Buko juice

[Pat Hammond]

Buko juice is just coconut water, the liquid that sloshes around in young coconuts. I'm intrigued by the properties it's said to contain. I love coconut flavors, and I'm always looking for ways to boost my potassium. Has anyone tried this?

[Chelsea Pearl]

If you're feeling lazy, they carry fresh young coconuts and several varieties of canned coconut water at Whole Foods. I'm addicted, esp. in this heat.

Fun Fact: in WWII young coconut water was used as IV solution. It's very pure.

--Pearl

[rln]

I love buko juice. My understanding is that it's the juice from young coconut, vs older coconut when it becomes milk.
In LA and in the Philippines, they sell chilled buko juice right in the young green coconut with the top chopped off. It's refreshing, and then you can scrape to eat the soft meat inside. I especially like it because it's not too sweet.

[StriperGuy]

Older coconut juice does not become milk. It does however get much sweeter as the coconut ages and loose some of that grassy, fresh flavor that the juice of green coconuts has.

Coconut milk is made by finely grating the hard white flesh of a mature coconut and then running water through it to extract the flavor. While you can buy canned coconut milk, freshly made is amazing.

[StriperGuy]

Just to further clarify: as coconuts mature they go through a very speficic process. The flesh goes from nothing at all, to a thin layer of clear jelly. The jelly gets thicker and thicker and firmer and firmer as the coconut matures, finally turning into the very dense meat that we all think of as coconut.

As the flesh matures, the juice, while initially perhaps a bit cloudy, gets completely clear, and gets sweeter as the coconut matures.

Parallel to all this the inner shell (not the fibrous outer husk) also progresses from thin and whitish to blackish brown and very tough.

[StriperGuy]

Never heard it called Buko juice, but have had this either fresh from the coconut, or in myriad canned/bottled varieties which are available in any decent asian market.

It is much milder then regular coconut. Tends to have a sweet grassy taste. I love it.

[Pat Hammond]

I'll check it out the next time I'm in Chinatown. I'd like to find a source for the soft, immature coconut meat too. I'm a fool for coconut.

[Pat Hammond]

Well, I went ahead and ordered here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search.html/...

Seems like a fair deal - $21 for a dozen 11 oz. containers.