I’ve always loved coconut milk. It was rare when my family bought one but we would open it with a hammer and a nail and drain the milk out. This was not the most efficient process! In the past 10 years I’ve had a lot more coconuts at restaurants (usually raw restaurants out west) and I thought they had some cool machine in the back that opened the top of the coconut in a perfect circle. I searched online for the “coconut opening machine” and could never find it.
Last summer I finally decided to ask – I was at Cousin’s Restaurant in Chicago (an awesome raw restaurant by the way). I ordered a young coconut (also known as a Thai coconut). Our server went and asked the bartender and he said I could come over a watch.
Here is the very easy way to open a coconut! It does make a bit of a mess and you have to be very careful with your big sharp knife!