Young Coconuts - young coconut how to open with a cleaver

How to open a coconut (and make a smoothie)
by Steve and Tricia Zenone

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE NOTE: The author, and this web site will not be responsible for injury caused by these instructions. Do not let children open coconuts. Please use these instructions at your own risk, and be careful. If something does not "feel" right for you, please do not proceed.

Step 1 - Making a Simple Coconut Smoothie
One of the easiest recipes for eating a young coconut is to make a tasty smoothie. The smoothie is simply the water from the young coconut blended with the soft jelly like white inner meat. The picture on the right is of a young coconut after it has been removed from its hard outer green shell. The coconuts we sell look like this picture - they've already been removed from the hard outer shell for your convenience.

Step 2 - The Tools
Often, people become frustrated with coconuts and give up on eating them because of the challenge often presened in trying to open them. What we've found useful to use is either a machete or butcher knife. You might want to make sure you have a cutting board, or some other hard surface to lay the coconut on that's safe to cut on. You'll also need a blender if you want to make a coconut cream (not pictured yet). Else, you can simply drink the coconut water with a straw, and scoop the white coconut meat out and eat by itself as well.

Step 3 - The Angle to Cut
One can drill wholes into the coconut, hit it with a hammer, or toss it out the window. We've found it easier to lay the coconut on its side so that we can safely cut the top off without losing much, if any, water.

Step 4 - Leverage and Safety
For safety sake, we don't hold the coconut when we do the initial cut - we value keeping our fingers intact. Our advice to you is to do the same if you feel comfortable. The coconuts rest very well on their sides. So, upon letting go of the coconut, we hold the butcher knife up high so as to help us get the necessary leverage needed to cut into the shell.

Step 5 - The Cut
With a swift downward strike, the knife cuts into the top of the coconut. If done correctly, the knife will break through part of the inner hard shell! This is what you want. If you didn't succeed on the first try, don't fret. Just try it again, rotating the coconut if necessary.

Step 6 - Different View
We'll usually set the coconut up straight after the initial cut just to make sure we don't lose any water. This picture hopefully gives you a better idea of how far the knife can sometimes go with the initial cut - there's no real need to pull a Hercules-like-blow cutting entirely through the coconut in one shot. In this picture you'll notice that the coconut has unfortunately lost some water upon the cutting board. Yes - it does happen.

Step 7 - Drain the Water
Drain the sweet coconut water into a blender. If the top of the coconut isn't removed, as in this picture, then we'll use the knife to help leverage/pry the top of the coconut in order to allow the water to freely pour into the blender.

Step 8 - Remove the Top
Cut the top of the coconut off using the knife. If you want, you can pull it off by hand, but this can sometimes get messy. Pour any extra coconut water into the blender. Notice the soft white coconut meet on the inside - it's great stuff!

Not a Step...
If you don't want to make a smoothie, you can put a straw in the coconut (okay, you'll need to make sure the coconut water is in the coconut, and not in a blender) and drink it as is. You can then scoop out the soft white coconut meat and eat it by itself. We wanted to add this picture to show that there are many possibilities :-)

Step 10 - Remove the Meat on Top
Using a spoon, scoop out the white meat on the top part of the coconut that was cut off, if any. Put the coconut meat within the blender. The softness varies from one coconut to another.

Step 11 - Scoop out the Inside of the Coconut
Use the spoon to scoop the soft white coconut meat from inside. Place the meat into the blender. Notice the darker, hard inner shell that has to be broken through with the knife within this picture.

Step 12 - Add the Coconut Meat to the Coconut Water in Blender
For the sake of making a smoothie, add the coconut meat to the coconut water within the blender.

Step 13 - Ready to Blend
Once you've scooped out all of the white meat, you're ready to blend. One point we wanted to mention is that while scooping out the coconut meat, don't worry if some of the meat has some thin, non-hard, inner shell coating on it. In fact, the lining from the inner shell adds a sort of cinnamon taste to the smoothie!

Step 14 - Blend Away!
We'll let the blender spin it's magic for two minutes. We use a FiberMania Juicer at its medium setting (only choices are high, medium and off).

Step 15 - Pour and Enjoy
Once finished blending, pour and enjoy!! We would have put in additional pictures of us drinking the liquid nirvana for you to view - but it tasted too good to put down to take pictures :-)