How to: Avocado rose
Finished avocado rose on a big ol’ slice of homemade sourdough bread (will save the recipe for another post!)
Avocado rose
Ingredients
Half of a very ripe avocado (check under the stem; if it looks shiny/slimy and green, it’s ready!)
Salt/pepper for seasoning if you want
Something to put the avocado on top of, e.g., a slice of bread or half a sweet potato. Or you could eat the avocado half on its own - delicious!
Equipment
Very sharp chef’s knife
Cutting board
Directions
Verify avocado’s ripeness by peeling back the small stem / cap of the avocado. If the stem comes off easily and you see something shiny/slimy green peeking out from the inside, you’re good to go! It’s very important that the inside is not only green but also shiny. If it’s not, put the avocado inside a brown paper bag to contain the avocado’s ethylene and encourage it to ripen faster for a few hours or overnight.
Cut the avocado in half. Set aside the half with the pit for later (I like to cover it with Press N Seal and throw it in the fridge to keep it from browning).
Here’s a handy tip for keeping your avocado half intact: rather than scooping it or slicing it out, peel the avocado like an orange. The peel of an avocado this ripe should come off easily.
Using the chef’s knife, slice the avocado very thinly width-wise - each slide should be less than 5 millimeters wide.
Very carefully, start to fan out the slices in a straight line diagonally across the cutting board. See photo #5 below. Try to separate each and every slice - if any of the slices seem like they’re stuck together, use the chef’s knife to split them apart.
Carefully roll up the diagonal line of avocado slices into a rose. See illustrative photographs below.
There you have it - an avocado rose! Use your chef’s knive to transfer the rose to your carby avocado vehicle of choice. I have a soft spot for avocado on top of sourdough toast, but the possibilities are endless: sweet potatoes, bagels, crackers… It’s especially yummy topped with salt and pepper, hot sauce, or my personal favorite: Trader Joe’s Everything But The Bagel sesame seasoning.
Gorge yourself :)
Let’s be real here: I love marveling at a pretty rose made of avocados as much as the next basic bitch, but when it comes to eating avocado toast, I want my avocado distributed more evenly, with more surface area for my beloved Everything But The Bagel seasoning. So it’s only fitting that when I eat my avocado rose, it’s squished onto the toast with a fork like this:
Special thanks to Skylar (@skylar_allen) for teaching me this technique!