How To Store Your Giant Bag Of Costco Avocados For Maximum Freshness

Avocado foods have gotten more creative since the days when avocado toast was the trendiest thing to order for brunch. Now there are people using large avocados as cups for elaborate drinks, making avocado ice cream, and turning them into roses. Most people will grab at least an avocado or two throughout the year for guacamole or as a salad topping. But some of us love them so much, we buy them in bulk from Costco and put them in everything from ice cream to smoothies. Whether you bake with them or love half an avocado with a little sea salt for breakfast, there's a universal problem with the giant bag of Costco avocados: they all ripen at the same time.

Once that first avocado ripens it creates a domino effect, sending out wafts of ethylene gas that affects all the other avocados. They join in the ripening process and before you know it, you've got six avocados that are ready to eat today (and will be overripe by tomorrow!). If you store your Costco avocados strategically, though, you can slow down the domino effect and make that bag of avocados last a whole long longer.

Avocados are temperature-sensitive, so you can influence the ripening process by storing avocados in different zones in your kitchen. Start with the least ripe bag of avocados you can find at Costco so you have some ripening time to play with. Then, split up the bag and store them in different places, where they will ripen at different rates and provide you with a string of ripe avocados throughout the week instead of an overabundance.

Store the avocados you want to eat ASAP in a paper bag, and add a ripe apple or other piece of fruit if you want to add some ethylene gas to accelerate the process. Then, put the ones you'll eat in a few days on the counter to ripen at room temperature. Put the rest of your Costco avocados in the crisper drawer in the fridge to slow the ripening process with the goal of producing perfect avocados later in the week. If you still have a few left over, freeze them for later use in guacamole or avocado sauces, soups and more.