Avocados - lucky dip ?

Primrose

Is there a magic tip to ensure you are buying a nice fresh avocado?

Have bought several recently from various “reputable” sources only to find that despite a healthy looking external skin, they’re completely black and inedible once cut open. Quite apart from the waste of money and the inconvenience of returning them to a shop to complain, it wrecks the concept of menu planning.

PasturesNew

On a TV show, which might've been Food Unwrapped ... and/or one with the Gurning Grocer on it anyway .... they covered the avocados issue.

I've never had one and so I wasn't really watching ... but ...

They said how you can't tell - but there's some new way of letting you know precisely how "ready to eat" each avocado is.... some special machine they built wiggles them and can grade them from that. It allegedly provides you with the information to select a fresh avocado every time

ariarnia

I have to admit never having bought a whole avocado.

There are some hints and tips here that might help: https://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-an-Avocado-Is-Ripe

Including that in ripe avocados the flesh pulls away from the stone so you can hold them up to your ear to hear a 'rattle' that tells you they may be overripe.

Thinking this is what your fancy machine checks for PN?

PasturesNew

ariarnia wrote: »

Thinking this is what your fancy machine checks for PN?

No idea to be honest.... while my brain registered the programme was on and that's what was being discussed, I wasn't watching the telly. I have the telly on "for company", not to watch most of the time.
And, as I've absolutely no interest in anything to do with avocados I didn't even sit and watch that 2 minute bit

Callie22

I don't know if they still do, but Asda used to sell avocados at different stages of ripeness - they'd have different coloured stickers on them to tell you if they were ready now, needed leaving a couple of days or needed leaving longer. They were generally pretty accurate and it was handy if you wanted one for now and another for a few days later. Having said that there does always seem to be an element of chance - I'm always slightly envious when you see avocados on TV shows and when they cut them open they're always perfectly ripe and flawless.

Primrose

Bitter experience has taught me never to use avocados when planning a dinner party type meal where you have visitors. You can always reckon that at least one of them will prove unfit for purpose and then you're scrabbling around with insufficient food to complete a recipe!

sooty&sweep

Hi

I tend to find that supermarkets sell underripe or overripe avocados. They are never just right.

I try to buy avocados ahead of when I need them so they have time to ripen.

Jen

ancientofdays

We have an avocado sitting on the kitchen windowsill, I'm waiting for it to ripen and turning it so that it can get some sunlight evenly.

There are stages in the life of an avocado. The unripe stage lasts ages. The overripe stage is upon you very suddenly. Between these extremes is a very short time when your avocado is exactly right but this lasts about 2 minutes so eat the thing quick.

The above is not necessarily sciencey fact.

moneyistooshorttomention

Then there's the whole thing of "But I only want half an avocado right now - just enough for my salad or to spread on my toast" that one has if single and how to ensure the other half stays okay until you decide to eat it.

The best solution I've found to that, to date, is to leave the stone in the other half of the avocado and put it (stone side down) on a plate in the fridge. There's a teeny little bit that goes brown - but most of it stays okay enough to mash on toast.

Ilona

I only ever buy them when they are greatly reduced on a yellow sticker. Sometimes they are rock hard so I know I can leave them for a few days, I squeeze them every day, when they start to feel a bit softer I use them. I find the occasional one that is inedible, but at 10p or 20p, that does't bother me.

Once opened I eat the whole lot, would not bother to save half in the fridge. I scoop out with a teaspoon and eat it, sometimes add it to a salad.

Ilona

juliettet

I eat a lot of avocados and find if the end with the stem joint is dry and very soft it is past its best. Quite often though some of it can be salvaged.