Because of the shape of the pear, avocado fruit is also known by the name of alligator pear and has a history of being ancient enough to be five thousand years old. This berry is divided into four different parts which are the stem, skin, pit, and flesh.
Along with being extremely healthy and full of nutrients, Avocados are also notorious for being difficult to cut and slice. If you've struggling with getting the most out of an avocado, this guide is the perfect place to be.
Tools To Cut and Slice Avocado
Avocados are soft textured fruits that need careful hands to do the handling. Therefore for the careful and proper cutting and slicing of this berry, here are some of the kitchen tools that will be required for the use:
Sharp Knife: A sharp knife is one of the most easy to handle kitchen tools that assists in cutting the avocado through the skin. It is mostly used to cut the avocados into halves, but if skillful, it can also be used in place of a dull knife.
Dull Knife: The soft texture of the avocado flesh cannot take much force therefore a dull knife or a blunt knife is a perfect tool to do the carvings and cuts without risking the possibility of cutting hands.
Chopping Board: Avocado will be placed over the chopping board for a clean cut of the berry without blunting the knife's sharpness.
Spoon: As a scooping tool, the spoon is used in multiple ways for the avocado. It can take the pit off the flesh by putting a little pressure to take it out. But except for pit, these spoons are also capable of scooping the avocados to peel as well as to make them mushy to make guacamole.
Plate: After the cutting of the avocado is done, it will be placed on the plate to serve as it is or to incorporate in other recipes.
Peeler: Avocado can also be marinated for which it needs thin paper slices of avocado. To make the slices paper thin, a peeler is the best tool. It can give even thin slices of the avocado to use for the marination
Kitchen Towel: For some cuts, the avocado is cut by carrying in one hand and knife in another. Therefore the kitchen towel is used as a barrier to prevent cuts on the hands.
How To Peel An Avocado
Before cutting, it is important to peel the avocado so that you can get all the flesh out of this delicious fruit. The following provide a guide on how to peel avocados:
1. Cut And Separate
Take an avocado and put it over the chopping board. Press the avocado a little from the top with one hand to keep it still and prevent it from moving. Take a knife in another hand and make an even vertical cut around the avocado seed.
The cut will divide the avocado into two halves which will still be attached by the pit. Rotate the avocado towards opposite directions by twisting both halves, this will loosen the pit from one of the halves and then both halves can be separated by gentle hands.
2. Remove The Pit
Among the separated two halves, one of the halves will still have the pit of the avocado attached to the flesh. To take the pit out with a knife, hit the pit from the sharp edge of the knife with light hands.
The knife will stick to the seed, if twisted a little with a slight force, the pit will detach from the flesh and then can be removed effortlessly. However, the pit can also be removed by scooping it out using a spoon, These methods will remove the pit, keeping the avocado flesh intact without making a mess of it.
Take the halves of the avocado one by one and cut each one of those halves again into their half. This will quarter the avocado making four wedges from two halves.
Once the avocado gets cut into quarters and gets the wedge shape, take the skin from the thinnest point of the avocado wedge and pull it off slowly from the avocado surface. Once the skin comes off balding the outer surface of the flesh, the peeling is done.
Scoop the avocado flesh to peel the skin off the avocado easily. Because the spoon is small and the hands are in full control, the avocado can be scooped little by little in smaller size cleaning the whole avocado off from the skin.
However, if not for small ones, the whole half of the avocado can also be scooped cleanly off from the avocado skin together, at once as well.
Among so many kinds of techniques of cutting and slicing, avocados cut in all these slices can be used for different purposes. Here are some of the popular cutting techniques of avocados:
Slicing an avocado is a technique in which the avocado is cut in thin stripes horizontally that goes from one side to another. The strips can be made thicker if preferred but the cuts must be evenly done in each stripe.
After halving, coring, and peeling the skin off of the avocado, put the avocado on the upside down to face the chopping board. Position the knife against the surface of the berry and cut the avocado into thin but evenly sliced pieces.
Once the avocado is cut as desired, season it with some salt pepper and some garlic-tempered olive oil. Serve it on a plate or add it over toast or bread for a quick meal at any time of the day with a little lemon juice spread over the slices.
The steps of cutting into half and removing the pit are unskippable so those are must to do. After which the Peeling and cutting process is a little different because this time, peeling the skin will have to wait to be done later after the flesh is cut.
To make the cubes, take a kitchen towel in one hand and put the unpeeled, half-cut avocado over the kitchen towel. Carry a dull knife in another hand and start carving thick sections of stripes vertically from top to bottom. Once done, carve the avocado horizontally, from one side to another as well. After done the insides will look like a cross-hatch.
Push the outer curve of the skin towards the insides after which cubes can be seen. Scrape the avocado cleanly with a sharp knife keeping a bowl below hands and the cubes will detach from the skin while scraping and will be collected inside the bowl.
