Buying, Choosing & Cutting Avocado

Before this year avocado is a foreign fruit to me. I have read & heard a great deal of goodness about this fruit (lower our LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol & increase our HDL ‘good’ cholesterol levels) but I never came close to buying & eating it. One reason is because we don’t grow avocado in Malaysia. They’re imported and hence quite pricey. At RM5.99 per piece, I prefer to eat local homegrown fruits.

With the many on-going competition amongst hypermarkets in Malaysia, the price war has thankfully reduce the prices of many daily food staples. We can get avocado at RM1.99 and sometimes even RM0.99 per piece!!! And thanks to my mom’s interest in this pear-shaped fruits, I too started to experiment with avocado.

Before sharing several of my favorite avocado recipes in the next few posts, let me first show you how to choose & cut an avocado.

Buying & Choosing Avocado:
We normally get unripe avocados from hypermarkets like Giants & Tesco in dozens (because they’re so cheap!). We get the unripe ones and let the avocados ripen by itself with ample time to eat & wait in between. Sounds good?

To check for ripeness, press avocado lightly with your thumb. If it’s hard the avocado is unripe, soft and the avocado is ripe.

Cutting Avocado:
My first time cutting an avocado resulted in blood & bandage! Hahaha 😀 Sure I can laugh now but it was very painful then. I banished avocado for several weeks!

Important note to virgin avocado cutter: Read how to cut an avocado before attempt one yourself.

Here’s how… (hey I’m a pro now)

Choose a ripe avocado.

With one hand holding the avocado take a sharp knife in the other and cut the avocado into half deep (blocked by avocado seed).

Stand the avocado and continue cutting.

Turn the avocado to the other side and cut the other half as well. Now you can lift the knife.

With both hands, one holding the first half and the other hand on the second half of cut avocado…

Twist ’em like you would opening a jar or a bottle.

Wah la you get your beautifully cut avocado.

There are 2 ways to remove the seed. One is very gruesome that involve axing the seed with the knife. I choose the later which is less dramatic and much more safer. Use a spoon milady and scoop the seed out.

Use the same spoon and scoop the avocado flesh. You can then dice or smash the avocado depending what the recipes calls for.

Have fun with your first trial!