Well, mostly, anyway. 🙂

Being a Canadian, I didn’t know that coconut scrapers were called coconut scrapers – I would have called them shredders or something else, but coconut scraper it is, at least in this part of the world. 🙂 After all, how many coconuts did I ever buy when I lived in Canada? Less than half a dozen? Yeah, that’s not experienced. 🙂

As it turns out, there are several types of coconut scrapers, and what kind you go with depends on your needs.

Hand-held type

These coconut scrapers that are somewhat similar to lime zesters. They scrape small amounts of coconut at a time, so take much longer to scrape a coconut. If you’re looking for a small amount of long shreds or wide shreds, then this would do the job, but if you’re looking at scraping an entire coconut, then, well, let’s just say my hands are already throbbing… 🙂

The images are from Gourmet Sleuth. There’s also an image there to a bench coconut scraper that they refer to as a Thai wood coconut grater. It isn’t. I mean it isn’t just a Thai design. That design exists in Sri Lanka, and, no doubt, India, Bangladesh, and other countries in the region.

Counter-top models

C-clamp coconut scraper

We use a coconut scraper with a c-clamp that attaches to the counter, either temporarily or permanently. The clamp becomes loosened while I use it, but that’s to be expected since I also use some heavy cloth to protect the counter – don’t want to scratch the counter surface, after all.

Other people clamp theirs on and never remove it. If it’s attached tightly enough, it NEVER loosens. We have nowhere to permanently mount, so we remove and re-attach at will.

With this c-clamp scraper, I can scrape a whole coconut in about a minute. When my joints aren’t bothering me. When they are, it might take me a minute and a half. This coconut scraper is highly effective at getting the job done quickly. And, as long as you hold the coconut around the shell with your fingers not close to the shell edge, you won’t even injure myself.

Clumsy me has managed to not injure myself yet, knock on wood. 🙂

This Australian site has a counter-top c-clamp style coconut grater for sale at AUS $49.01. The one I use costs around Rs. 900 (about US $9) at Arpico.

Suction/vacuum based coconut scraper

My mother in law used to have a coconut scraper with a suction base, but the suction was so horrible that it took one person to hold the scraper in place while the other person scraped the coconut. Hardly practical or useful, and really, just an all-round failure in engineering. NOT the kind I would ever recommend.

The very next time we went shopping, we bought the kind with the c-clamp.

The image for the suction mounted is from Spices of India.

Bench scrapers

My mother in law uses a bench coconut scraper. She straddles the bench with the scraper out front and scrapes the coconut against the blade. She’s pretty quick at it and can have a coconut scraped in the same time it takes me to scrape a coconut with the c-clamp kind.

I can’t use it because, quite frankly, I wouldn’t be able to stand again. Pesky bad knees. And back.

The first image is from Temple of Thai while the second image was take at my favourite mortar & pestle and cast iron griddle shop. 🙂

Motorized

These kinds are really more for high-volume coconut scraping. 😀 I saw one at Arpico once, priced at around Rs. 7500 (about $75 US). Saw another one at my favourite mortar & pestle and cast iron griddle shop for around the same price. Yehaw!

You might also be interested in reading a post over at Mental Masala about attaching the round scraper ball to a power drill. There’s also a picture of the suction-mounted coconut scraper that I so hate and find so completely useless.

So.

Clear as mud? Questions? Does that tell you everything you ever wanted to know about coconut scrapers?