Your whole food, plant-based life.

Raw Food: All About Young Coconuts

When creating raw food recipes, the young coconut is a healthy substitution for many of the dairy products that we have eliminated.  Raw food is traditionally vegan.  Coming up with recipes that remind us of  the traditional recipes that call for cream, butter and cheese requires creativity with the ingredients that we do use, such as nuts and coconut.

Coconut flesh, coconut oil and coconut butter are healthy substitutions. Recent research as found that the saturated fat contained in coconut actually protects against heart disease, stroke and hardening of the arteries. Coconut oil contains large amounts of lauric acid which is the main fatty acid found in breast milk. Lauric acid strengthens the immune system and protects against viral, bacterial and fungal infections. You can read more about the health benefits of coconuts here.

What kind of coconuts do you use for the recipes? I use young Thai coconuts. They are coconuts in the earlier stages of development. (See above picture). You can find them at co-ops, Whole Foods, Asian markets and online. Recently I found a site that has great prices for fresh, organic young coconuts. I have not ordered any from here but wanted to let you know about the site. The owner wanted me to let you know that sometimes it might take a week or two to get your order because they ship as the coconuts become available. The link is: Florida Coconuts.

What is the difference between coconut oil and coconut butter? Coconut Oil is pressed out of the coconut flesh either by centrifugal force ( unrefined, virgin coconut oil) or the cold pressed method. Coconut Butter is coconut oil plus coconut solids. It contains the oil and the flesh of the coconut.

Opening Coconuts: When I first started experimenting with raw foods, I was intimidated by coconuts. I had no idea how to open them. I tried a tree saw, a huge cleaver and various knives. Every attempt was finally met with success but only after some pretty scary moments and fear of removing body parts.  Then, I stumbled upon a video showing the correct way to open a young coconut. Honestly, it is so easy, I couldn’t believe how much stress I had previously put myself through.

Trim excess husk from pointed top of coconut.

It will look like this.

With the bottom edge of your knife, strike the coconut towards the top.

Continue to strike the coconut around the top until you have reached your starting place.

Lift the lid, pour out the water (save it as it is quite good for you) and scrape out the flesh with a spoon!

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56 Comments

  1. Andrea wrote on December 6, 2012

    Thank you so much for these tips. I have been intimidated in the past and deliberately not bought fresh coconuts. I will be more willing to have a go at opening one now!

    Reply
  2. Rocky wrote on March 14, 2012

    I just wanted to say thank you for the Florida Coconut link. I had been buying the young Thai coconuts for their water at Whole Foods for about $3.00/coconut but recently learned that they are dipped in formaldehyde before shipping. The Florida Coconut Farm is literally right down the street from me and I now go there every few days. They are organic. The price is right and he sells a tool to open them up in about 10 seconds. The water tastes a little different. It seems fresher. Oh ya, you cant use the tool for the Thai coconuts because the husk and shell are too hard by the time they hit the stores. Hope this helps.

    Reply
    • Susan wrote on March 14, 2012

      Glad you can use him! Also, Whole Foods does carry organic coconuts now. Cheers!

      Reply
  3. Lise wrote on February 5, 2012

    Thx susan, love your site. Can we make our own coconut butter?

    Reply
  4. Mike wrote on January 13, 2012

    @michelle

    Yesterday I picked up a dozen from the link listed above as I live a few miles away them. I have noticed the “thai” coconuts to be smaller while the “florida coconuts are generally larger and have more water.

    Reply
  5. Lexi Porter wrote on August 25, 2011

    Hey, Susan – thanks for the great article on this (love the pictures!). I’ve recently become a fan of young Thai coconuts (raw chocolate pudding – yumm!), but so far I’ve made my husband open them all for me. Maybe now I can do it myself (MORE raw chocolate pudding! 🙂

    Thanks again,

    Lexi

    Reply
  6. Maija Haavisto wrote on June 1, 2011

    I tried this method on my first young coconut today. I could not get the knife to actually puncture the coconut part (or even leave a noticeable dent on it), but after whacking it around in a circle for quite a while it eventually caved in. Luckily it was good, because after all that work finding something nasty would have been quite discouraging… Spooning the flesh out was also more work than I thought – I actually ended up using a knife because it clung to the edges.

    Not sure I’m going to fight another battle any time soon (I’m disabled so it was a bit too exhausting).

    Reply
    • Susan wrote on June 1, 2011

      You don’t want to puncture…you want to crack the top.

      Reply
  7. Michelle wrote on January 13, 2011

    Susan, have you ordered from the website you suggested yet? They are only a couple hours away from me & I was wondering if the variety they grow is thai or not.

    Reply
  8. LisaE wrote on December 4, 2010

    Hi Susan, Have you ever tried making your own coconut butter? Couldn’t you just use young coconut meat and blend it up with coconut oil in either a food processor or kitchen mixer?

    Reply
  9. Anna's Fasting For Weight Loss wrote on October 8, 2010

    Hi Susan

    Great post. This clears a lot of my worries in opening up a coconut. I had always relied on the shop owner to open it for me without knowing that I can actually DIY. Thank you for the post. And one more, I like the Florida Coconut link. That enables people to enjoy coconuts anywhere. Great resource!!

    Anna

    Reply

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