Early Retirement Extreme Forums

/facepalm.

I love avocado's but they are faffy to process, but it's part of the fun.

Ha, well, I've never had much difficulty with avocados, but I don't bother to do anything with them that looks pretty. I just halve them and pinch/squeeze the skin so the insides fall out. If the pit doesn't come loose in that process I just grub it out with my hands. Hoards of specialized kitchen gadgets is one of those types of clutter that causes me stress.

brute likes to halve, squeeze out the pit, then slice length wise. upon squeezing the skin, it falls out almost in slices, unless too soft already.

That's funny. A good sharp knife is all you really need. DW makes a mean warm avocado salad out of a cookbook from the 1950s.

Stuff I didn't learn at home:

Avocado: Cut in half. Chop knife into pit so it sticks. Rotate and the pit pops out.
Beware of "avocado amputations" which will probably become a thing now.

Tomato: Slice perpendicular to center line for added structural integrity. (Also remove all the pulp for less wet salad.)

Bell pepper: After the end is cut off, the seed bulb can be pushed out through the hole with your thumbs.

There's a brief optimum point of ripeness where the skin and stone will slip off easily. Avocados need management...

Yeah, I saw something online about "Avocado Hand" a few weeks ago. I am super careful in the kitchen because I am acutely aware of how little cooking skill I have.

We buy avacados when they drop under $1 / avacado. Delicious straight up with some chopped onion and paprika and a pince of salt.

If you need a tool like that to pry out the pit, it's not ripe enough to eat. When ripe, its very easy to get the pit out with a spoon and also scoop out the flesh with a spoon. It practically falls out actually.

*sigh* I may have ended up in the ER last year because I cut myself while slicing an avocado. Right to the bone.

I hate sharing this ... you guys don't really need another reason to think I'm an idiot ... but I'm pretty sure GTOO knows about the incident and I'd rather out myself. He'll laugh when he sees this thread.

Mango Massacre next-up?

Ya know, I saw this story out of the U.K. Where cutting avocados was the leading cause of hand lacerations this year. It had me scratching my head.

Are the avocados there tougher? Possibly unripe for packing and shipping purposes?

The avocados I buy are soft enough to cut with a spoon. On a tough skinned haas I'll use a serrated tomato knife to get through the skin but to flesh out the seed and inside a spoon works. Anything tougher I won't eat because it just isn't ready yet.

Mangos are another story. I dread cutting those.

Pomegranates? Dragon Fruit? The annals of dangerous fruits and vegetables are legendary . . .

As someone from the UK the country seemingly afflicted by an epidemic of epic proportions I can say I have never seen an injury. Despite working in A&E.

But, supermarkets are terrible at knowing when an avo is ripe, the best before date means all. Has meant I have been able to get 'out of date' reduced avocado that still needs time to ripen! They sometimes try and help with stickers on how many days until ripe. These are also normally wrong. Which might explain these mythical injures as foolish Brits hack at bullet like fruits...

I believe that most kitchen accidents result from dull knives: the knife slips off the surface of your avocado, tomato or whatever and slices your hand instead. Some people address this by sawing with a serrated knife, but we just keep the knives surgically sharp and watch where we put our fingers.

Mangos...what a pain. I used to buy them from street vendors and just chew the flesh off the pit on my way to work.

Piercing the skin of whatever you are cutting with the tip of the knife gives an entry point for even a dull knife. For things like squash/pumpkins, its the only way to cut it safely.

Mangos were .39 here recently so we bought about 10 of them and froze a bunch. Agree! Although like everything there is a method.

halfmoon wrote: ↑

Thu May 25, 2017 10:33 am

I believe that most kitchen accidents result from dull knives: the knife slips off the surface of your avocado, tomato or whatever and slices your hand instead.

on the other hand, if knives are dull enough, even slippage won't cut human skin. it's the middle that's dangerous.

True enough. It's always the middle that's dangerous.

Dull knives are most definitely more dangerous.

- with a dull knife people apply more force to compensate for the lack of sharpness
- when a dull knife slips that knife could penetrate deeper than with a sharp knife*.
- a dull knife tears instead of cuts

* assuming people handle a sharp knife with respect and apply little force


A sharp knife will create a clean cut. Clean cuts heal faster and better. Cutting yourself with a proper sharp knife will almost immediately create that annoying itchy feeling of a healing wound. And if you treat the knife with respect, you probably didn't apply much force and could've prevented cutting yourself all together or made a shallower cut.

I work for a retailer and we sell about 3000 knives? Close to half of our entire product range.

having good technique is probably critical, and depends on type of material being cut, as well as type of knife. brute has seen humans use fancy Japanese forged knives to basically press through vegetables instead of cutting.

that little rocking motion that chefs use seems very efficient, but brute doesn't nearly cut enough food to justify learning the knuckle-grip. he's tried, and it just feels unnatural.