This Tip Will Ripen Your Avocados Faster for On-Demand Guac Tonight!

We’re no fortune tellers, but if you’re plant-based or vegan-curious we’re guessing we can predict at least one food fact about you: You love avocados. You love the six reasons you should eat an avocado a day for health and weight loss. You love easy homemade guacamole with chips and fancy avocado toast with pickled onions, pumpkin seeds, and a riff on that spectacular plant-based ricotta your go-to breakfast spot used to make you thrice a week. (You also love and miss your go-to breakfast spot, sigh.)

One thing you don’t love so much? Having to deal with a rock-hard avocado when your guac hankering calls or your sad piece of toast lands on your plate, ready for its favorite mate. That explains why we were thrilled to see this easy tip from Women’s Health on how to ripen avocados so they’re always ready to roll when you need one. “Collect your apples, tomatoes, melons, and ripe bananas and put them in the produce drawer of your fridge. Snuggle your avocado into the middle of the group and let them all sit in there for a day or two,” writes the article’s author Madeline Howard. “Then, when you finally need it, open up your fridge and you'll have...the world’s most perfect avocado!”

The reason this works is thanks to a naturally occurring gas that bananas, melons, apples, and the like produce, which accelerates the ripening of food in its proximity. Since avocados are so-called ethylene sensitive foods and fruits and veggies like the aforementioned are ethylene producers, storing them near each other helps quicken ripening. Worth noting: If you want to avoid food waste, make sure you also aren’t storing fruits or veggies that are ethylene sensitive nearby, except for this explicit purpose.

In lieu of storing your avocados in the fridge, you can also put them in a paper bag with a banana or apple (according to the California Avocado Board you should avoid using newer varieties like Gala or Fiji that have been bred to ripen slowly and produce less ethylene) to help them ripen more quickly.

Of course, you’ll still have to utilize this technique a day or two in advance of when you plan on using your avocado, but considering the answer to when you want an avocado is “always,” we’re pretty sure it can’t hurt to always have a backstage avocado ready to report for business.