How do you make coconut "noodles"?

germin8

I haven’t prepared a meal with young coconut in it… not yet, at least. But, I’ve seen recipes that call for coconut noodles. How easy or difficult is it to get noodles????? ...from young coconut! Sounds impossible… or a lot of work. Any advice on this? I want to try some Thai dishes which call for coconut noodles… but the coconut noodles is the only thing holding me back from even trying.

kandace

There may be a more complicated version than this, but I just scrape the coconut meat out in big pieces and cut into noodle-like strips.

Zoe

I did a recipe from Raw Food Real World by Sarma Menghalis and Matthew Kenny for samosas that used young coconut. The wrapper of the samosa was basically blended young coconut meat and milk with some Indian spiced, dehydrated, cut into triangles and stuffed with curried cauliflower. It was soooo tasty and satisfying, an amazing recipe.

But it makes me think, that if it is too hard to scrape out meat that is good for noodles – mine always comes out in scrappy mess, then you could blend it together with the milk, flavour it – or not!, dehydrate it and then cut it into noodle strips. I think I will try it.

germin8

I have that book too. Yes, the samosas look delicious. I want to try that recipe too.

But, first… the noodles. Scooping huge chunks out and cutting them sounds like julienned coconut. I know it will taste the same whether julienned or noodled; I just wonder how they got them long enough to be called noodles! I’ll stick with julienned… sounds easy enough. But, I’m afraid it will still end up like a “scrappy mess”.

Zoe, you may be on to something. If you put the coconut in a squeeze bottle and squeeze it out onto your tray before dehydrating… you may just get a good coconut noodle. I don’t expect it will shrink because it is mostly fat. Still sounds like a lot of work… more than I would want after all that time spent opening a coconut!

Rosie

I’ve only come across one or two young coconuts in my life that seemed a fit consistency for noodles. Most are too soft, and you may have to go through several to get one with the right firmness. And it was a pain to carefully scrape the meat to get decent-sized pieces. I ended up with short noodles (I think that’s all you can get), they were much like a julienne shape. I’m curious how the dehydrating experiment works out – let us know if it does!

Zoe

germin8 that is such a good idea to put them in the squeezy bottle first, wow, thank you! I am going to do that!