The wing cut technique is a cut that requires certain skill in possession. These types of cuts look easy to do but that is not true. These cuts are usually seen in decorative platters.
To make this cut, halve the avocados, remove the pit, and then peel the skin off of both halves. Put half on the chopping board and cut into not-too-thin or thick stripes lengthwise. Do not cut the stripes all the way to the bottom. Leave less than a quarter of the length uncut to keep the avocado stripes attached to each other.
Keep the cut avocado on a plate and press it lightly from the top in a sliding motion to loosen the stripes. As the avocado opens up on the plate spreading like wings, thus the name of the cut.
To make a spiral rose cut, the half avocado must be kept facing the chopping board. Then use a sharp knife to cut the avocado into very thin slices. The thing to remember during the slicing is that the cut starts from the verticle bottom and each slice slowly makes its way to reach the top.
The length cut will make the spiral look better. After the avocado is cut, spread the slices to make a long line.
As the line is made, start folding from one end to the other. While folding keep the flat edges on the surface of the chopping board to keep the balance of the rose. Then twirl the avocado slices along the edges by folding them to form a spiral rose shape.
Peeling the avocado is a cut that requires creativity. Although seems to be easy to make, this type of cut is quite difficult to handle. The pressure and the speed of peeling should remain constant throughout the preparation process.
Cut the avocado in half, take the pit off, and remove the outer skin without making dents or smoothing the bald surface of the avocado. Take a peeler with sharp blades and run it over the avocado surface to get long and thin peels like paper. Make multiple such avocado peels.
Put them in a bowl and marinate them with salt, pepper, olive oil, and chili flakes, and coat evenly.
Additional Tips On Cutting Avocados
Here are some of the tips about avocados that can come in use for avocado lovers.
While purchasing avocados, buy them little by little, if bought in bulk they will spoil as they go bad really fast.
Washing avocado may look unnecessary but the germs stuck in the skin of the fruit can transfer to the flesh. Therefore do not skip washing.
In the case of latex-fruit allergies, avoid avocado because the protein found in these both are similar.
Extremely young and the ripening takes longer to ripen. To ripen the avocado fast keep it at room temperature keep the avocado inside a brown paper bag with one banana inside. Banana emits ethylene gas which assists in ripening faster.
A colder temperature environment like a refrigerator slows down the ripening process.
Exposing the flesh of the avocado makes the oxygen combine chemically with the avocado leading to the oxidization.
Before storing, oxidizing must be prevented.
The acidic content of the citrus prevents the fruit flesh from oxidization.
Choosing The Perfect Avocado
Ripened avocados are very tasty and healthy. However, an unripened one can destroy the experience. Here are some of the ways to choose the ideal avocado.
1. Color
Avocados are usually green when unripe and as they start ripening, they change the color of their skin from a lighter shade of green to a darker shade of green. However, if the color of the avocado is darker enough to look greenish-black or black, those are the symptoms of an overly ripened fruit.
If opened up, they will be mushy when trying to peel and cut the avocado.
2. Firmness
The ripened avocados are easier to yield under the pressure applied by the hand which is the opposite in the case of the unripe avocados. When force is applied by the hand to the avocado, it will submit itself.
However, if the avocados yield too much, then it might have already been a mush inside the skin. The ripened avocado will be firm yet easy to yield, unripe ones will not yield for sure and the overripened ones will get soft under the pressure.
3. Texture
Regarding the texture, avocados can be picked by assessing the appearance and texture of their skin. The skin of the avocados that have ripened already will have bumps all over the dark green skin when touched.
However, the unripe ones will have a lighter shade of green-colored skin which will be smooth without any textures or bumps.
The stem test of the avocado works like magic to check the condition of the flesh inside. The color under the stem can be seen to determine the ripeness of the avocado if the stems can be popped off.
But another trick to do with the stem is to flick it, if they come off easily the fruit is ripe. At the same time, if the nub falls off, it can determine the avocado to be overripe with a brown and mushy mess inside.
Make a salad dressing by whisking citrus juice, red wine vinegar, honey, garlic, oil, oregano, and fresh herbs of choice with salt and pepper. Then combine vegetables like cucumber, tomato, onion, and other vegetables of choice that require no cooking. Mix all the vegetables with the dressing made. This salad goes well with tuna, chicken, beans as well as eggs.
Embrace the favorites and embark on a journey of tasty salad. Serve it like that or keep it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to 15 minutes and then serve it chilled. This salad can also be used for potlucks, or gatherings as it can be made before the event and stored in the refrigerator.
This easy recipe is a time saver and can be made within 15 minutes. Boil pasta in salted water and when done save a cup of water and drain the rest. Make a guacamole sauce by mashing the avocado into creamy mush and mixing garlic, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in it. Add the pasta water to manage the consistency of the sauce.
Mix the pasta with the cooking sauce and give a really good mix to coat the pasta with the sauce. Add stirred or boiled vegetables of choice and serve it hot. Tofu is a great pair to add to this vegan dish.
