How to Crack a Coconut

Every now and then I will buy a coconut.

In our house, every one LOVES coconut.  We like coconut butter, coconut milk, coconut cream, coconut water, coconut flour, coconut sugar, grated or shaved coconut and munching of fresh coconut flesh.

When in season (ummm don't know when that is actually) I will get the green ones.  Most commonly you will find them out of their green fruity covering, just leaving the pip...which is what we know as a coconut.

coconut and big arse knife!

There must be a dozen ways to crack a coconut open, but my personal favourite way is with a BIG knife.

1.  Hold the coconut firmly in your hand.
      You need to kinda cradle it so that when you whack it, the force goes into the coconut.  You almost need to move the coconut towards the knife as you move the knife towards the coconut.

2. Get the biggest, strongest knife you have.
      If you have one of those chinese cleaver style knife... use that.  I just use a big arse chef knife.
Whatever knife you go with, you will be using the BACK, BLUNT!!!! edge of the knife.
*****THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!! DO NOT USE THE SHARP BLADE EDGE TO WHACK THE COCONUT!!!!  USE THE BLUNT BACK EDGE ONLY!!!!!!******
you will lose a finger or two and blunt your knife and stuff like that if you use the blade.  So don't do that!!  ok??

3.  Find the equator.
      Most coconuts will have what look like seams running around them.  There will usually be three of them.  They lead to the three eyes.  Think of the eyes as the top of the coconut so that  you can  now find the middle of the coconut... the equator.  That is where you want to focus the force of the BACK of the knife when you strike it.

4.  Start hitting.
    You just need to keep hitting the coconut until a crack appears.  Once you get a crack, you will know.  The sound changes.  Shuffle the coconut around in your hand so you can keep hitting along the 'equator' until you get a crack all the way around.

5.  pry it open.
      If you have been careful, you should have cracked the hard shell of the coconut, but left the flesh inside whole.  once you have peeled away the hard shell, you can then possibly remove that brown flaky skin around the soft white flesh.
once you have a nice clean white fleshy sphere, you can either pierce it to pour out the water, or just carefully cut it in half and pour the water our that way.

clean coconut flesh. no shell.

I took a video of my coconut cracking efforts recently, but the coconut must have been old or seomthing as when I cracked it open it was mouldy :(  very disappointing.

Here is the video clip anyway.  The technique is the same,  you just have to hop eyou don't get a scungey mouldy coconut like I did :(