The Best Way To Ripen an Avocado Quickly, According to an Avocado Farmer

More than once, I’ve wanted to serve up a delicious bowl of guacamole only to reach for an avocado in my fruit bowl and find it rock hard. Typically, a hard avocado takes around a week to ripen, but I don’t always have that kind of time or patience, which made me wonder how to speed up the ripening process. 

Whether you need ripe avocados to spread on toast, chop up for a salad or a grain bowl, or mash up into a heaping bowl of guacamole, there is an easy trick that will shorten the ripening time. It involves two items you probably already have: bananas and a brown paper bag. 

How Do Bananas Speed up Ripening?

“Bananas emit ethylene gas, which is the gaseous plant hormone in fruit that induces ripening,” explains Rachael Laenen, sixth-generation farmer and Director of Farming and Operations at Kimball Avocados. 

“Putting an avocado close to a banana gives the avocado more of the natural ripening agent, making it ripen more quickly.” That said, don’t expect to be able to eat your avocado the same day you place it next to a bunch of bananas. This technique shortens the ripening time by a couple of days but won’t magically make an avocado ripen in a couple of hours, Laenen says. 

You may have heard that placing avocados in a brown paper bag will help them ripen faster. Laenen confirms this method works, but placing avocados and bananas in the paper bag together is a better option. “Putting the fruit together in a paper bag keeps the [ethylene] gas contained and concentrated around the avocados,” she says. 

The ambient temperature is also slightly higher inside the bag, which further helps with ripening. When it comes to timing, this method can shorten the ripening time by 36 hours or so, Laenen says.

It Also Depends on the Season 

Seasonality also influences how quickly avocados ripen. At the beginning of the season (spring, for California-grown avocados), avocados take longer to ripen once they have been picked. “Early in the year, our fruit can take 10 days to two weeks to ripen,” she says, “But towards the end of the season the fruit can ripen in as few as five days off the tree,” Laenen explains. 

Avocados won’t ripen while they are still on the tree. “The fruit will mature on the tree but will not start to ripen until it is picked,” she says. This trait makes it easy for farmers to ship unripe avocados across the globe since they are less likely to be damaged and blemished than ripe ones. While a firm avocado is great for shipping, it’s not so great for eating, which is where the banana and the paper bag come in.

If you do decide to use the banana trick, you might wonder if that smelly, ripe banana will affect the avocado’s flavor. Don’t worry! Your morning avocado toast won’t taste suspiciously like banana bread.