Please Stop Squeezing Your Avocados — There’s a Better Way to Tell if One Is Ripe

A perfectly ripe, buttery avocado is so delicious, you might be tempted to eat the green flesh scooped straight from its shell, with a sprinkle of salt. But the level of ripeness is critical to enjoying this tasty and nutritious fruit in guacamole, avocado toast, and other recipes. Here’s how to pick the perfect avocado — and how to prevent it from spoiling once you’ve found one.

Related: 23 Amazing Avocado Recipes From Salsas to Ceviche

How to pick a ripe avocado

Assess the skin color

You probably already know that a bright green avocado isn’t ready to eat. “The color of their skin is a big indicator,” says 2011 F&W Best New Chef Katie Button, co-founder of Cúrate in Asheville, North Carolina. She suggests looking for avocados that are deeper purple and dark.

Apply light pressure with the palm of your hand

Squeezing avocados bruises the fruit, causing them to spoil faster — and no one wants a brown thumbprint on their avocado salad.

Jeff Dickinson, a Hass avocado grower and founder of Dickinson Family Farms, suggests applying gentle pressure to the avocado without using your fingertips. “If too soft, this avocado is overripe and best to pass on it. If it’s too firm, give it a few more days and it will be ready,” he says.

Button says she gives her avocados a “gentle hug.”

Don’t break the seal

Although some people recommend flicking off the stem cap to tell if it’s ripe, Dickinson warns that this is a lesser known trigger for discoloration. “One common mistake is removing the stem cap,” he says. “As with all fruit, once you break the skin, the oxygen in the air will cause browning. Whether it’s ripe or not, popping off the stem at the market or in your kitchen triggers premature oxidation that can negatively impact color, texture, and taste for when you are ready to eat, so I don’t recommend it.”

Related: How to Cut an Avocado

Put them in the fridge once they’re ripened

Restaurants buy avocados by the case, which can make things overwhelming if they all ripen at once. Button uses the same technique at home and in the restaurant kitchen to throttle her avocados’ ripening and gain some control.

At the restaurant, her team layers unripe avocados on parchment paper-lined sheet trays in a single layer and holds them at room temperature, checking their color and firmness (no squeezing!) daily. Once ripe, they transfer the tray to the refrigerator to halt their ripening. “They will keep ripening in the refrigerator a little bit,” says Button, “just much more slowly.”

“At home, I often buy a bag of four or five and then I watch them on my counter and then one by one, depending on their individual ripeness, toss them in the refrigerator when they get to that perfect level,” she says. “That buys me three to four days to enjoy them.”

Avoid over-ripening

An overripe avocado can be mushy, brown, and bitter. “They’re perfect when they just have a subtle give to them but aren’t really soft, then there’s this point where the skin starts wrinkling,” says Button. “They’re like mush inside of a wrinkle suit. You can still eat them, but they get a little weird off flavor as they go too far.”

Keep an eye on your avocados, resist thumb squeezing, and enjoy this earthy, healthy fruit. 

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