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As you may know, I grew up in an amazing tropical island and now I live in Indonesia where coconuts are in abundance and I love that I know How To Open A Fresh Young Coconut. They are just everywhere and I love the fact that they are back in fashion again.
Coconuts are amazing you know. Did you know that even coconut husk is used in producing brushes, ropes and nets? They also give us coconut water, oil, coconut sugar and that awesome coconut flesh that you can turn into epic dairy-free ice cream. Don’t know how? Check out my post on how to make dairy-free ice cream that makes you go mmmm.
To get all these goodies from coconuts, you need to know how to open them. I actually assumed that people know how to do this, but at our retreats, we use a lot of coconuts and when I opened them, I saw amazement on people’s faces. So, it turned out that many people actually don’t know how to open coconuts, and I’m gonna show you now.
When coconuts are harvested, they look big with a green husk and we have these coconuts in Indonesia almost everywhere. But you guys outside of Indonesia get coconuts that are already cleaned, so you miss all the fun of removing the husk. These little beauties can be found in any supermarket in Australia and I have seen them in abundance in America as well.
Challenge Accepted: Open a Fresh Young Coconut!
How To Open A Fresh Young Coconut? There are two ways to open a fresh young coconut. You can go the old-fashioned way and grab a big, sharp knife or you can be cool and get yourself a Coco Jack. It comes in a cute bag with three tools that will make opening a coconut and scraping the flesh easy.
Whichever way you choose, you need to do this – take a tea towel and shape it in a way to make a nest that will hold your coconut. Set your coconut there and check that it stands firm. If you decide to go with a knife, you will need to hit the top of the coconut with a heel of your knife. The motion you will make resembles the one you would make if you would chop a tree. The key thing here is that you want to keep your other hand away from the coconut because anything can happen. So, you just keep chopping or hitting your coconut and turning it until you can lift the lid off. And if you use a Coco Jack, well, it’s really easy. Check out the video for detailed instructions.
After you open a coconut, you can either drink its water right away or store it in a bottle and use for making smoothies for instance. Another thing you get once you open a fresh young coconut is its flesh. To scrape the flesh, you can use a spoon or the scraping tool you get with your Coco Jack pack.
In my online cooking classes, we use a lot of coconut flesh. In Australia, for instance, you can buy these young coconuts in packs of nine. And since you will not eat that much coconut flesh all at once, you can actually freeze it (cool, right?) and use it later to make coconut milk or even coconut bacon. Maybe it sounds crazy, but yeah, you can make healthy bacon using coconut flesh. Want to give it a try? Get the recipe in this blog post on how to make coconut bacon. And so that’s How To Open A Fresh Young Coconut.
Explore the work of coconuts and share your stories with me on Facebook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbQBFR9oyaE&t=239s
Love,
Chef Cynthia Louise xx
