Use the right technique to eat raw coconut.
If you are lucky enough to acquire a fresh coconut, you can cut it open and eat it raw with the right technique. Coconuts have an extremely hard outer shell that feels like wood, so you will need to use the right tool to open it up and access the edible part. The juice of the coconut, or the "milk" is full of minerals and the white "meat" is full of potassium, so eating raw coconut is very healthy. Add this to my Recipe Box.
Instructions
1. Place the coconut on its side on a cutting board. Hold one end of the coconut and chop the other end off with a butcher knife, about 1 inch from the end. The cut you make doesn't need to go all the way through, so rotate the coconut and chop the end again. Keep rotating and chopping until you have made a flat surface on the end of the coconut in the hard outer shell so that it can stand up on its own.
2. Stand the coconut up on the cutting board. Create an opening in the top of the coconut by chopping the top in downward angles. Rotate the coconut and chop until a piece comes off of the hard outer shell to reveal the white, edible "meat" of the coconut. Use the end of knife to puncture the meat if you haven't already cut through it.
3. Hold the opening of a glass over the opening of the coconut with one hand and invert the coconut and glass with the other hand, so that the coconut juice drains into the glass. Set the glass of juice off to the side.
4. Cut through the top of coconut and cut it all the way in half with several heavy chops of your butcher knife. Scoop the meat out of the center of the coconut with a serrated-tipped spoon. You can now add the raw coconut to a recipe or eat the raw coconut by itself. You can also drink the coconut juice.
Tags: coconut chop, hard outer, hard outer shell, outer shell, butcher knife, coconut juice, coconut with