Everything You Need to Know about Storing Avocados

Are you tired of throwing out rotten avocados? I'm spilling my secrets for storing avocados so they keep longer without spoiling.

overhead photo of a perfect, cut avocado next to a produce bowl that's storing avocados, potatoes, and onions

Don't Buy Too Ripe.
Storing Avocados Properly
Storing Unripe Avocados
Storing Avocados to Ripen them More Quickly
Avocado Recipes

Hi, my name is Becky, and I’m addicted to avocados. If we have fewer than three in the house, I feel an overwhelming urge to immediately rush to the store to replenish our stash.

Always keeping a handful of avocados around is great for quick snack and meal-making, but it can also mean a lot of wasted food. Avocados ripen at light speed and seem to go from rock hard to a mushy mess overnight.

Below are the secrets to storing avocados, so I can keep up with my addiction without letting them rot.

Buying a bunch of avocados at once doesn’t have to be like this:

With a little TLC, you can buy lots of avocados at once and actually eat all of them before they rot. I buy up to six at a time, and the tricks below work like a charm to ripen without letting them get rotten.

Don’t Buy Too Ripe

My first secret to buying many avocados at once without losing them to the mush is to buy only unripe or perfectly ripe avocados.

A ripe avocado is still pretty firm, but if you press gently with your fingers, they will make a slight impression. It feels similar to holding a ripe peach or mango.

If the avocado in your hand feels softer than that, you can still eat it, but you want to use it right away. You may also need to cut off some brown parts to get at the goods.

If you have to choose between unripe and slightly-too-soft avocados, always choose unripe.

Storing Avocados Properly

Now that you know how to choose them, let's get to storing avocados so they last.

pulling ripe avocados out of a produce bowl

Storing Unripe Avocados

When they’re hard as rocks, keep them out in a dark corner of the kitchen. I store ours in the same wire bowl as our potatoes, onions and garlic. A wire fruit bowl is perfect for storing unripe avocados, because it lets air circulate all around.

If you’re storing in a solid bowl, you’ll want to turn them once a day, so they don’t get a soft spot.

You’ll need to check on your avocados once a day. I check on ours in the morning while I'm making tea.

Once they reach that perfectly ripe, tender phase, move them to the produce drawer in your fridge. This slows the ripening to a crawl, and you can buy yourself up to a full week by making this move.

avocados stored in a produce drawer in the refrigerator

If the fridge keeps them from rotting, why not just put them there in the first place? There are two reasons that you shouldn't do this:

They will take forever to soften in there
I’ve noticed that refrigerating before they ripen messes with the texture, making it a little bit stringy.

Storing Avocados to Ripen them More Quickly

The only problem with buying underripe avocados is that sometimes you want to eat them before they have time to naturally soften up.

You can speed up the ripening process with a simple trick. Christin at Little Things explains that you can ripen avocados (and other fruits!) just by sticking them into a paper bag with some apples or bananas.

She gives more detail -- including the science behind this trick -- over at her site. She also tests the oven and microwave methods for ripening avocados. Spoiler: those methods medium work, but she doesn't recommend them.

I know: this might sound like a lot of work just for avocados, but really it’s just about forming a habit. Buy them hard, let them ripen on the counter, then stick them in the fridge. Once you get into the swing of checking on the little guys, it becomes second nature.