A friend noted that when you buy California-grown avocados at Costco (Waltham, Massachusetts store) they never ripen, but the Mexican immigrant avocados get soft and ripe after 3-5 days at home.
Readers: Is this consistent with your experience? When will the government investigate this issue?
Cooking tip: fry or bake (10min@300F) an unripe avacodo to get the taste and texture of a ripe one.
Do never refrigerate avocados. For some reason they plasticize when you do that.
Short answer: No.
One of the reasons why avocados are expensive compared to other fruits is that they can remain on the tree for a long time without ripening so they can be picked to order. Other fruit crops ripen at a certain time and they have to be picked when they ripen or else they fall to the ground and rot, so the farmer has no control over the supply – it’s use it or lose it regardless of whether the market price is high or low that week. If avocado prices are low, the avocadoes just stay on the tree until the market comes back up.
You can use chemical intervention and use ethylene which helps fruit ripen… in other words put avocados in a bag with a banana (which produces more of it) for a couple days
@Jackie,
Another reason might be because all of Mexican avocados (which means 8 of 10 sold in US) are controlled by a drug cartel?
I always check the tag at Costco as well. The Mexican ones are the only ones I’ll buy
It’s the same in Switzerland. The avocados from the cold store are much better than the ones from the local supermarkets. That’s because the cold stores care about them more, and know how to ensure they stay good. In the local supermarkets, everyone touches them the wrong way and it makes them go bad. Viva l’avocado!