Why do so many love avocados? For a delicate creamy creamy pulp rich in healthy fats. Because you can eat avocados for breakfast, lunch and dinner, in side dishes, salads, spreads, drinks and even desserts. Because this fruit does not need to be cooked, but can be consumed raw, even if simply cut into pieces and seasoned with salt and pepper.
Pick your recipe
How to choose the perfect avocado
Avocados on sale are ripe immature so that they can ripen on the way to the consumer without losing freshness. You can buy fruits of various degrees of maturity. Although the skin color, changing from deep green to dark, almost black, can help with the initial visual selection, it is not the most reliable indicator of maturity. You should take the fetus in the palm of your hand and squeeze them lightly, without pressing the fetus with your fingers, so as not to leave dents. If an avocado does not succumb to unobtrusive pressure, then it is still immature. But after 4-5 days at room temperature it will mature. So, if you buy the fruits in reserve - this is your choice.
Avocados, which are already slightly susceptible to pressure, quickly mature in a day or two. In principle, you can use them in salads already like this, but keep in mind that with such fruits it will be difficult to separate the flesh from the bone, but cut into cubes it will keep its shape well.
The ripe fruit lends itself to gentle pressure. Such fruit should be stored in the refrigerator. Its flesh is well separated from the bone and it is easy to knead. Overripe avocados are too soft to the touch, dents easily remain on them. When cut, their flesh will be yellowish, and the bone may even begin to darken. Taste overripe fruits may be slightly rancid.
On the Internet, it is often advised to pry the “button” on the narrow top of the avocado and see if the fruit has ripened or overripe. In unripe fruits, the peduncle does not separate at all, in mature - the skin under it is green, and in overripe - brown. This method has a serious drawback - removing the "button" of the stem, you will provide access to air and the flesh of the fruit will begin to oxidize and darken prematurely. So it’s better to choose the fruits with the “button” and leave it intact.
How to peel an avocado
Peeling an avocado is easy, it’s easy for a ripe fruit to cut the skin with a sharp knife. You can do this very effectively. Put the fruit "on a barrel" on a cutting board, put a towel under it for reliability. Holding the avocado with one hand on top with the other, set the knife at the narrow end, in the middle, and begin to rotate the fruit until you cut it all in half to the bone. A bone, by the way, can simply be removed with a table leg. The same spoon can remove the flesh if you are going to grind it.
If you need to cut the flesh into slices or into cubes, it is better to cut the halves again and remove the skin from the quarters, and only then give them the shape you need. The fat-rich avocado pulp quickly oxidizes and darkens to prevent this - sprinkle it with freshly squeezed lemon juice.
If you are not going to use the entire avocado at once, wrap the rest of the wrap tightly with cling film and put in the refrigerator. So it can be stored no longer than two days.
How to eat raw avocados
There are many dishes made from raw avocado pulp. The easiest way is to put avocado slices on bread or crackers, season with salt and pepper and eat immediately. If the fruit pulp is mashed with a fork or a blender, it can be smeared like butter. Such sandwiches will be especially tasty with ham or boiled meat - turkey, chicken or beef, eggs, smoked fish.
Various sauces are made from raw avocados. The most famous of them is guacamole. There are dozens of recipes, but the raw ingredients are raw red onion, garlic, and freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice.
Avocados are a popular ingredient in many salads. Its pulp goes well with leafy vegetables, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, sweet peppers, meat, seafood, especially shrimp and crab. Less often, avocados are put in fruit salads, but in vain - he can decorate this dish too.
A new way is avocado - put its pulp in various smoothies. And do not forget that this particular fruit is most often added to sushi.