Update, June 1, 2022: The FDA advises against storing avocados in water, since this could cause bacterial growth of Listeria and other organisms, potentially making you sick. Refrigerating avocados without the water is still okay. The original article follows.
Buying avocados is always a bit of a crapshoot: They tend to ripen at unpredictable intervals, with that fleeting moment of ripeness coming and going before you have a chance to eat them. Sure, you can freeze them, but that does mean a change in texture, which might not always work for what you want.
According to a Facebook post that’s caught a lot of attention lately, it is possible to slow the ripening process down, which means you can keep your avocados fresh for up to a month, if not a little longer. That’s a lot of time to use up that case of avocados you bought at the farmer’s market on a whim when the bulk price was too good to pass up.
How to make avocados ripen slower
As the Facebook user posted, “Avocados stay good for-freaking-ever if you put them in water in the fridge. These have been in here for two whole dang weeks while the control group on the countertop rotted.”
As her photo demonstrated, she was able to store whole avocados in the fridge for several weeks by submerging them in water. As The Kitchn reported in a recent article, this hack was confirmed as legit by multiple people on Twitter, including the writer Ashley Ford.
In a different article by Southern Living, they tested the hack a bit further by seeing how it compared to storing avocados on the counter or in the fridge, but without submerging them in water. According to them, storing avocados in water in the fridge made a notable difference in lengthening the time it took to ripen. The avocados on the counter went bad the fastest, the avocado stored dry in the fridge took a little longer, but the ones kept in water in the fridge stayed fresh the longest.
How to make your avocados ripen faster
The hard part about buying multiple avocados is the lack of control over how fast they ripen. Placing them in water in the fridge slows down the ripening process, but there will be times when you might need to speed it up a little, especially if you want to stagger eating them over a period of weeks.
If you’re storing a batch of avocados in the fridge and want to use one within a couple days, you can speed up their ripening by removing it from the fridge and placing it in a paper bag with a piece of fruit. The fruit will produce ethylene gas, which will make your avocados ripen a lot faster.
