I brought my coconuts home and drained the coconut water out. It looked a little cloudy, but I've never done this before, so who knows what to expect! I took out my favorite hammer and pounded on the coconut until it cracked open to reveal... rotten, moldy coconut flesh. It was gross. Luckily I had gotten two coconuts at the grocery store! I drained the second one, cracked it in two and discovered... a second rotten coconut! Pathmark must have gotten a bad batch.
This sad turn of events meant that I was going to be making coconut water in Buffalo. Thankfully, Buffalo is home to Wegmans and Wegmans stocks coconuts. As a lifelong fan of Wegmans, I knew that they would not disappoint and sell me rotten coconuts. My parents were a bit confused as to why I was making coconut milk when they sell it in every grocery store. After three hours, I would be asking myself the same question.
Draining and opening the coconuts was the easy part. Although my dad wondered what all the noise was about and I scared the dogs out of the kitchen. When it came to prying the flesh out of the shell, I got a little frustrated. Videos on youtube suggested keeping the shell whole of prying out the flesh with a knife, while others told me to break the shell into smaller pieces, then remove the flesh. All I can tell you is, it took me over an hour to remove all of the coconut meat from the shell.
After the meat was freed, I spent the next hour and a half peeling the brown skin from the while flesh. After spending all this time trying to get clean coconut meat, there was no way I was going to hand grate it. The food processor was put into action and I finally was able to make my coconut milk. Once the coconut is freed and grated, it's easy to make the milk. Just a little boiling water and ten minutes time and it was done. Took long enough!
