Avocados can be ripened quickly by using ethylene gas, which can be trapped in a paper bag with the fruit. Adding an already ripe fruit or multiple avocados to the bag can speed up the process, but refrigeration should be avoided. The oven light can provide gentle heat to aid in ripening.
There are several methods you can use to ripen an avocado, depending on how quickly you need the fruit to be ready to eat. Because avocados don’t ripen on their own trees, the selections available in grocery stores are often still hard, green, and several days away from being quite ripe. Of course all avocados will eventually ripen over time, but if you need to ripen an avocado quickly, the process can be sped up by manipulating the fruit’s natural ripening signals using ethylene gas.
If you bring home an avocado from the store and it’s very tough, you can simply leave it out on a table or counter until the flesh is soft and ripe. This could take several days, so if you’re planning to serve a recipe that calls for avocados that are ripe on a particular date, it might be wise to plan ahead and buy the fruit early to allow for ample ripening time. The refrigerator is not a good place to ripen an avocado because low temperatures slow down the ripening process.
The quicker ripening of an avocado will also require some waiting time, but not as much as leaving it to its own devices outdoors. When fruit ripens, it releases ethylene gas in what is sometimes called a ripening signal: The ethylene gas stimulates the ripening processes to begin. An avocado sitting on a counter by itself will release ethylene gas, but it will be diffused by the surrounding air; the maturation process will take place, but not particularly quickly. Using a paper bag is a quicker way to ripen an avocado because the ethylene gas is trapped inside and speeds up the natural ripening processes.
Wrapping an avocado is a good way to manipulate the ripening to happen faster, but the process can be taken even further with a few simple tweaks. If you’re trying to ripen more than one avocado, put them all in the same bag. Logically, the more avocados in the bag, the more ethylene is released and the avocados are likely to ripen faster. Similarly, you can also ripen an avocado by placing an already ripe fruit such as an apple or tomato in the bag along with the avocado to increase the amount of ethylene and thus speed up the ripening. It is commonly believed that bananas are the best fruit to use to help other fruits ripen because they produce higher amounts of ethylene gas.
Paper bag packages like these can be left out at room temperature or may even benefit from being placed in the oven as long as the heat is completely turned off and the interior light is on. Don’t turn on the oven as not only could the bag catch fire, but it still won’t help the avocado ripen. The oven light alone will provide a very gentle amount of heat that can help speed ripening.
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