Adventures in Thai Cooking & Travel
Cracking a Coconut: The Easy Way
To Crack a Coconut
by Kasma Loha-unchit
Copyright © 1995 Kasma Loha-unchit in It Rains Fishes
Also Available: Links to Information on this site about coconuts | includes: Coconut: A Good Oil | Coconuts in Thailand | Purchasing a Coconut | Recipes with Coconut
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Quick
version:
- Hold coconut over a bowl in one hand such that the "midriff" rests in the middle of your palm, with the tip on one end and the eyes on the other.
- Whack the coconut with the back (that is to say the blunt side) of the cleaver a few times all around the center until it cracks open cleanly into two nearly equal halves. Make sure you use the blunt side of the cleaver.
- Catch the juice in the bowl as it drains from the cracks.
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Some people try to get into a coconut by banging on it with a hammer. Others suggest poking holes in the eyes to drain the liquid before hammering. This sounds like a good idea, but if you have tried it before, you may have discovered it isn't quite so easy. The eyes are small and the surrounding shell quite thick and hard. After much effort to jab them with a sharp object or puncture them with a nail, you may end up with a slow trickle, taking a lot longer to drain all the liquid out than you may have patience for.
A 
quick and easy, no-nonsense way to crack a coconut is to use a cleaver. Holding it with one hand such that the "midriff" rests in the middle of your palm, with the tip on one end and the eyes on the other, whack the coconut with the back of the cleaver a few times all around the center until it cracks open cleanly into two nearly equal halves. Make sure you use the blunt side of the cleaver. Do this over a bowl in the sink to catch the juice as it drains from the cracks. If the juice tastes fresh and sweet, enjoy it as a refreshment by itself or reserve for use in extracting cream from the flesh.
After 
the coconut is cracked in two round halves, the white flesh can be scraped out in long thin shreds using a small implement with a row of sharp teeth, available from Southeast Asian markets. (My little niece and nephew, Toey and Baitoey, find this activity to be great fun. Whenever they come to visit and want to help in the kitchen, I keep them out of trouble by asking them to shred coconut. That usually is worth half an hour of silence and undivided attention. Later, when I incorporate the fruit of their effort into a simple appetizer or dessert, they feel so proud to have contributed; they have learned that cooking is fun and a way to give of themselves to their loved ones.)
Alternatively, you can first remove coconut meat from the shell and then grate or shred it in the food processor. (See the next section "Preparing a Coconut For Pressing Milk," for tips on how to de-shell coconut meat.)
In Thailand, there are shredders that are attached to wooden stools, so that you can shred coconut while sitting down. If you have one, sit on the stool with the flat round shredder head sticking out in front of you and between your legs. Simply hold the coconut half with the white meat on the sharp-toothed head and move your hands swiftly up and down, scraping it out in fine shreds. With practice, you may find that a whole coconut shreds up in no time at all. You may also develop strong wrists from the exercise!
In olden days, the wooden stools were carved into elaborate animal shapes (such graters are called gkra-dtai, meaning "rabbit"). The National Museum in the southern city of Nakon Si Thammarat and the extensive Institute of Southern Thailand Studies in Songkla display interesting collections of antique coconut shredders among their folk exhibits. Some are people-shaped, with the shredder sticking out of the mouth, or more comically, out of the rear end. These artfully carved stools make fascinating decorative pieces and have become collector's items. Look for them in Bangkok's enormous Chatuchak Weekend Market – a bustling bazaar where almost everything imaginable is available – or in antique shops.
Aside from hand scrapers and stool graters, there are a number of mechanical contraptions for grating coconut. Many of these can reduce the pulpy meat of old coconuts into very fine, snow-like flakes, perfect for extracting coconut milk and for making chewy sweetmeats. Along with the wooden, boxlike machine mentioned earlier, another common device used by vendors in marketplaces consists of a large round aluminum basin with a torch-like shredder head sticking out through a hole in the center. With the basin tilted on its side, the shredder head is hooked on the back to a machine which powers it to turn like an osterizer. The sides of the basin catch the grated coconut so it doesn't fly all over the place.
