ethylene gas that fruits produce and it speeds up the ripening process.

Another method to accelerate the ripening of a rock hard avocado involves the oven and cuts a day or two off of the paper bag method.  Wrap the uncut avocado in tinfoil and bake it on a baking sheet at 200˚F for 10 minutes.  If it's not soft, bake it for another 10 minutes.  You can bake it up to an hour, checking it every 10 minutes.  Then let it cool down and dig in.

These hacks are going to make life so much easier!  We'll be able to have avocados on-demand, instead of whenever they decide to cooperate with our schedules.  Life will be great.  As long as the revved-up avocados taste as good as the ones that ripen naturally.  Let us know what you think.