Some of the ways you can ripen an avocado faster are storing it at room temperature, placing it next to a banana, or putting it in a brown paper bag.

Avocados do not ripen on the tree — only after being harvested. Some research shows that avocados can hang on the tree for more than 12 months without ripening.

They are a type of climacteric fruit, which means that they produce a burst of ethylene and increase respiration when it’s time to ripen. Ethylene is the main hormone responsible for their ripening process.

The characteristic buttery texture and flavor of avocados form during ripening.

Avocado producers often cover avocados in wax to reduce water loss, store them in cold temperatures, or treat them with the ethylene-blocking chemical 1-methyl cyclopropane (1-MCP) to slow their ripening when shipping them worldwide.

The effects of 1-MCP last about 20 days. After this time, ethylene production increases again, and the fruit ripens.

Since avocados produce ethylene gas, surrounding the fruit with ethylene-rich air may further increase its ethylene production and speed up the ripening process.

That means that storing avocado in an enclosed but breathable material, like a brown paper bag or newspaper, traps ethylene and helps the avocado ripen faster. It may take up to 3–4 days to ripen fully with this method.

You may not get the same effect from plastic bags, which are not porous like paper, unless the bag is left partially open so the avocado can ‘breathe.’

Cold storage, like the refrigerator, slows avocado ripening.

However, research has found that storing avocado at room temperature reduces the ripening time compared to lower temperatures. This is because avocados produce more ethylene at higher temperatures.

The pantry can be a suitable location for storing an avocado to ripen. You can also leave it on a countertop or another room temperature location in your kitchen.

Like avocado, bananas are a climacteric fruit that produce large amounts of ethylene.

Ethylene-rich air speeds ripening by encouraging nearby fruit to produce more ethylene on their own. Thus, storing avocado next to bananas ripens it faster.

It may take 1–2 days to ripen fully in a warm area. Be sure to check on the avocado daily to avoid overripe fruit.

Using the banana

If you store your avocado next to a banana, you can use the banana in another recipe, such as the following:

If you’ve cut an underripe avocado, fuse the cut pieces back together and store them in cling wrap in the refrigerator.

Research shows that coating avocado in a low-density polyethylene wax is the best way to reduce moisture loss, but using cling wrap may achieve the same effect.

Additionally, cut avocado continues to produce ethylene. This means it will ripen, albeit slower due to cold storage.

Although heat-shocking half-ripe avocados before leaving them in controlled storage may work in industrial processing to sync the ripening times of batches of avocados, the same may not work at home.

There isn’t a scientific backing that heating avocado instantly ripens it. Thus, heating an underripe avocado in the microwave or oven may soften it but not truly ripen it.

While this can be convenient if you need to use an avocado immediately, the full buttery texture of a ripe avocado is not optimized. Further, less of its healthy fats are available because it is underripe.

Avocado is a climacteric fruit that produces the gaseous hormone ethylene when it’s time to ripen.

You can speed the ripening process of avocado by wrapping it in a brown paper bag or newspaper, storing it in a warm place like the pantry, or storing it next to bananas.

However, heating underripe avocado in the microwave or oven only softens it instead of truly ripening it.