If you Google “freezing avocados,” you find a lot of results claiming that you can easily freeze whole avocado halves, slices, or chunks, with great results.
However, food experts and testers disagree and claim that freezing does not preserve avocados. So what’s the truth?
Can You Freeze Avocados?
You can freeze avocado puree, and use the thawed avocado puree in dressings, soups, and smoothies. But avocado slices, chunks, halves, or whole avocados become mushy and slimy after freezing, and can’t be used like fresh avocado.
Why Can’t You Freeze Avocado?
Well, of course, you CAN freeze avocado – you can freeze anything.
But freezing destroys the smooth creamy texture of avocados, which is usually the quality people want to preserve.
Like many fruits, avocados are high in water. Unlike many fruits, avocados have a very soft, tender, creamy flesh. In the freezer, the water in the fruit forms ice crystals.
The sharp edges of the ice crystals make microscopic tears and slices in the flesh of the avocado.
When the avocado thaws, the crystals turn back into the water, leaving the flesh of the avocado mushy and a little slimy.
Freezing avocado destroys the flesh of the fruit, so it can’t be used like fresh avocado.
In fact, even the packages of frozen avocado you can sometimes find in the grocery store get pretty bad reviews from consumers. Professional food scientists haven’t yet figured out how to freeze an avocado.
Related Content: Can you freeze Asparagus? Best ways to keep it fresh, green and crispy!
How to Preserve Avocados
If you have leftover avocado, you CAN still freeze it for later use – you just need to puree it first.
Put leftover avocado in a blender with a ½ tsp of lemon juice per avocado.
Blend it into a smooth puree. Then put the puree into an air-tight container.
The avocado puree will last in the fridge for 4-5 days, and in the freezer for 4-5 months.
The lemon juice should prevent browning, but avocado is still safe to eat with some slight browning.
Avocado puree can be used for baby food, salad dressings, smoothies, and sauces, and freezing is a great way to store avocado puree for later use.
**Having second thoughts about apples? Read the full guide about freezing apples here!!!**
Related Questions
How long can you keep avocado in the freezer?
You can keep avocado in the freezer for up to 6 months. After thawing, it can be pureed and used in dips and sauces.
Is frozen avocado as good as fresh?
No, frozen avocado isn’t as good as fresh.
While using lemon juice can prevent browning, the act of freezing destroys the texture of an avocado, making it mushy and unpleasant.
If you want a smooth avocado puree, without any avocado texture, then frozen is as good as fresh.
What happens when you freeze a whole avocado?
When you freeze a whole avocado, ice crystals form within the fruit that causes microscopic tears and damage to the flesh of the avocado.
While freezing can preserve the taste of avocado for several months, the texture of a frozen avocado becomes mushy and unpleasant.
Do frozen avocados turn brown?
Freezing doesn’t make avocados turn brown. Oxygen makes them turn brown.
So if they are exposed to the air while you are slicing them, or while they are sitting in a container before they freeze, or sitting in a container while they thaw, oxygen exposure turns them brown.
You can prevent browning with lemon juice, by tossing avocado slices in ½ tsp of lemon juice per avocado.
The citric acid in lemon juice keeps avocado from turning brown, whether you freeze them or not.
How do you keep avocados from going bad?
You can keep avocados from turning brown by tossing them in a little bit of lemon juice.
You can then keep avocados from going bad by quickly putting them in an air-tight container and refrigerating them, where they will last for 1-3 days.
Brown avocado, while not very appealing looking, isn’t actually spoiled, and is still safe to eat.
Over several hours of air exposure, the same phenomenon that turns avocados brown will also make them taste bitter, but they are still not harmful to eat.
If avocado flesh has become not just brown, but also either hard or slimy, or grayish in color, or if the avocado has an unpleasant smell, it should not be eaten.
Avocado lovers have always struggled with the fact that the fruit is perfectly ripe and beautiful for such a short period of time.
Unfortunately, freezing avocados is not the solution.
