How to keep an avocado from turning brown? Weusually take toast with half an avocado and if we don’t put it in the fridge it will turn brown.
Even so, it always usually has the typical brown stains that make it ugly and spoils the taste. If you remove the first layer, the rest is more or less fine overnight, but there are ways to prevent it from turning to brown.
Certainly, the dilemma of the other half of the avocado and how to preserve it is a postmodern mystery as disturbing as knowing what is on the far side of the moon, but both questions have a solution.
We will not deal here with the face of the moon that we cannot see, but with the avocado and how to prevent it from browning. To do this, first of all, we must offer a scientific explanation to the browning – browning would be the correct word – of this fruit. How to keep avocado from turning brown or how to keep avocado from browning?
Why does avocado brown?
Once opened, the avocado undergoes browning reactions in the presence of oxygen. Although not as fast as those that can occur in an apple or a pear, for example, eventually break its aesthetics and the texture of its oily meat.
The reason is that despite being a fruit almost 100% made up of vegetable fats. Avocado has a certain amount of phenolic groups – vegetable alcohols – in its cells that are released when the pulp of this fruit is cut.
These phenolic groups have known antioxidant properties that, for example, are one of the great values of avocado but also of wine.
In other words, they are compounds that tend to react quickly with oxygen. Thus preventing it from oxidizing the avocado oils and making them stale, which would give it a bad smell due to the formation of aldehydes. And when we eat them, phenols pass into our blood and also protect our cells from the action of oxygen.
Now, the protection exerted by phenols when oxidizing makes them transform into quinones. Which are other compounds that in turn have bactericidal action, which prevents the avocado from rotting quickly.
For example, thanks to polyphenol oxidase, catechol (phenol) is transformed into 1/2-benzoquinone (quinone). But benzoquinone tends to quickly form polyphenol polymers, which take on the brown color we see in the pulp. For reference, the melanin in our skin is also a polyphenolic polymer. How to prevent avocado from turning brown?
Methods to avoid this browning reaction
Having explained this, we will all agree that the strategies to prevent the avocado from browning must go two ways: either limit the presence of oxygen or inhibit enzymes such as polyphenol oxidase, which is what oxidizes phenols.
The reported methods go in this direction, and we will add another. Slow down the reaction using cold since it requires heat.
In other words, the first basic strategy must always be to put the avocado in the fridge. At room temperature and in the presence of air it will brown immediately.
The second strategy, in progress, will be to put it covered in a container, or in a sealed plastic bag. From which we have removed a good part of the air.
The less air it has, the lower the browning. With these two, surely Alba can keep her half avocado from one day to the next.
Now, if we want it for more days, we must be more active in finding solutions. One of them is to fill the container with water so that it dissolves the polyphenol oxidase and prevents the reaction. Moving on to how to stop avocado from turning brown.
This third method, which allows us to prolong the conservation. It has the disadvantage that it softens the surface of the avocado a bit.
The fourth system is to add lemon to the visible pulp since the ascorbic acid (vitamin C) of the lemon is a more powerful antioxidant than phenols. And it will oxidize sooner, consuming all the oxygen in the container.
The counterpart will be that the avocado will gain acidity and will taste like lemon, although it can be washed.
Finally, the fifth, the one that seems to preserve the avocado better, consists of adding chopped fresh onion to the container. It does not have to be on the pulp.
Triopropanal sulfoxide which is an irritant gas. Well, this gas also inhibits polyphenol oxidase, preventing it from oxidizing catechol. Avocado conservation in these conditions can last several days in perfect conditions.
MetroYak offers open and wide-ranging access to information, news, latest stories, photographs, and videos. You can use MetroYak platform to promote your voice in a highly targeted, personalized way using Promoted Content.
Share your requirements at: hello@metroyak.com
