How To: Cut an Avocado

Since the first days of Clearly Delicious, I planned to offer helpful tips, tricks, and techniques (the Three T’s) to readers looking to advance their skills in the kitchen.  These posts could be as simple as how to knead bread to as complicated or subjective as how to build the “perfect” cheese plate (note: such a thing certainly doesn’t exist, but we may make stabs at it when pairing wines or tapas suggestions).

Today, I share the first of a larger series of “How To” tips that I know many will find useful: how to cut an avocado.  For those of you who find removing an avocado’s fleshy green meat from its skin a daunting task–often messy, slimy, and no fun–there are some easy guidelines to help make transferring avocado from tree to plate just a little bit easier.

Once there, you can add them to Tortilla Soup, Tacos, Rich Salads, and Perfect Guacamole.

But, first, here’s how, in just 7 steps.

To Cut an Avocado or Mango

Cutting an avocado is really quite simple, so long as you follow my “hedgehog” technique.  Avocado meat has a thick pit that effects the way in which it can be prepared.  Here, you’ll need to remove the seed from the green meat, but do so carefully.

1.) Using a paring knife, slice down the center of a ripe avocado making note of where the tip of the knife meets the seed.

2.) Cut all the way around the avocado, set down knife, and with one half of the avocado in each hand, pull the fruit apart.

3.) A ripe avocado will give easily and the pit should remain stuck to one of its sides.

4.) Lay pit side of avocado face-up, and being very careful to press the tip of your paring knife into the pit, press and twist until the seed comes out.  Again, the riper the avocado, the easier this step will be.

5.) Discard seed and cut like a hedgehog: tracing the outer ridges of where the green meat comes up to the shell, cut all the way around.  Then, cut several vertical strips from the tip of the avocado to its bottom.

6.) Repeat this step with like horizontal incisions.

7.) Lay down knife and pinching the dark green shell in both hands, flex the skin backwards until the squared meat pops up like a hedgehog; or, using a spoon, scoop out chunked avocado meat.  From here, you can scoop the fruit from the skin or simply pull it off.

–Helana Brigman

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