How to Husk a Coconut

Opening the Coconut
The brown coconut you may find in the grocery store has been removed
from
its packing crate. The coconut palm grows nuts that are amazingly
equipped
for ocean voyaging - able to withstand days or weeks at sea, the
crashing of
waves, and ultimately being storm tossed onto a distant shore. You
think
opening one is going to be like peeling an apple??
The first method of coconut opening applies to mature nuts either well
yellowed and perhaps already fallen from the tree, or those that are
totally
brown and fibrous. This method was bestowed to me by Dr. Robert Halley
of the United States Geological Survey, St. Petersburg, Florida, to
whom I am
eternally grateful. Grasp the coconut husk firmly with both hands so
the
coconut stem axis is vertical. Strike the coconut firmly against a
rock or other
hard surface - almost throwing it down. Flip the coconut 180 degrees
and
repeat. After twenty or thirty blows, the nut will tear loose from the
husk
and the husk will part into three pieces which may be torn away from
the nut
by hand. It really works.

The second method of coconut opening is this: take the coconut in one
hand - holding it near the stem-end. Use a large
fish knife or machette to “whittle” the opposite end of thehusk to a
point. After whittling some husk away, the surface
of the nut will be exposed in some cuts. This helps one judge the
depth to strike for subsequent cuts with the blade.
Continue to whittle until about the bottom 1/3 of the husk is cut away
and the outer surface of the nut is exposed all
around. Hold the coconut in the palm of the hand with the whittled
point up, and with one stroke, strike this point off
flat. A perfect outcome is that the blade will cut through the nut
shell, but not completely through the nut meat inside.
Then use the point of the blade to cut out a plug of the nut meat. For
a flourish, this plug of coconut may be skewered on
the blade tip and eaten immediately.
A water nut will be so full that there is no air space. An immediate
refreshing drink is called for. Once a sip or a gulp or
two is gone, a suitable quantity of rum may be poured into the coconut
to dilute the water and the resulting mixture may
be sipped at leisure.
In places where coconuts are abundant, some homes have a wooden or
metal stake in the ground with a sharp tip poking
up, which they use to husk the nuts open. I infer this from the pile
of discarded husks that almost invariably accompany
such a stake.

Cracking the Nut
If you are just drinking a water nut, there is no point in cracking it
- just lop off the top as Rafael would do, but whether
you top the nut to drain it or gouge out one or more of the three eyes
to drain it, it still must be cracked to get out the
meat. This is easily and neatly done with a hammer by holding the nut
in the palm of the left hand and tapping the nut
firmly with the hammer. This is also the method of opening stone-crab
claws. Once the nut cracks it will sound like a
broken baseball bat when tapped - or more accurately, like a broken
coconut. The crack may be “chased” around the nut
with successive taps until the nut breaks into halves.
One method to reach the coconut meat from a drained nut, was to split
the nut and whittled husk with one whack after
the drinker was finished drinking, then any nut meat could be easily
reached. My machete is apparently not quite as
sharp. You can also trim shavings of the green husk into spoons for
removing the coconut meat.

Removing the Meat
When the coconut is not fully ripened and the meat is not firm, it may
be scooped from the shell with a spoon. A heavy
duty spoon with a relatively sharp edge seems to work best. I have
obtained such a spoon and sharpened the edge with a
file. It works quite well.
For the harder nut meat, a paring knife is useful for cutting the nut
meat into 1″ X 1/4″ chunks and prying them out.
There is a thin brown skin between the meat and the shell and this
usually adheres to the coconut meat. It tastes just like
coconut and does not affect the texture, so not to worry.
The meat of a coconut contains flavorful oil and emulsifier. The milk
of a coconut is watery and clear. Coconut milk in a
store is milky and sweet. I guess this is because some of the “juice”
has been extracted from the coconut meat. I have also
achieved this in a primitive fashion by placing some meat into a food
processor and chopping it very fine. Then, a small
amount of coconut milk may be added to the chopped nut to “wash” it.
The milk that drains or is squeezed from this
mixture is quite milky and sweet.
Local coconut processors collect large quanities of coconut meat and
crush it somehow and let the juice stand. The “milk”
separates to some extent and the floating material is then cooked to
remove water. A clear oil results. This oil, coco oil, is
the essence of coconuts and is marvellous stuff. You can cook with it,
use it on a salad like olive oil, or rub it on your
skin like a lotion. A few drops is good in about anything. Coconut oil
can be made from the nuts of a tree with Lethal
Yellowing, but it takes about ten times as many nuts to get the same
amount of oil. Coco oil - never for sale openly, only
if you know to ask and know who to ask - has become quite scarce in
Belize and the Bay Islands of Honduras,
unfortunately.

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