Yes, they’re delightful. I think the best thing about them is the variety of sizes. There are big ones and small ones.
Are there some as big as your head?
Chop off the top. Drain. Fill with at least three types of rum, pineapple juice, and a touch of curacao. Add ice and straws.
This is good only if you have the young green coconuts. The mature brown coconuts that the OP had don’t really have much in the way of sweet juice and meat.
Scrap off the meat, and toast it in the oven… LOW heat. Delicious all by itself. Drizzle on some simple syrup if you prefer a sweetened taste.
Uh, YUM? seriously, I think I need to try this.
I just heard this same thing as a “solution” in one of my son’s puzzle books. You know that wouldn’t actually work, right?
God, I love that guy.
Except he’s wrong about oranges. “Difficult” and “untasty”?
I clear them off my front yard weekly and throw them in the garden waste bag… what?
I actually like coconut, but I just can’t be bothered dealing with the mess.
The one time I did have one because my mother was visiting (“oh my god you have coconuts litering your garden, how cool!”), it tasted fine.
Om nom nom nom!
I had a chance to try some coconuts at different stages in their lifecycle. If you wait until they sprout, the milk has turned into a fluffy concoction that fills the empty space in the nut. Someone described it as being like natural cotton candy. That’s not quite right, but I’ll be damned if I can think of a better description. Fascinating plant.
And the image of our second mate, Emma, wailing on that coconut with a machete, will not soon leave me.
Some describe it to be like a marshmallow.
As an excruciatingly-correct nitpick, the liquid inside the coconut is coconut water or coconut juice. Coconut milk is extracted out of the coconut meat.
I don’t bother with whole coconuts unless they’re fresh off the tree in the tropics. I’ve had them in the South Pacific and in the Caribbean: ambrosia. Elsewhere? Soap, pretty much.
(Grate. Dry thoroughly. Toast slowly in a heavy skillet. Add to salad. Mmm.)
Actually, the best way to open one of them is to sharpen a steak (the wood kind) drive it into the ground and then sharpen the end sticking up to use that to peel off the husk. Those that try to use a machete are doomed to frustration.
Everyone who has explained about the milk of a brown coconut being bad is very accurate. Some of the things a coconut nut itself can be halved, three quartered, and used as a cup. If you leave a bit of the outer shell and husk, it can even be made so it stands. The fiber can be made into cord and then that can be woven into rope. When burnt, the fiber will smoke sufficently to keep mousquitos away. Coconut husks burn slowly and create good coals for cooking but you have to be patient and wait for them to burn down.
Yes, that’s true. When we’re served a fresh coconut at the beach, with a straw in it, it IS juice, a clear liquid. And you see bottled coconut juice sometime. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed coconut milk for sale here.
You don’t know Emma.
I saw her with the machete and figured she was going to saw away at the husk or pry the fibers away. Uh uh. I think it was four solid whacks and she was in.
Don’t mess with a sailor; even one named Emma.
Yes, machete. They can wield them wickedly here, too, whacking coconuts.
Sell as Gollywhopper eggs.
Tell all of your friends and family how you think coconuts are kind of gross and don’t eat them. Then eat a green one and curse the universe for trying to pass brown coconuts off as food.