How to Open a Coconut | In the Kitchen

Today I'm going to show you how to open up a young green coconut, sometimes also called a young Thai coconut. Keyword in there is young. Anyhow, I wanted to be the one to show you how to do this because I am a big old wimp when it comes to opening big tough things like this with a knife. So if I can do it, you can do it. So you'll notice that I haven't taken the plastic wrap off of the coconut. Typically you do that, but in this case, when they take off the hard outer shell, which they've already done for you, they have to spray the coconut with all sorts of chemicals in order to make sure that it doesn't mold during transit. So don't worry, that doesn't get into the coconut itself, so you're not going to be eating it, but you don't want it to get onto your cutting boards, onto yourself, onto the, you know, your knife or anything. So easiest way to prevent that from happening is just to keep it in the plastic wrap. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna take our knife and we're gonna shave off the top of the coconut so that we expose the nut, which will make sense in a moment when I do it. Okay, so you just wanna take your knife— see? Nut. The white stuff comes off pretty easily. And it won't let you cut all the way into the actual nut, so you don't have to worry about going too far. Okay, so there we have the nut exposed. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this little end here of the knife, and now be very careful here. You want to hold the coconut, you know, back down here, not up here, because you don't want to risk actually hitting your hand. Okay, so hold down here on a hard surface, and then you're gonna take the knife and just hit into the side. I'm not very accurate with this, that's why I wanted to show you even a dummy like me can do it, which means you can do it. Here we go. You see, there's a little— you can see this little ring that's starting to form. There's a natural spot on top of the coconut That just wants to come off. There you go. So now this is the top of the coconut. Normally the meat would have come with it, but in this case the top just popped off nice and clean. You have the top of the coconut, yummy flesh. So this is the top filled. I can't— it's so full I can't even tip it to show you. Filled with juicy water. We've got our glass here. And just— Hear that? So you've got all this good meat in here, and you could just throw it out, but I would highly recommend you don't because you can do all sorts of things with it. You just need a little spoon, and what you're going to do is you're going to just basically— actually, using it this way is easier. You're just gonna peel the meat off the inside of the coconut. Sometimes it can be a little stubborn. It kind of depends from coconut to coconut. And again, don't worry about this nut bits that get stuck. You can peel those off later. There you go. Sometimes it comes off in chunks. You can see I'm not a pro. Some people are pros at this and they can make it come out in one big chunk. But this is to show you that even if you're not a pro like me, you can do it. There we go. All sorts of good meat in here. Yum! So you just— any little bits, Take off, and then you can just— mm, so good. Mm. With your glass of coconut water. Oh, seriously good. If you open up the coconut, pour the water out, and it's pinkish, it's not quite ripe. It's not going to be quite as sweet. You can use it. I'd recommend putting it in a smoothie or something, but not necessarily drinking it If it's kind of gray or dark, that means it's gone off and you can't use it. Although I have to admit, I've never actually seen that in one of our coconuts. Unfortunately, you can't tell until you've actually opened up the coconut. So if you have a recipe that really requires this, make sure you have an extra on hand. Now what you can do is you can take the meat and the water, throw it into a blender and puree it, and you have coconut milk. Super simple, homemade, no preservatives, Totally yummy. Try it.