This Easy Meal Prep Tip Keeps Avocados Ripe for Way Longer

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, where we worked in strange communal spaces called offices and learned in structures called schools and not internet browsers, breakfast was a harried, haphazard afair. A vegan protein bar, perhaps. A banana and a few spoonfuls of almond butter. A bowl of overnight oats with agave nectar and cinnamon packed into a glass travel container if you were feeling fancy.
Now, amid quarantine life, we’re all about putting some extra effort into breakfast, that is, spending five minutes or more assembling our morning meals, instead of a fleeting moment. If you ask us, a smoothie is the ultimate breakfast—easy-to-make, filling, nutritious, refreshing, and delectable. There’s good reason we at The Beet have an entire Smoothie of the Day program and probably guzzle them down, oh, five times a week for the most important daily meal.

And what’s our secret ingredient in almost all of our tasty, fruity shakes? Avocados. When eating plant-based, slipping a quarter of an avocado or so into the blender helps thicken up your smoothie and also lends it a richer, velvety texture. But timing your avocado’s ripeness is no easy feat. And when you buy several at a time, you may worry that they’ll spoil before you have a chance to use them all (or throw caution to the wind and wind up with a vat of guacamole, thus leaving your morning smoothie deprived of its favorite green fruit).

No more! Thanks to this genius tip that we picked up from the lifestyle website at Simple Most, we now know that freezing your avocados is a genius way to extend their shelf-life and ensure you have handy, pre-portioned avocado ready come blender time.

“While I typically only buy avocados when they’re on sale, I’ve been using them in my smoothies for years by simply cutting them into chunks, spreading them on parchment paper, letting them freeze and then putting them in a Ziploc bag or freezer container,” writes the article’s author Kaitlin Gates. She also notes that you can simply peel the avocado, cut it in half and toss the pit if bigger pieces are more convenient for your needs. Frozen avocados have a shelf life of four to six months, so don't sweat using them right away. 
However you slice it, it’s safe to say our smoothie routine just got a serious upgrade and our avocado obsession has reached new heights—and record low temperature.