How to Open a Coconut or How NOT to Open a Coconut, rather.

A couple of weeks ago my son became transfixed by a coconut in the store.

He needed the coconut. He wanted the coconut. I said ok, let's get the coconut.

He carried it around proudly for most of the day and after dinner we decided to open it up.

I did not look on the internet ahead of time on how to do this.

AND THAT THING IS HARD! (That's what she said.)

For your reference, don't do this:

It doesn't work.

This does not work either.

No matter how strong your thighs are.

Eventually we got it open but also you can see the variety of tools we used to try to get it open, none of which actually worked.

What did work was the flat side of a meat tenderizer. Eventually I did look on the internet (sort of) and used the meat tenderizer to beat the crap out of it.
That worked. It was a nice release of some built up frustration, too, if I might add.

However.

Had I searched a little further I'd have found out that coconuts have a "sweet spot" or a seam.

If you bang that seam (not tap, but bang) with the blunt end (not the blade) of a chef's knife, meat cleaver or some big heavy knife (in my case, a meat tenderizer) while turning the coconut and following the seam (doing all of this over a cup or a sink to catch the water inside), it'll eventually split open. And also you'll look like you know what you're doing.

Unlike the madness that was a mom and a dad pulling out tool after tool after tool, frazzled and baffled, with children underfoot trying to figure out how to break open a coconut.

Oh, and a brick or rock or edge of a concrete slab can also be used according to WikiHow which also provides several other useful methods for opening a coconut. Including my personal favorite and most brilliant in my opinion:

"If nothing works you can wrap the coconut in a towel, then hit it with a hammer."

The other one super useful thing I missed out on by not looking it up on the internet is how to get the meat out.

That was another challenge.

How do people stranded on a desert island survive on coconuts without the internet to properly instruct them?

(Do they get 4G coverage there perhaps?)

You can freeze pieces of the coconut for 30 minutes and you can scoop the meat out easier. But I didn't do that (of course.) You can also stick the coconut in an oven on 350 for 20 minutes (after you've drained it first) which will cause the meat to separate from the shell on its own. Didn't do that either.

I scraped and I dug and eventually I got some pieces out.

Which he enjoyed. And I had just enough energy to scrape out a tidbit for myself before I was tired of looking at this thing and not in the mood for it anymore.

The other one lost interest after the chaos of banging the coconut was over. He's not pictured from here on out, he's off doing more interesting things like picking his nose or running around naked because that's how he rolls.

So there you go! How NOT to open a coconut!

It should have taken us about 5 minutes.

The whole process for us was about 30. Not counting the time spent ogling it of course.

But hey. We've got memories now, right?