Northwest Edible Life

urban homesteading in the pacific northwest

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Never Buy A Rotten Avocado Again

Where I live, far from avocado country, it’s not unusual for organic avocados to be $2.50 or $3 each.

“Oh, waaah, you big crybaby,” locavore purists might argue, “avocados are expensive because you live in Seattle, so stop buying non-local food!”

To which I reply: “The zombies can have my guacamole when they pry it from my salt-covered, tortilla chip-holding fingers.”

In any event, if you are paying $3 for a single avocado, you want that avocado to be freaking perfect: soft but not bruised, fully ripe but not rotten.

But I suspect many avocado lovers have experienced, as I have, the disappointment of slicing into their avo only to find brown streaks or dark, rotten bruising on the inside.

Gross.

Here’s how to make sure that never happens again.

Before you commit to a specific avocado, look for all the external signs of ripe-but-not-rotten. With a Hass avocado (the variety we tend to get on the West coast), the skin should be very dark green-to-black and bumpy. The fruit should feel heavy and firm, with no obvious smooshy parts or flat areas.

Now here’s the trick. Once you’ve got a good candidate, take a sneak-peak at what’s inside. Discreetly flick the dry stem off the fruit.

If you see a brown patch under the stem, put that avocado back. It will be gross inside.

Like this:

But, if the fruit right under the stem is bright avocado yellow-green, you have a winner. Your avocado will be great.

Like this:

This technique has never failed me.

Haas avocados purchased hard and green will ripen nicely on the counter over several days. However, once your avocado hits that black-skinned stage, don’t delay in enjoying it. The difference between a soft and creamy avocado and a brown-streaked, half-rotten one is only a few days on the counter.

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  1. Wow thats how a good avocado looks. I have never bought one that didn’t have a brown colored seed in it. What an eye opener. Thanks for the info.

  2. I eat avos alllll the time, so thank you so much for this wonderful tip!

    I’ve just discovered your blog, and I have been reading your posts about budgeting. My question is, for a 24 year old grad student living in a small apartment in the middle of town, in the harshest, coldest, part of the harshest, coldest state (other than Alaska), what do you suggest for gas savings/food savings – especially when it’s -60 F with the windchill?

    Many thanks!

    • Well, I can honestly say I have no idea what -60 F feels like. I think you must be amazingly rugged to handle that. I know you’re asking about gas and food, but this link might be helpful since I’m guessing you have to spend a lot of money heating your place. http://www.richsoil.com/electric-heat.jsp It talks about heating the *person* rather than the room, and as such might be useful to cut down on utility bills (assuming you are covering those rather than your landlord).

      The basics on gas savings are the same everywhere I think: avoid driving when possible, be super conscious about running errands deliberately, only when really necessary, and in the most milage-efficient order (ie, no backtracking), and keep your car tuned up to get the best possible milage. I like this post about doing the little things right to save on gas, since not everyone can bike everywhere (hello -60 degrees town) or can spring for a new Prius. http://www.survivingeconomiccollapse.net/how-to-dramatically-reduce-what-you-spend-on-gas/

      For food savings, the easiest way to save money is to cook from scratch, from staple items. Yeah, I mean like beans and rice. (Then it’s easier to buy an avocado to top it all with!). If you are single or without kids, particularly, I think once-a-week big batches of stew, soup, chili, etc. kept in the fridge and eaten between my-eyeballs-are-bleeding study sessions is a good way to save time AND money. In general, the cheaper cuts of meat are also the most flavorful, you just have to know what to do with them. What to do with them is almost ALWAY “braise” meaning, cook slowly with a little liquid at a low temp. That’s what turns cheap-and-chewy meat into succulent, tender deliciousness. A crock pot is a good way to handle this from a convenience standpoint, and I think also at the lowest energy cost.

      Thanks for reading. Hope this helps. 🙂

  3. Awesome tip…I am one of those who gently “feels” the softness of the avocado. I eat almost one a day, so they are important to me. My skin is soft instead of dry, my hair shines, and I feel better than I have in years! A lot of that is due to raw foods and my favorite is the glorious avocado!

