If you're wondering when an avocado is ready, or how to ripen it, you've come to the right place. Here at Campos del Abuelo we'll give you the keys to ripening it naturally. While making sure it keeps all the benefits of eating avocado.
It often happens that avocados are picked too early and then given surface heat to force them to ripen. This makes the fruit lose many of its properties.
Now, that said… To eat an avocado at just the right moment, you need patience.
To help you understand each step, at Campos del Abuelo we recorded a few videos with Eduardo, farmer and founder of Campos del Abuelo. He talks to us straight from the field about some really important points in the avocado ripening process.
But first, let's clear up a few ideas about this delicious fruit.
How avocados ripen
The first thing to keep in mind is that the avocado is a climacteric fruit. Climacteric fruits are those that keep ripening once they've been picked from the tree. Like tomatoes or apples, for example.
The curious thing about avocados is that they belong to this group, but they need to be harvested in order to ripen. In other words: ripening only ever begins once it's been harvested.
That's because it has to be picked when it reaches its ideal oil content. We explain this process in more detail in this article about avocados.
Now we can get to the videos we recorded with Eduardo at Campos del Abuelo, to better understand the ripening process.
In this first video you can see an avocado that hasn't ripened yet. It's a Hass avocado and Eduardo will also show you why we should wait for it to ripen to enjoy it at its best.
As Eduardo says, an avocado has to be ripe, otherwise it's impossible to eat because the flesh is very hard. Another sign that it isn't ready is that the skin of the stone comes away and stays stuck to the flesh. That doesn't happen when it's ripe. Keep in mind this applies to any avocado variety.
Right, in this second video straight from the field, Eduardo gives you the keys to tell at a glance whether an avocado of this same variety is ripe or not:
There are different avocado varieties, but as we can see with the Hass variety, it's easy to tell if it's ready because the skin gradually turns black. If it's dark, it's ripe; if it's still green, it isn't ready yet. And the foolproof method is the "touch test": press it gently with your fingertips, and if it gives a little, it's ready.
Now let's keep going, because besides these tips, we're going to show you the natural way to ripen your avocados and eat them at their best.
The role of ethylene in avocado ripening
To understand how fruit ripens, we have to talk about ethylene.
Think of this fruit as a living thing that, even once it's off the avocado tree, keeps breathing. As it breathes, it produces carbon dioxide, water and ethylene.
Ethylene is an organic chemical compound produced by all plants. We won't go deep into the chemistry, because at Campos del Abuelo we're growers, but we will tell you that ethylene is very important because it regulates the ripening process.
As we said above, you need patience. We'll give you the key to ripening your avocado in a healthy, natural way through the natural release of ethylene.
What we're going to do is increase the presence of this gas. How? By putting the avocado inside a paper bag. If you don't have a paper bag, you can wrap it in newspaper or any sheet of paper you have at home.
This way, the ethylene it gives off as a gas won't escape and will build up around the avocado.
Something that speeds up the process even more is placing, alongside the avocado in the paper bag, an organic apple from Campos del Abuelo, since apples also release a lot of ethylene.
Just one thing: don't use plastic bags, because plastic isn't porous, so it causes mould and can rot your avocados.
How long does an avocado take to ripen naturally?
After two or three days, it may be ready. Sometimes it takes longer, but once ripening starts, ethylene production rises very quickly.
Also, as the avocado season goes on, they ripen more easily. Early in the season it's normal to wait a few more days. So remember to check it every day.
You'll know your avocado is ready if you do, as Eduardo says, "the touch test", that is, if it gives when you apply a little pressure with your fingertips.
Another little trick is to touch the stem: if it comes off easily, it's ready. Check the colour underneath when you remove the stem: if it's a soft yellow, it's ready to eat.
In this video we'll look at the stages of an avocado, so you can see when it's green, ripening and ready to eat. Just bear in mind that in this video we're still talking about the Hass variety:
So, to recap: when the Hass avocado is greener, it's freshly picked from the tree; when it starts to ripen, the green gradually turns dark. As Eduardo and the avocado growers explained, the fruit is fully ripe when the colour is really dark.
We explain this process using the Hass variety because it's the variety most widely grown around the world.
For other avocado varieties, the thing that never fails, as we said, is the touch test. These avocados really make you want to try them, don't they?
Are there other ways to ripen an avocado quickly?
There are ways to make a hard avocado soft in no time, but they have nothing to do with ripening the fruit…
The "magic recipe" of putting it in the oven wrapped in foil, or even in the microwave, does make the avocado soften, but that's because of the intense heat, not because it's ripening. On top of that, doing this changes the fruit's flavour, smell and colour.
At Campos del Abuelo we harvest avocados when they've reached their ideal oil content, to send them to your home freshly harvested in under 24 hours. That's why, to enjoy the real, delicious flavour of our avocados, you need patience and to let them go through the ripening process.
Remember that at Campos del Abuelo you can buy fruit and vegetables straight from the farmer. You choose it, we harvest it and send it to you without any post-harvest chemicals.
So there you have it: with a paper bag, an apple and Eduardo's tips, you've got all the steps to ripen your avocado naturally.
See you next time, and thanks for reading!
