Leave This Unpredictable Fruit Off Your Home Grocery Delivery

You've planned ahead, ordered your groceries, picked a recipe, and are set to start prepping for dinner. You get into the thick of it and are ready to cube your avocados when you get a sinking feeling. The avocados are as hard as rocks and feel more like plastic fruit than anything edible. Choosing avocados is a task for a discerning shopper and knowing exactly when you plan to use them helps inform that decision, so clicking to add a few to your online order is not always going to pan out well.

To avoid an online grocery meltdown, it is best to choose pre-packaged and prepped avocado cubes or buy yourself some leeway with a back-up of store-bought guacamole to use in a pinch. You can maximize your online shopping endeavors by making sure to keep perishables in mind, scrutinizing sizes and double-checking your order, but what to do if you've been caught out by unripe avocados in your recent delivery? If you check your produce upon arrival, you can speed up the ripening process by placing avocados in a sealed brown paper bag overnight (or even several hours) with either an apple or banana. If the grocery bags are barely in the door and it is already time to make your avocado-forward meal, you might have to rely on the already prepped version you smartly added to your cart.

If your heart is set on guacamole, but you are faced with an unripe star ingredient, consider guacachile. Guaca what? This verdant chile-forward dip hits all of the same flavor notes of guacamole, the tart lime, punchy jalapeños, savory onions and of course the right level of salt, without the avocados. This thinner dip makes a solid stand-in and you will still have ripe avocados ready to go in another day or two for your avocado toast.

If you are more in the "guacamole or go home" feels, then perhaps one of those avocados is passably ready to eat and you can bulk up your recipe with the addition of on-hand summer vegetables like corn or tomatoes. You can also try another ingredient swap for better guacamole: adding 1 tablespoon of room temperature butter to the dip. The fat in the butter will mingle with all of the ingredients, giving an overall richer mouthfeel and result. Or, shift gears a bit and add a humble can of rinsed black beans for a cowboy caviar situation. Who knows, you might land on your own new favorite recipe (and save yourself some money in the process) by using avocados more sparingly in your guacamole moving forward.