We’ve adopted Pavola, Lamingtons, Lorde and Russel Crowe, and it looks like soon another winner from across the ditch we will claim as our own. Wait for it, avocado stickers to tell you when they are ripe, perfect for eating. Bernard Salt will be frothing over these!
Thinking outside the square
A brilliant New Zealand company has developed stickers for avocados that tell you when they’re ripe for the eating. No more bruised squeezed brown mush.
The perfect avocado
Developed by Freshmax their stickers, with clearly marked colour codes to tell you if the avo is ‘not ripe’, ‘firm-ripe’ or ‘soft ripe’.
Unfortunately, they’re not available in Australia – yet – but Freshmax Senior Marketing Strategist Matthew Crouch confirmed they aren’t too far off.
“We’re exploring plans to roll them out across Australia and in other categories,” he told us. And by ‘other categories’ he means other types of produce, just in case you can’t tell your bananas from your brown mush.
Meanwhile, shout-out to this Redditor who today has made the world brighter with his/her avocado expertise.
“My time to shine: I live on an avocado farm. This colour chart only works for certain cultivars of avocado, notably Hass, which is why it’s popular with supermarkets. It is, however, not the tastiest avo, not by a long shot.
For me, that would be Fuerte. Rich, nutty, and smooth, it is utterly delicious and picks early in the season. But it stubbornly doesn’t really change its colour. The best thing to do with this avo is wrapping it in a newspaper with an overripe banana and leave it on your windowsill in the sun. Should ripen in a day or two.
General tip
When buying avos, always check the tip around the stem. If the avocado was legitimately harvested, the stalk will be trimmed down flush with the avo skin. If the avo was nicked, the stalk will be completely removed, leaving an indentation in the avo. You don’t want to buy these for two reasons.
First, because obviously you don’t want to support a supply chain that includes stolen produce. But second, there’s a reason we trim that shit down rather thank just yank it off the tree the way a thief would.
When you yank the avo off the tree, you pull the stalk right out, creating the indent. What happens is, that spot begins to ripen wayyyyyyy earlier than the rest of the avo, because the skin has effectively been broken at that point. Which means that at the point where the avo feels rip in your hand, it’s already rotten at the top.
Legitimately harvested avos are clipped at the stalk, then trimmed down, precisely because we want the avo to ripen evenly. We don’t want our consumers to have shitty rotten fruit, we want a nice even squish across the whole thing.”