Long, thin coconut shreds are sprinkled over various snacks and desserts, used as an ingredient in the fillings of crispy crepes and dumplings, and rolled into sweetmeats. For my niece and nephew, I sometimes toss toasted sesame seeds, some sugar and a little bit of salt with the coconut shreds they have helped scrape out of the shells and serve the mixture to them for a snack or light dessert. Cooked sweet corn kernels added to such a mixture also make a very nutritious snack food.
Along the streets of Thai cities and in snack shops, a tasty coconut cake called Kanom Paeng Jee is a popular treat. Made primarily of finely grated fresh coconut with rice flour, sugar and flavorings, it is shaped into little flat round pancakes and grilled. Some street vendors fill the sweet coconut mixture in tiny metal rings atop a hot griddle to make uniform little round bites – reminiscent of chewy coconut macaroons.
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Preparing a Coconut for Pressing Milk
If you wish to make coconut milk from scratch and would rather use a food processor or blender than a hand-held implement to shred the thick flesh,when cracking the shell, whack the shell when you first crack it just enough to make a small fissure sufficient for draining the liquid, but keep the coconut whole. (The taste and smell of the juice will tell whether the coconut is good or whether it has gone rancid.) Place the coconut in a hot oven (400-450 degrees) for fifteen to twenty minutes. The heat from the oven loosens the flesh inside from the shell. Do not leave the coconut in the oven too long because you do not want to cook the flesh; cooked coconut meat will not yield fresh-tasting coconut milk. Cracking the shell and draining the liquid before placing in the hot oven prevent the heated coconut from exploding, an experience you want to avoid in your kitchen.
After the coconut has been in the hot oven long enough, remove it and allow it to cool until you are able to handle it without burning your hands. Then whack the coconut all around the center line with the back of a cleaver, as described earlier, to crack into two halves. Using a knife or screw driver, pry the meat out from the shell. If it is hard to do, whack the shell into smaller sections.
If you wish, peel off the brown skin attached to the shell side of the white meat. Break the meat into smaller chunks and chop as finely as possible in your blender or food processor. Transfer the chopped meat to a bowl and add two cups of boiling water. Allow it to steep about ten minutes, then strain through a fine-mesh strainer into another bowl. Gather the pulp with your hands and squeeze all the fluid out from it; this fluid will be the creamiest part of the milk. You may wish to wrap the pulp with a dampened muslin cloth to ease the task of pressing.
Add another two cups of boiling water to the pulp, steep, strain and press again. This will be lighter milk. Judging from the consistency from this second pressing, you may decide whether or not to do a third. In Thai cooking, coconut cream from the first pressing is used to make rich coconut desserts (try the coconut custard recipe). It is also reserved for frying pastes in the making of curries, with the lighter milk added later during cooking to constitute the sauce. The lighter milk is also saved for soup stocks and to stew or pre-cook various meats.
Copyright © 1995 Kasma Loha-unchit.
Sections taken from pages 110 to 113 of It Rains Fishes: Legends,Traditions and the Joys of Thai Cooking, by Kasma Loha-unchit. Published by Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995.
Quicktime Movies: (movies of the same event, long & short versions)
Long version – 1 MB | Short version – 561 K
Options: Index of articles | Thai recipes | Cooking classes | Thai cookbooks | Return to top | Contact Kasma
Also Available: Links to Information on this site about coconuts | includes: Coconut: A Good Oil | Coconuts in Thailand | Purchasing a Coconut | Recipes with Coconut
Options: Index of articles | Thai recipes | Cooking classes | Thai cookbooks | Return to top | Contact Kasma
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Text Copyright © 1995 Kasma Loha-unchit in It Rains Fishes. All rights reserved.
All material on this website is Copyright © 1995 to 2008 Kasma Loha-unchit. All rights reserved.
For comments, feedback or questions, contact Kasma.
Last updated 12 April 2007.