Don't Throw Out Avocado Pits - Make Tea Instead

Avocado toast may be a bit passé by now (in fact, The Takeout declared it to be so back before the pandemic hit), but guacamole will never go out of style. However, with great avocado dishes comes great waste since that big pit in the middle makes up about 15% of the fruit. Back in the 20-teens, people started eating avocado pits by drying, grinding, and adding them to smoothies to take advantage of their health benefits. Avocado pits do contain antioxidants, fatty acids, minerals, protein, and vitamins; but grinding them can be hard on a blender, so you're probably better off using them to make tea if you want to practice the produce equivalent of nose-to-tail eating.

For avocado pit tea, boil one pit in a pot of water for about five minutes. It should now be soft enough to chop with a knife, so cut it up into smaller chunks and boil it again for another 10 minutes. Remove the pit chunks from the water, then drink it like any other tea. It may not taste all that great since avocado seeds are often bitter, but think of it as medicine. You might want to disguise the taste as best you can with sugar or honey and a generous squeeze of lemon.

If the idea of drinking a bitter brew doesn't appeal but you're still committed to a zero-waste kitchen, you can try growing an avocado tree instead. This is something we used to do when I was a kid: Stick three toothpicks mid-pit at roughly equal intervals, then use them to balance it on the rim of a drinking glass with the pointy end up and the flatter side down. Pour in just enough water so the seed is half-covered, then put it in a sunny spot and wait. After a while, you'll see a root start to emerge from the avocado pit. Eventually, the top part will start sprouting a stem. Change the water periodically, making sure the entire root is covered. Once the stem is six inches high, you can plant it in a pot.

The thing about these avocado trees is they're often strictly decorative. I've never known one to grow fruit. In fact, the avocado pits I've tried to grow in recent years haven't even sprouted, making me wonder if they're treating avocados differently these days. Redditors say they've still been able to sprout their avocado seeds, so I may just be failing to pick the best avocados at the grocery store. One commenter insisted that, in order for the seed to sprout, the avocado must be beautiful, but they all look green and lumpy to me. I'm inclined to think the growing or not growing thing is more of a crapshoot. If it works, it works, and makes for a fun experiment and a free houseplant. If not, there's no harm done.