    • I am a big advocate of buying and using local food, I even wrote a book about it (www.foodfromourland.co.nz). If it is available locally I buy it locally, but if there is a superfood, for me it is coconut oil, I buy it in bulk where I can buy it.

  4. Now I’ll be finding all the “rejects” with the broken-off stems in the bin!!
    Still a great tip.

  5. I saw a Mexican lady do this in our OKC grocery store, and asked her…she said the same thing…green under the stem equals good.

  7. I’m with Misti above…I don’t really see much wrong with the first avocado in your pics. Maybe a little over-ripe, but not rotten by any means. (But, I’m the same way with bananas; I like them VERY ripe.) Or maybe I just can’t stand the thought of an avocado going to waste.

    I also don’t buy organic avocados. I’d never be able to afford them if I did. I’ve bought regular (non-organic) avos at Aldi for as little as .29, but they are usually .49 or .69 there. I try to pick out a few that are ripe that day, and several that have yet to ripen. I do the “press on the pointed end” method to detect ripeness.

    I love guacamole, but my favorite way to eat an avocado is to just sprinkle it with coarse sea salt and scoop it out with a spoon. Yum!

    • Yes “Annie” I have been trying to find different ways of eating cado’s as I had never liked then before except as quacamole. I always keep coarse ground sea salt & coarse kosher salt in my pantry – the other day when I had 2 cado’s – 1 ready to eat, which I made like a egg salad sand just by mixing it with some salt & siracha sauce & spread it on some oat nut bread – DELISH E OSO ! Once the other ripened I just sliced it and sprinkled some coarse sea salt on top – I found that rather delicious as well.
      I’VE BECOME AN AVOCADO LOVER NOW !
      PS…thank you Aldi’s for having then at such good prices. It really helps when you want to eat/snack healthy on a limited budget !

  8. how do the stores where you are buying the avocados feel about this. it is a great tip but i am concerned that the produce workers seeing us doing this might not be too happy. any experiences with this so far? i once got yelled at a store for touching the strawberries, ridiculous, because we all touch the fruit to see if we want to buy it, but it has made me reluctant to over- handle the produce and flicking off the tops of the avos may upset some store workers. what do you guys think?

    • Good point. Here’s my feeling: if you flick the stem and it looks good, for God’s sake buy that one. Don’t just flick for fun. Then, you’ve taken the avocado you’ve “marked” and no harm is done. If it’s black, then the avo wasn’t good anyway and maybe you just saved someone else from buying an icky avo.

      I’d also say, if the produce people aren’t actively trying to sell you on the fruit and veg at that store, find a better store. At the Yuppie-Hippie market where I shop, the kids are given free fruit just for coming in and the people in that department will give you a slice of anything so you can try before you buy. You pay for it, in the sense that the produce is more expensive right off, but you also know your *real* cost per pound won’t double because you have to throw away half of what you bought.

      That said, obviously only do what’s in your comfort zone. I don’t want to encourage people to get in fisticuffs with their local market. 🙂

  9. thanks for the tip Iam in northern Wisconsin what a great tip and I love them but hard to find a good one

  10. Thanks for the tip! I have noticed that avocados with a redish tint to the skin never seem to fail to be excellent. Also, I’ve noticed that the more bumpy the better. Thanks again!

    • I know I’m posting this 3 years after your post, but I had to just say that I completely agree with this – I’ve been eating these great avacados with a redish tint to the skin lately, and I loved it so much that I felt compelled to do a search on these redish avacados. If you can find them, they taste the best by far!

  11. A way to get your avocado’s to ripen faster is by putting them in a paper bag. My fresh green avocado’s have been ripe within 3 days or less with this method!

  12. Thanks for the tip! I tend to buy them rock hard and ripen myself to avoid that, but if you do get one that is subpar, you can always make a face mask and condition your hair 🙂

  13. Not only am I glad I found this post, I’m glad I read through the comments. The stringy veins one finds in the avocado ruins the texture too. I never knew that they were the avocado sprouting. As far as the brown under the stub of the fruit: will it predict bruises and brownness not under the stub? My Mom taught me about ripening avocados in paper bags. Certain fruits ripen that way too. Even she didn’t know this particular tip so I just shared it with her. Thank you!

