Avocado Bravado

A frequently purchased item at the shop is the avocado slicer.

As I am prone to do, I will explain the simple way to open, remove the seed and slice an avocado using a knife and then I will discuss the tools one can buy.

The Easy Way

You start with a sharp kitchen knife, I like a 6″ Utility knife. Hold the avocado lengthwise in your hand, start cutting at the stem, slice down to the seed and follow all the way around. Then twist the avocado open by turning the two halves in opposite directions. You should now have one half with the seed inside and one without.

To remove the seed, chop into the seed with the sharpened side of the knife blade and twist. The seed should twist right out.

Next, using the flat edge of the knife, make slices in the soft flesh of the fruit. Take care – if you use the sharp side as you can easily pierce the avocado skin and cut yourself. If you are afraid of a sharp knife, use a butter knife or other dull blade to make the slices. If you want to make cubes instead of slices, make cross cuts width-wise.

Now just grab a tablespoon and starting at the wide end of the avocado, scoop out the flesh. It couldn’t be easier.

Using a knife, you can cut slices as thin or thick as you like and you already have the necessary tools in your kitchen.

The Other Way

However, if you are a tool lovin’ monkey, there are some models you might like.

Avocado slicers share similar designs which have inherent positives and negatives.

Positives

easy to use

cut the flesh cleanly

scrape the inside skin clean of flesh

can slice many fruits rapidly

no risk of cutting yourself

Negatives

don’t work well on very large or very small avocados

you still have to cut and seed the avocado with another item, like a knife?!?

adds another tool for the drawer

don’t clean up easily, particularly if you don’t rinse it right away

Models

There are two basic designs, plastic and metal. I prefer the slicers with wire tines for cutting the avocado flesh. The stainless steel wires make smooth, cleaner cuts. The plastic models generally have thicker plastic tines which push rather than cut the avocado, particularly when working with riper fruit.

After that, the handle is really the only other feature to consider. I like a no-slip grip as opposed to the plastic handle, but that is a personal preference.

After slicing open the avocado and removing the seed, just press the rim of the slicer firmly against the skin and pull toward you. If you keep even pressure on the slicer, it should scrape the skin cleanly and present you with slices that easily slide out.

The wire tine slicers achieve thinner slices, but that may not always be your goal.

The Amco and Progressive International avocado slicers are the most effective and well made of the bunch.

Both have metal wires firmly secured into the handle and rim. The Progressive model has a no-slip handle. The Amco version has a comfortable metal handle, plus a seed removal tool at the opposite end. I prefer the comfortable feel of the Progressive handle and am not impressed with the seed remover of the Amco. The seed remover can dig into the flesh unnecessarily, because sometimes seeds don’t want to come out easily. For pure slicing capability, I lean toward the Progressive slicer.

The Norpro slicer is all stainless steel, but has blades and not wires for the slicing element. The blades are not as efficient as the wires and avocados may stick a bit. This can also happen with a knife of course, but the possibility of mashing the avocado is more likely with these slicers than with a knife. I am not fond of the way the lower end of the tines attach on the Norpro.

Chef’n makes two models of plastic slicers – one has plastic blade tines, the other has metal blades. The model with the metal tines is the better model. The plastic blades just don’t cut as cleanly or smoothly. The Tovolo slicer suffers the same problem because it has thick plastic blades. The Tovolo does offer one interesting feature: it can stand upright on the handle. This feature doesn’t make up for the thick blades, but it can keep your counter a little cleaner.

The last model to look at is the Van Vacter avocado knife. It uses a different approach in its design that takes us back to my non-gadget method. The knife has a serrated edge for slicing the skin and a concave spiked portion on the other side of the blade for removing the seed. You then use the serrated side to slice the flesh of the avocado like you would using a normal kitchen knife. Which begs the question: if I use this product like I would a normal knife, why buy it? I give the manufacturer credit for creative design. You may find this product struggles to cleanly cut tough skinned avocados.

Summary

If you make copious amounts of guacamole, a slicer will save you time. For those of us who eat one or two avocados at a time, the easy knife and spoon method will do just fine.

In the end, I will stick with my knife and spoon method. However if I went on a guacamole diet, I’d buy the Progressive International avocado slicer.

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