TikTok Recipe: How to Make an Avocado Rose

Prepping the Avocado

Cut an avocado in half. Find a ripe avocado and use a sharp knife to carefully slice it in half lengthwise. Cut around the entire avocado, then peel the two halves away from the pit. To find a ripe avocado, gently press on or squeeze it with one hand. If it yields slightly, that probably means it’s ripe. If it’s super hard and doesn’t squish at all, it’s probably not ripe yet. Be careful as you cut! Never cut toward your hand, and keep your fingers away from the knife.

Remove the pit and throw it away. Push the edge of your knife into the avocado pit carefully, making sure it’s stuck completely. Pull the knife away carefully to remove the pit from the flesh of avocado. Throw the pit away in your trash or your compost. If you want to grow your own avocado tree, set the pit aside to save it for later.

Scoop out one half of the avocado and place it on a cutting board. Glide a spoon gently in between the skin of the avocado and the edible green part. Carefully scoop out the inside of the avocado with the spoon, leaving it in one piece as much as you can, and place it on a flat cutting board. If your avocado isn’t ripe enough, it will be much harder to scoop out in one piece. If it doesn’t go well at first, try scooping out the other side of the avocado instead.

Slice the avocado into ⁄4 in (0.64 cm) thin slices. Place the avocado with the flat side facing down on the cutting board. Using your knife again, slice the avocado into pieces that are about ⁄4 in (0.64 cm) thick, going across the avocado from left to right. Keep cutting until you’ve chopped up the entire avocado. The thinner your slices are, the easier they will be to form into a rose.

Forming the Rose

Spread the slices out so they form a line. Keep the slices of avocado resting on the thin sides as you move them around. Push the left half of the avocado upward and the right half of the avocado downward, keeping the slices touching each other just slightly. Use your index finger and thumb on both hands to gently manipulate and spread the slices out until they form a long, straight line on the cutting board. Be careful so you don’t squish any of the avocado in the process! One hack is to run your fingers on one side of the slices to push them into a diagonal line, then adjust your slices from there. If you’re having trouble, you can move each slice individually. However, this can take a little bit more time.

Wrap the slices into a spiral starting from the bottom. Keep the slices of avocado on their sides, just like they were when you sliced them. Starting with the slices at the end of the line, slowly wrap them up and inward in a spiral formation. Keep going until you’ve wrapped all of the slices in a spiral to create a perfect avocado rose. If you need to try your spiral again, just unwind the slices.

Set the avocado rose on a plate. Slide a spatula or a knife underneath the rose and quickly move it to a plate. Try to move it as fast as possible to avoid messing up your beautiful rose. Try picking a white plate to make your avocado rose stand out.

Drizzle olive oil over the rose and add salt and pepper to season it. Take about 1 tsp (4.9 mL) of olive oil and gently pour it all over the rose, letting some run down the sides onto the plate. Add a pinch of flaky sea salt and ground black pepper for some added taste, then show off your avocado rose! If you want to take pictures of your rose, try putting it in natural sunlight so people can see the light shimmer off of it.