This Is Why Avocado Slicers Are Useless

For Bon Appétit, by Alex Beggs.

Avocado slicers: Just say no. Photo: Courtesy of Bon Appetit

Avocados--the patron saint of California, fairweather friend of toast, and blood type of Gwyneth Paltrow--are one of the world's most perfect edibles. Thanks a lot, nature! The only drawbacks: When in holy hell is this thing ripe? Why does this look like a dino egg? Why are they so expensive? And THAT PIT.

Most sane human beings know the whole knife-and-spoon trick: Gently hack knife into pit, pull out, bang against side of garbage can until pit miraculously falls out. Then slice diagonals in the creamy green meat, and spoon out onto toast or whatever. Why is this so hard?!

Apparently this is just *too much* to handle. Knives are scary! And humans have credit cards, which means the market was riper than a black mushy avocado for an avocado slicer. Another contraption for your bottomless junk drawer and seemingly bottomless AmEx limit.

There are suddenly tons of these things, and the pros at Cook's Illustrated tested ALL of them, or very close to all of them, since more keep popping up in Bed, Bath, and Beyond every day in various shades of Shrek. They also tested them with different varieties of avocados! It was downright scientific. Hundreds of avocados were sacrificed to the guacamole gods, which Miye Bromberg, who led the testing over several days, told me. There was a "steady stream" of avocado toast, too. They determined: Pointless. And in your heart, which is full of healthy fats thanks to a daily breakfast of guac and chips, you know this is true.

Look ma! Avocado toast, minus the avocado slicer. Photo: Marcus Nilsson

They all created a mess of mush, some had uneven cuts, took as long as cutting, or did more mashing than slicing, and some were so slippery they were called "dangerous" for the threat to your digits. Bromberg told me that "it's surprisingly easy to hurt yourself with them, especially if you're not particularly adroit, and I'm on the clumsier side of the equation." Was there blood? "I can't lie, there may have been some gouging."

The irony is, these gadgets were invented specifically because people are so terrified of knives. "People will do anything to avoid using a knife," said Bromberg, whose job it is to take these testings extremely seriously: "I tried to get data on how many avocado-related injuries were seen in the Boston area in hospitals, and unfortunately people weren't taking specific statistics on that." So she called an orthopedic surgeon and found out that they see 2-3 patients a year because of avocado-knife slips (severed palms, deep cuts, things like that). The best way to cut it with a knife, she told me, is to put a folded dish towel in your palm, then nest the avocado in it to add an extra layer of protection before you start slicing. I personally just leave it on the cutting board and have never had problems, but my colleagues are all palm-slicers. The most important thing, Bromberg added, is a sharp knife: "As long as you have a sharp knife and know how to use it correctly, you're going to avoid 90 percent of the cuts and injuries people get into when slicing an avocado."

Here's the Cook's Illustrated method.

And hey, you can't shove three consecutive slices of (pre-Instagrammed) avocado toast with Maldon, red pepper flakes, and artisanal olive oil into your mouth without fingers, you know?! Fingers are important, a $5.90 avocado slicer? Not so much.

But because life is all about compromise, the testers at Cook's Illustrated did admit that one OXO Good Grips slicer was an acceptable pit-remover. It has a jagged end for cutting the avocado (looks suspiciously like a knife), and a cylindrical middle part with blades inside to take the pit out (little knives!).

So there's that.

Related: Our Best Avocado Recipes, Naturally

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