The Clever Technique To Split An Avocado With Your Bare Hands

Many people are astounded when they learn what type of fruit an avocado is: it's a single-seeded berry, and what a seed it is! The pit of an avocado is one of its defining features, despite the pit itself being basically inedible (although not extremely poisonous, as some rumors posit). The avocado pit makes the fruit difficult to cut open, usually requiring a sharp knife. That takes no small level of care to avoid accidentally cutting your fingers or palm as you slice around the circumference of the avocado to break the scaly skin and get to the delicious flesh inside. Plastic surgeons even have a pithy name — "avocado hand" — for the potentially devastating injuries that knives can have on the delicate tendons of your hand as a result of improperly opening this fruit.

That's why we were nothing short of dumbfounded when we learned that there's a hack to open an avocado bare-handed, using no tools at all. We've seen it demonstrated on social media and had to try it for ourselves. Basically, you place the avocado upright between your hands and both pull and press, putting pressure on the top of the avocado where the stem was formerly attached. If you get the motion correct — it's not about force but about breaking the most vulnerable part of the outer shell — the top of the avocado will split open, allowing you to effortlessly pull the two halves apart. Best of all, the pit should drop right out, no spoon required.

Done properly, you can quickly and painlessly open avocados over and over using just your hands. There's a catch, however — doing so has a tendency to kind of mash and squish the fruit, making the end result not especially even or attractive. This is all well and good if you are going to substitute avocado for butter in your baking or if you are whipping up a big bowl of guac, as these preparations call for mashed avocado anyway. If, on the other hand, you are planning on using your avocado in a way that requires pretty or even strips, like mango-avocado spring rolls, or in neat slices on a burger, you might be disappointed by the state of your produce. In these cases, perhaps you should still go old-school and open your avocado (carefully!) with a blade.

Furthermore, some social media users have reported that there is a learning curve involved and that the process can be a bit messy. If you manhandle your avo a bit too much, especially if it is very ripe, you run the risk of avocado paste shooting out the open end of the fruit and onto you. Until you refine your technique, you may want to practice over a sink and perhaps wear an apron. When you finally master the art of breaking open avocados using just your fingers, we bet that you will endlessly impress your dinner guests and get requests to show exactly how you pull it off.