3 Ways To Make Your Own Avocado Oil

Taylor A Ritz

Avocado oil is an oil extracted from ripe avocados. You can use it like vegetable or olive oil for cooking, frying, recipes, and other DIY hacks. Avocado oil purchased in the store can be quite expensive, so it’s much more cost-effective to make your own at home. It’s also a pretty simple task! Here are 3 ways to make avocado oil at home.

Extracting Avocado Oil By Cooking

You can cook avocado fruit to extract avocado oil. You will need approximately 12 avocados, a pot, and cheesecloth or some other fine mesh to use for straining.

1. Peel avocados

Wash your avocados and cut each one in half around the inner pit. Remove the pit, then the bright green fruit. Put the fruit into a food processor or blender. Dispose of or compost the skin and pit. Better yet, use the pit the grow your own avocado tree!

2. Puree the avocados

Turn on the food processor and blend until the avocado forms a smooth paste. Scoop out the mixture and put it in a medium-sized pot.

3. Cook the avocados on medium heat

Turn your stove to medium heat and place the pot on top. Stir the mixture every 5 minutes or so. When it begins to boil, you should see the avocado oil begin to rise to the top.

4. Cook until the mixture becomes dark

Continue cooking and stirring the mixture until the avocado turns a darker green color, then brown, and any water has evaporated.

5. Spoon the avocado mixture into a cheesecloth

Remove the pot from heat and carefully scoop the avocado mixture into a cheesecloth. Pinch the corners of the cheesecloth together until you have a sack full of cooked avocado. 

6. Strain the avocado

Squeeze the sack of avocado over a small bowl to strain out the oil. The oil will come out slowly, drop by drop. Keep squeezing, periodically changing your grip, until no more oil comes out. 

7. Store the oil

Store your gathered oil in a small container with a lid. Small mason jars work great for this!

Extracting Avocado Oil From Avocado Skins

You can also extract avocado oil from avocado skins. If you saved the skins from the last extraction method, you can gather even more oil. For this method, you will need 12 avocados, a fruit press, a strainer, and a coffee filter.

1. Remove the fruit from the skins.

Slice the avocados in half around the pit. Separate the 2 halves and use a spoon to scoop out the fruit. You can use the fruit for guacamole or another recipe, or even use it to extract oil using the first method above.

2. Place avocado skins in a press

Stack the avocado skins on top of each other and place them in a fruit press. Place a container under the press to catch the oil. Pull the lever with as much force as you can muster as the mallet presses down on the avocado skins and oil begins to drip out. 

3. Press until the oil stops dripping

Press the skins several times until no oil is dripping out of them. Reposition the skins and repress to make sure you’ve gotten all the oil out.

4. Strain the oil

Remove the container holding the oil from underneath the fruit press. There are likely bits of avocado skin floating in it. We can remove these using a coffee filter. Get another clean bowl and place a strainer and a coffee filter lightly on top of it. Pour the oil into the coffee filter and the oil will pass through the filter and the strainer into the bowl, while the debris will be filtered out. 

5. Bottle the oil

Let the strainer sit in the bowl overnight. This allows all the oil to filter into the bowl. When the oil is done passing through the strainer, pour it into a small bottle, and seal it.

Extracting Oil from Dried Avocados

You will need a food processor or blender, 12 avocados, cheesecloth, and a baking tray.

1. Remove the fruit from the avocados

Slice the avocados in half and scoop the fruit out of the skins. Remove the pit as well. Spoon the fruit into a food processor. 

2. Puree the avocado

Puree the avocados in the food processor (or blender) until it becomes a thick paste. If you don’t have a food processor or blender, you can hand mash the avocados, though this will take longer. 

3. Spread the avocado paste onto a baking tray

Use a spatula to spread the avocado onto a baking tray in as thin a layer as possible. Aim for about a half an inch thick.

4. Place the baking tray in the oven

Set the oven temperature to no more than 155 degrees Fahrenheit. Your goal is simply to dry out the avocado, not to bake it. Keep the avocado in the oven for about 5 hours. Check every hour to make sure it isn’t burning. The avocado should turn a dark green or brown. If it’s turning black, take it out. Alternatively, you can put the avocado out in the sun to dry; this will take about 2 days.

5. Remove the avocado from the oven and strain it

After 5 hours in the oven (or 2 days in the sun), remove the baking tray from the oven. Place the avocado into a thin cloth like a cheesecloth. Pinch the corners of the cheesecloth together to form a sack and squeeze the avocado over a bowl. The fine cloth will allow the oil to filter out and drip into the bowl. Stop squeezing when the oil stops dripping out. 

6. Bottle the avocado oil

When you have squeezed all the oil out, pour the avocado oil into a bottle, and seal it.