Coconut

[LaTisha07]

How do I open it and what should I do with it? I was thinking about making one of those green smoothies and adding that to it? I've never eaten a fresh coconut before.

[cherries]

First of all - be careful - coconut opening is dangerous because you are hitting a round ball with a hammer and it jumps and moves when it is hit.

The way I do it is to poke holes in the eyes with a screwdriver (hitting the screwdriver with a hammer) and drain the liquid into a wide mouthed glass. My cutting board has a cut out handle and I put the pointy tip of the coconut in it to help stabalize it a little while hitting it. The holes will often get plugged during draining so I shake it a few time to clear the holes, I will also poke the screwdriver back in to clear them or even crack it a little to get rid of the suction, I always get a mess when I crack it though because the water comes out so fast. The water should be sweet, if it isn't and tastes bad, the coconut is probably bad and at this point I would throw out a bad coconut before I invested more time on it.

Now hit the coconut with the hammer until it cracks (the pointy end is the toughest place to start the crack, so I always make the initial crack on the side of the coconut) and then follow the crack around until the coconut is in two peices.

Now lay the halves, white side down, on the cutting board and continue smashing each of the halves into smaller peices.

To get the meat off the shell I lay the peices, white side up, on the cutting board and tap a knife into the meat with the hammer (the side of the knife rather than the point). If you use the right knife, (I use steak knives and not all of them work with this) the meat on one side of the knife will pop off of the shell, sometimes all by itself sometimes with a little twist of the knife.

You can also pry the meat off with a knife, I've heard of using butter knives for this but I don't have one. At this point be very careful and be sure that the point of the knife is never pointing at your hands. I will carefully use a hammer to tap a knife between the meat and the shell of a small peice and then twist the knife to get the meat off. Being very careful.

This is very messy and peices of coconut go flying everywhere. I try to do this right before I sweep.

Now I wash the peices of white meat and check to make sure that all the shell is off. I've heard that the brown skin on the white meat is ok to eat, so I don't bother to take it off.

I run the meat through my food processor with both the grater and the s blade. Then I make milk by blending it with several batches of water, straining the pulp out between blendings. I usually get a half gallon milk and then I add carob powder and agave nectar to make carob milk! There is plenty of pulp, I spice it up like mexican rice or I process it with bananas and make pudding with a rather rough texture.

Good luck!

[LaTisha07]

Wow! Thats a lot of work for 1 little coconut but I'll give it a try so it doesn't go to waste! Thanks! I was thinking hammer as I was trying to stab it (with no luck) with a huge knife. I dropped it on the floor a few times to see what would happen but than I thought about it, if it busted open...that would be one large mess that I do not want to clean. I shook it and heard the liquid. I can't wait to taste an actual coconut! :)

[Random Violin Guy]

I just opened my second coconut this morning. If you poke at the three eyes of the coconut (I'm talking about a mature brown coconut, btw) one of them should give with little pressure. No hammer needed for that part.

[Nurse in the Raw]

Young coconuts are so much easier to get into, they have more water and the meat is not hard. You should try one.

[cherries]

You're right it is really complicated, I think of it as advanced raw food. I think that it is a guy thing to do, raw guys should open the coconuts like cooked guys take over barbecuing. ;)

I should note, that I use plastic cutting board so I don't ruin my counter, and that I use plastic because ruined a wooden cutting board when it split duiring coconut opening.

[EZ rider]

Here's a video on YOU TUBE of someone opening a young coconut:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hkJJZuf2Voc

[cherries]

That video is so cool, I'm going to go get a young coconut and try to find the "door". I usually like the brown coconuts better though because they have more meat.

[moonstar]

...I haven't tried this yet because I am away working, but why not try to drill coconuts with a power drill? You can hold it and get soem "good" holes from which to pour the juice.

[LaTisha07]

Cool video! I don't think I've ever seen one of those coconuts. I'll have to get one!

[kmik]

Opening a young coconut with a good cleaver is actually quite theraputic ;) I believe there are benefits to young coconuts over brown ones, but it escapes me at the moment. There is also a tool for poking holes in them that an old boardmember "hydronewbie" gave me. That helps keep from losing much of the precious water.

[HydroRaw]

Opening a young coconut with a good cleaver is actually quite theraputic ;) I believe there are benefits to young coconuts over brown ones, but it escapes me at the moment. There is also a tool for poking holes in them that an old boardmember "hydronewbie" gave me. That helps keep from losing much of the precious water.

It is HydroRaw!

Hello Krista! I am glad to see you here again. This forum is not the same without you. Smile!

By the way, I never got that accident again since Chicago. Wink!

[kmik]

oops, guess I got your screen name mixed up with your email address. Glad to see you're still on the board! I plan on being around for a while :) but yeah, tell everyone where you got that awesome, yet oh-so-dangerous coconut opener ;)

[HydroRaw]

If you are anywhere near Chinatown, look for this particular nifty coconut opening tool:

http://www.youngcoconuts.com/coconutopener.html

A word of caution -- just be careful in handling it as the blade is extremely sharp.

By the way, this coconut opening tool can be bought for less than two bucks if you shop around carefully.