Vitamix “Coconutty” Carrot Ginger Soup And How To Break Open A Young Thai Coconut

Since Gwyneth Paltrow’s Double Chocolate Chip Cookies were so delicious, I decided to try yet another simple recipe from her website GOOP. I’ve been itching to try this “Coconutty” Carrot Ginger Soup for quite some time, and when I noticed that my local Whole Foods was selling some Young Thai Coconuts, I finally decided to give it a go.

Although the soup was delicious and merely required the blending of a few ingredients in the Vitamix, I think I added a bit too much ginger. Therefore, if you attempt to make this soup, I would suggest that you start out with half the recommended amount of ginger adding a bit more at a time, thereafter, to taste.

The other issue I had with this soup was the difficulty in breaking open the Young Thai Coconut to retrieve the coconut water and meat. The next time I make this recipe, I might opt to substitute coconut cream from a can instead of the coconut meat, and buy pre-packaged coconut water instead of fighting for the juice and meat from a real coconut. However, I do like the healthy ingredients in this soup, including shallots, miso and cumin.

This is the packaged Young Thai Coconut which I purchased from Whole Foods…

In my desperate attempts to break open the coconut, I absolutely destroying it by hacking it with a knife every which way but loose. After the fact, I decided to Google the issue and I found a wonderful post on the website Breaking Muscle depicting the proper way to do it. Before I tell you the proper way to open a Young Thai Coconut, let me show you a photo of the hack job I performed on my poor coconut. This is pathetic! I could barely scrape out the meat from the inside.

Now, let me tell you the proper way to break open a Young Thai Coconut as per Breaking Muscle. The photos below are from Breaking Muscle too!

TUTORIAL: HOW TO BREAK OPEN A YOUNG THAI COCONUT

1. Put the young coconut on its side and start cutting the top, pointed husk off with a sharp knife. A regular sharp chef knife is cool. You don’t need a machete, cleaver, or hack saw.

2. Cut away as much of the husk as possible until the nut is crowning. The spines of the nut should be bare, like this.

3. With the bottom edge of your knife, come down pretty aggressively at the base of one of the spines, creating a good cut in the shell all the way through. Good eye-hand coordination is probably useful here, but you’ll get it. Just keep your free hand out of the way. Repeat at the base of all the spines. Do the same in between the spines, at the base, until the top of the shell feels loose. Drain a little water into a container if it starts to splash while you are opening.

4. With your fingers, you should be able to pry the top up. Keep prying – it’s like nature’s coconut hat. Or pop top? Maybe like a tupperware lid. You get the idea.

5. Ta-da! Filled with yummy water minus many shards of shell like if you were to take a hammer to it. You can stick a straw in it now and call it a day or you can go on to make many delicious things.

6. If you want to use the meat and water for a recipe, first scoop the goodness off the “nature hat.” Or pop top. Whatever. Then scoop the meat out of the main cabin. Mmm.

The above method is much better than mine, isn’t it? In any event, here’s the recipe for the “Coconutty” Carrot Ginger Soup…

Vitamix “Coconutty” Carrot Ginger Soup

VITAMIX “COCONUTTY” CARROT GINGER SOUP

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

3/4 lb carrots (about 2 1/2 carrots), roughly chopped

1 cup coconut meat, roughly chopped

1 1/2 tablespoons shallots, diced

1/2 cup coconut water

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 clove garlic

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 tablespoon miso

Pinch of cumin

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients in a high-power blender such as Vitamix and blend well until completely smooth.

Enjoy!

Related Links:

Click here to read my post How To Make Ginger Tea And The Health Benefits of Ginger.

Click here to learn How To Make Homemade Ginger Ale.

Click here to read my review of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook It’s All Good And Simple Recipe for Gwyneth’s Avocado Toast.

Click here to read my post Debby Sunshine Stars On The Rachael Ray Show (With Gwyneth Paltrow).

Click here to read Gwyneth Paltrow Mocked With Meat At East Hampton Library’s Authors’ Night.

Bye for now!

Debby

xoxoxo