VacVin coconut opener

Ow! My eye!!!

Have you ever watched someone on television open a coconut and think that there's no way you'd want to do that?

It looks sort of dangerous, right?

When I got a coconut opening tool from VacuVin, I thought I'd take a whack at it. Literally.

I was kind of surprised that the tool wasn't sharp. Nope, it's like the back of a knife instead of the sharp side. Interesting.

But it makes sense. You don't crack nuts with a knife - you use something blunt to create a crack in the brittle shell.

So, I poked out the coconut's soft eye with the pointy end of the tool - which also wasn't sharp. But it didn't need to be. One of the eyes was definitely soft. The others weren't. So I made a nice round hole in that soft spot. Then I poured out the liquid.

Then I proceeded to use the whacking part of the tool to start smacking the coconut around its circumference. While this sounds like it could be dangerous, if you're holding the coconut in the palm of your hand, all of your fingers should be safely near the underside of the coconut and not in danger of being smacked.

Holding the coconut on a hard surface while whacking is more dangerous, because your fingers are likely to be in the way of where you're smacking.

Trust me. I know.

You you don't really need to hit it that hard - just sharply, to create cracks.

As you smack it, you'll hear the sound of it change. And then you'll see cracks. And pretty soon you'll have two coconut halves.

And there you go. Coconut. Cracked. Ta daaaa!

What you do with it after that is totally up to you.

While I haven't tried it yet, I think the tool would also be useful for cracking hard Hubbard squashes. Normally I just drop them onto concrete until they crack. Next time I buy one, I'll give it a go with this tool.

Who's it for: People who buy a lot of fresh coconuts.

Pros: It's made specifically for coconut cracking, so you're not damaging a knife or other tool that shouldn't be abused like this.

Cons: Definitely a single-use tool.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.