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Sometimes you want to buy an avocado, but all they have are hard on touch and you know they are not ready yet; they are rubbery and untasty.

One can buy them and wait couple days, they ripen sooner or later (hopefully before they get spoiled).

Are there any tricks and tips on how to speed up the ripening? Like special storage, some treatment to the avocado etc.

Cascabel
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yo'
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  • (I tried to go through the questions that speak about ripening or browning avocados, but they all seem to be about different problems. I hope I didn't miss anything; if so, please let me know.) – yo' Feb 12 '16 at 18:22
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    To me, http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/89/what-can-i-do-to-help-my-avocados-ripen?rq=1 looks like a duplicate. Could you please edit to make it clear what is the difference in your case? – rumtscho Feb 12 '16 at 19:04
  • @rumtscho You seem right (and I seem dumb), thanks. Should I delete this one? – yo' Feb 12 '16 at 19:35
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    You're not dumb! Questions can be hard to sift through, and duplicates are not always obvious. I hope you got what you needed from the other questions. – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL Feb 12 '16 at 19:44

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In general, but mostly in my experience, it's a bit like treating a cold, or a flue: It you don't do anything, it will take 7 days, but with medicine it might only take a week.

In general, there are no natural fast-forward methods for fruits to ripen, at least not to the level that makes it interesting: If the actual specimen of the fruit is willing to cooperate, you might get from X days to X - 1 days, maybe X - 2 in very happy circumstances.

You may be able to force the fruit (or vegetable, whatever) to get to the stage where it fits your needs for processing (heat tends to work nice in general for instance, that's why we cook and fry stuff ), but it won't be the same as ripening that fruit. It's not like the fruit realizes what's going on, and starts to make up for lost time.

Willem van Rumpt
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  • I don't know about avocados specifically, but often you can actually speed up fruit ripening. See for example http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/21716/1672 and http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/109/1672 (for bananas but it affects some other fruit too). – Cascabel Feb 12 '16 at 19:01
  • Yes, lots of fruit can be sped up, and even made to rot much sooner than they would if left out and alone. – Escoce Feb 12 '16 at 19:27
  • And by how much did it speed the process up? How ripe were they to begin with? Did they get the 6-days-before-ripe banana to ripen in 2 or 3 days, or in 4-6 days? In other words: Was it the fruit, or "The Process"? – Willem van Rumpt Feb 12 '16 at 19:31
  • Saw a kids show once where they gassed green bananas from the same (unripe) state with different amounts of ethylene - significant difference. – Stephie Feb 12 '16 at 19:40
  • Because we all have an ethylene dispenser in our kitchen... – Willem van Rumpt Feb 12 '16 at 19:41
  • A bag of apples will do ^_^ – Stephie Feb 12 '16 at 20:04
  • Hehehe :) It's not that I'm not believing the science, it's that I distrust the impact it has in the limited time in which it has to make a difference. From the duplicate referred to by rumtscho: "To ripen a California Avocado, place the fruit in a plain brown paper bag and store at room temperature 65-75° until ready to eat (usually two to five days)". Nice. So it takes 2 to 5 days. How do you determine by how much the *apple or banana in the bag actually shortened the ripening process*? It's 2 to 5 days, *any moment within that timeframe is completely natural*. Like a cold, or a flue. – Willem van Rumpt Feb 12 '16 at 20:16
  • Perhaps I will ask a separate question about it, it still seems unlikely to me. – Willem van Rumpt Feb 12 '16 at 20:22
  • An experiment may be in order! :) – Jolenealaska Feb 12 '16 at 23:11
  • @Jolenealaska would a bunch of green bananas count or are avocados mandatory? – Stephie Feb 13 '16 at 12:40