How To: Freeze Avocado

I love, love, love avocado and guacamole.  But most of my kids haven’t quite come to appreciate this green miracle yet.  So I’m always stuck with too much and it always goes bad too quickly.

Enter:  Pinterest.

How many times has Pinterest come to the rescue?

Well, at least this once.

I found instructions on how to freeze avocado and I knew I had to try it.  Worked like a charm.  If you are a chunky guac fan, you may be disappointed in the puree texture; but it’s still a great way to preserve this luscious goody and I’ll suffer through using it to make smooth guac if it means no more throwing away avocado halves and leftover guac!

Ingredients/Supplies:
ripe avocado
fresh lime juice (1 Tbsp. per avocado)
blender
zip top sandwich bags
wide, short glass
chopstick or pencils
cookie sheet

1.  Scoop avocado flesh into the blender.  To do this, I cut the avocado in half length-wise, around the pit.  Then I twist the two halves in opposite directions to separate them.  I cradle the pit half in my left hand and with my right hand I CAREFULLY chop down once into the pit to “grab it”…I use a small knife in case my insane klutziness gene decides to take over and dismember me.  With the knife embedded in the pit, I give it a slight twist and out pops the pit.  Usually.  Then I just scoop the flesh out with a spoon.

2.  Add the freshly-squeezed lime juice.  Puree until smooth.  Drool.  But not into the blender.  That’s gross.

3.  Take the wide but short glass and place the zip top bag into it, then fold the zippy edges of said bag out over the edge of the glass.  Spoon some of the puree into the bag (just eyeball it being half to three quarters full).  Fold the edges back up, carefully squeeze out as much air as you can, and seal the bag.

4.  Lay the bag flat on a cookie sheet, opening the bag a tad if you see anymore air trapped inside.  Using the chopsticks or pencils, make a tic tac toe board on the bag….two sets of parallel lines.  Is that too math-y?  Okay, just do like this:

5.  Place in freezer until totally firm.  Then you can take it out and store it vertically so it takes up less space.  (Incidentally, this is a great way to freeze and store soups, sauces, etc…..flat first, then vertically like files.  Not that I actually get around to doing that.  But I’ve thought of doing that.  And I think I should get credit for that.)

When ready to use, take out a bag and snap off as many squares as you think you’ll need (I used the edge of the counter as a fulcrum.  HA!  Fulcrum…that’s all science-y.  Did I just blind you with science?).  I ended up sacrificing the original bag this way, but that’s okay.  I just put the remaining squares into a new bag and placed them back in the freezer.

Source:  Traveling Spoon Blog via Pinterest