Freezing avocados is super easy and extraordinarily economical. Have you seen the price for avocados and/or guacamole? It is through the roof!
Although avocados do not lend themselves to off-grid food storage, there is away to preserve them— freeze them. They are considered a super food because they have all the right fats and are loaded with vitamins and minerals.
I recently found avocados on sale for three for a dollar. In my neck of the woods that is a steal! Most of the time I have to pay a dollar or more for just one. So of course when they go on sale I stock up!
Here is how I preserve them:
When I buy a lot of avocados to freeze I buy the greenest ones I can find. I want to make sure they are all ripe at the same time and this gives me a day or two to work peeling them and freezing them into my schedule.
When I bring them home from the grocery store I put them straight into a brown bag. I just check them daily to see how ripe they are.
I take them out of the bag when they are a dark olive green like in the picture above.
To make sure avocados are ripe you can take out the stem. If the hole where the stem was is green and the stem is not mushy or mildewed then the avocado is ripe.
Wash your avocados. Even though you will not use the skin, when you cut through the skin with a knife germs and bacteria can transfer onto the knife which can go through to the meat of the fruit and contaminate it.
Cut down to the seed and then turn the avocado in a circular motion until you have made your way around the entire fruit.
Then pull the halves apart.
You can remove the seeds at this point if you like or halve all the avocado pears first.
To remove the seeds simply insert your knife into the seed as if you were going to cut the seed in half. The seed is hard so you won’t be able to cut very far but your knife will be firmly implanted into the seed. Then just make a circular motion with your knife and the seed pops out. You may have to pull the seed away from your knife like you would if you have cut into a tennis ball.
To remove the skin place both thumbs under the skin and the meat should slide away from the skin.
Mash the avocados with a potato masher.
Keep mashing until you get the consistency of guacamole.
Add some lemon juice. I added the juice of 1 and 1/2 lemons. How much juice you add will depend on how many avocados you have. Add about 1/4 teaspoon per avocado.
I like to add garlic salt to my avocados. I often just pull some avocado/guacamole out of the freezer and spread it on a sandwich without adding anything else. I added about 2 tablespoons to this bowl. When adding garlic salt add a little then taste it. Stop adding garlic salt when you get the mixture to your or your family’s desired taste.
I like to use little snack bags for freezing my guacamole. You can use glass or other plastic if you prefer. You can thaw the guacamole in the refrigerator or pop the spread in the microwave for 30 seconds, mix and place back in the microwave for about 20 more seconds. The avocados last up to a year in the freezer. If you use plastic bags do not forget to remove the guacamole spread from the plastic bag before placing in microwave. Due to the oil content in the avocados, they just slide right out of the plastic bag.
There might be a slight amount of oxidation (the avocados turning brown) on the surface, however, once you mix it up you can not tell it was ever in the freezer and it does not appear oxidized at all.
Next time avocados are on sale stock up. The first time I did this it felt like I had stolen the guacamole since I was able to save so much money!! You might feel like you got away with something too if you take advantage of sales and store guacamole in the freezer. You might consider your little green bags worth their weight in gold!