You guys, I am so crazy excited about showing you how to crack open a coconut, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning.

It might not look like much, I mean, there aren’t even any pretty pictures to look at or anything…

So what can I possibly be so excited about, you wonder? Trust me and read on. This is PRICELESS!

For the first time EVER, I am sharing a video with you all. And not just any video, a video that I made myself.

Okay, now this was my first time shooting and editing video, so please, go easy on me. The poor quality of the offering won’t prevent you from getting all the valuable information that it is meant to offer. And THAT is what’s important!

You see, I LOVE LOVE LOVE fresh coconut with a passion, but I used to never eat it because cracking open that hard shell to get to the precious meat was a task that I deemed quite darn close to impossible to accomplish. I’d tried every possible technique, from using a hammer, saw or power drill, to slipping the thing into a pillow case and smashing it against hard concrete. All very messy (and sometimes dangerous!) procedures that didn’t yield the best results and often left me very frustrated and essentially coconutless, too.

That was until one day, I learned this SUPER EASY AND QUICK technique for cracking open a coconut using nothing but a good old chef knife! Seriously, that method is so easy that, once you’ve mastered it, you’ll be cracking coconut after coconut and will be able to enjoy it in its fresh form anytime you want.

Before you get started, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Hold the coconut firmly in your non working hand.

Use the blunt side of a chef knife or cleaver to hit the coconut around its perimeter

Use swift but hard hits (it’s all in the wrist, you’ll get the hang of it!)

Don’t go using your best knife here, for obvious reasons… (I keep an old $15 blade specifically for this purpose)

Make sure you work over a bowl to collect all the precious water

Once the coconut is cut in half, continue hitting it to break it down into smaller pieces

Use a butter knife to detach the flesh from the shell. Simply slide the tip of the blade between the two layers and give it a little twist.

Lastly, if you want to, you can remove the outer brown skin with a vegetable peeler.

So, without further ado, here goes.

Hope you enjoy!

And now that you know how to operate these coconuts like a champ, next time, we’ll be making Fresh Coconut Milk from scratch.

You will not believe how good that stuff is…