  14. My love for avocados began in Hawaii when my husband and I were there for our wedding/honeymoon. Several locals at the shops couldn’t wait to share their bounty and we indulged to the fullest! The horse staying at our rental property loved avocados too!

  15. I love avocados and I love this tip! I’ve been using it for the past couple of weeks and it’s right on. I’ll be sharing your article with my blog readers, because avocados are one of the healthiest foods out there.

  16. Thank you for this tip! I tried it out when I bought an avocado last week and got a perfect one! No more yucky avocados for me!

  17. G’day, I live in an area in Queensland where there are many avocado plantations; yet, I too pay $2.50 per avocado at the supermarket and often have to discard the fruit. Not now, I hope with this simple tip. Thanks.

  21. I buy my avacados while they are green and still very firm. They ripen quickly without bruises and are fully ripe when the skin has turned black. Squeezing the avacados at the store causes them to bruise. I’ve seen peole squeezing the avacados after they have turned black for tenderness and this is a big no no. Also please, don’t pick the little cap loose. The avacado fruit is exposed in doing this and will be spoiled (start rotting) for someone else if you don’t buy it. I too had to learn how to determine how to buy them without all those nasty bruises. I cringe when I see people squeezing already ripe avacados.

  24. Good article and I like your pictures. As other people have mentioned, it’s really annoying to see people squeezing avocados as this will leave black bruises. It’s better to ripen them at home but your method seems far less intrusive, particularly if you’re going to buy it if it passes the test. If it doesn’t, then I guess it would have been bad anyway.

  25. …….and if you happen to come across an avocado that isn’t ripe, but doesn’t have its bellybutton a/k/a stem, melt wax into the hole and the avocado will ripen properly without the stem end rotting!!

  26. Just some further tips from Oz – never put ripening avocados near other fruit – the enzymes they give off causes the avocados to ripen unevenly and you open a gorgeous looking avocado on the outside to find it full of brown spots! Put them somewhere by themselves to ripen! Since I have been doing that, I have not had one single avocado go bad on me! As soon as they reach that slight give stage around the top they go in the fridge. I can’t live without my breakfast toast with avocado – as a coeliacs sufferer it’s the only thing that makes gluten free toast taste good lol!

  28. Thank you! Oh, my have I been irritated and angry at supermarkets for this issue. I know it’s wrong, but they are incredible expensive here in Norway too, so when living on a tight student’s budget it is so disappointing when you can’t eat what you’ve bought. I will try to use this trick from now on. Hope it works! 🙂

  29. BTW, just tried this this weekend. Thought oh , now I can pick a good avocado. No, was green on the 4 one I picked the nub out of but when got it home probably was able to salvage only about 1/3 of it. Had brown streaks all through it.

  30. Definitely going to try this. Makes me very mad when I buy three avocados and get a thimbleful of usable flesh out of it.

  31. Thanks for the tip. This worked really well for me. This is an excellent and simple way. You’ve just made my shopping that much easier!

  32. Great tips! I came here as a result of a Google search… After many years I had abandoned the very idea of ever getting good avocados (most of them turning brown or never ripening right) and only eat them in restaurants because I have had so little success with them, so it’s great to know about the stem tip, the pointy end tip, the OK to buy rock hard tip (I didn’t know avocados can ripe normally on a shelf!) and the refrigeration after ripening tip. The power of the Internet never ceases to amaze me 🙂

    But could you please consider that not everyone has perfect vision (I notice you are young and don’t wear glasses, Erica) and consider using a more legible font than this pale gray Times-like font that is so hard to read and seems to be the in-thing to do on so many web sites of late? One could think you’re afraid of speaking out 😉

    Chris in the Great White North (Definitely NOT avocado country 😉

  33. You have no idea how much disappointment you’ve saved me with this tip. I used to live in California and I was accustomed to fresh, perfect avocados all the time, so I never really learned how to check them. Now that I’m on the east coast avocados are *such* a gamble. This is seriously going to improve my culinary life, thank you so much.

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