Do You Need to Wash Avocados Before Cutting Them?

Most people rinse an apple before eating it. Far fewer think to wash an avocado, because we don't eat the skin.

It seems logical enough. If you're not eating the skin, why wash it?

There's one simple reason that's easy to overlook: the knife.

What happens when you cut an avocado?

When you cut into an avocado, your knife passes through the skin before it reaches the flesh.

That means what's on the surface can potentially be carried with the knife onto the part you're about to eat.

What's on the skin can travel with the knife.

That's why washing fresh produce before preparing it is a useful habit to build, even when you don't intend to eat the skin.

And avocados aren't the only example. The same principle applies to produce such as melons and mangoes, where a knife passes from the outside surface through to the edible flesh.

Why is it so easy to forget?

We naturally think about washing the parts of fruit and vegetables we're going to eat.

• Berries? Wash them.
• Grapes? Wash them.
• Lettuce? Wash it.

An avocado that looks perfectly clean? It's much easier to forget.

But fresh produce has been grown, picked, packed, transported, displayed and handled before it reaches your kitchen. What you can see on the surface isn't necessarily the whole story.

So a simple habit is to wash produce before the knife comes out, rather than thinking only about whether you're going to eat the skin.

How should you wash an avocado?

Start by rinsing the whole avocado under clean running water before cutting it.

If you're using Plantaera as part of your produce washing routine, add one pump to one litre of water, wash the produce for around 30 seconds, then rinse and dry as usual.

The important part is the order:

Wash first. Cut second.

The takeaway

If you don't eat the skin, it's easy to assume it doesn't need washing.

But when a knife passes through the outside before reaching the food you're about to eat, washing first makes sense.

It's a small kitchen habit that's very easy to build.

Wash first. Cut second.