Avocado adds a creamy, buttery texture to this tangy citrus salad.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—With heaping piles of avocados available right now at your local market, it’s a great time to take advantage of these luscious, buttery, protein-packed and fiber-filled fruits. Try out some recipes with avocado, and you not only get an excellent source of folic acid, potassium, and vitamins B6, C, and E, you'll also get valuable copper, magnesium, manganese, niacin, phosphorus, and riboflavin. It's no wonder avocados are an important part of the health-boosting Mediterranean diet.

Before we share some avocado recipes, here's some background on the fruit. Domestic avocados are grown in both Florida and California; they mature on the tree, but only ripen after being harvested. The California variety, known as Hass (sometimes mislabeled as Haas), has a dark-green, pebbly skin, and has been found to contain almost twice as much vitamin E as was once thought, which makes them the highest fruit source of the antioxidant. They’re also the highest fruit source of lutein, and they provide three times the amount of the antioxidant glutathione when compared to other fruits.

And if you’ve been avoiding avocados due to their fat content, it’s time to add them back into your diet. Not all fats are the same; the fats in avocados are healthy monounsaturated fats that, along with other healthy fats, may decrease your likelihood of developing medical conditions like heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and breast cancer. Studies show that a diet high in monounsaturated fats may lower total and "bad" LDL cholesterol. And adding avocado to salads and salsa was found to help increase the absorption of specific health-boosting carotenoids, in one study. For a lower-fat, lower-calorie avocado, look to larger, smooth-skinned Florida avocados. The texture is silky, rather than creamy, and you might find them less flavorful than the Hass variety.

Read on for avocado shopping tips and recipes.