Did You Know You Can Eat Coconut Sprouts?

And that they taste like manna from heaven?

Coconut sprouts are called uto in the Cook Islands, o'o in Samoa, manzanas de coco (coconut apples) in Latin America and here in Seychelles we call them koko zerm (or coco germes if you wanna be a little more high falutin'). In Hawaii, this food was considered so powerful that only the royals were allowed to eat it.

In Seychelles, on the other hand, the koko zerm is now considered poor man's food and most people ignore it in favour of other tasty man made "treats". In fact, when we moved back here a few years ago, my son had to show it to some of his friends who had grown up here and never tried it.

I pretty much love anything to do with coconuts, but coconut sprouts have got to be my favourite part of a coconut. Maybe they remind me of my childhood (I ate them when on holiday here.), maybe I just don't get to eat them too often or maybe they are as delicious as I think.

So what is a coconut sprout really? Essentially, a coconut contains a small seed like ball that floats around in the coconut water within the shell. When the coconut drops off the tree this small ball begins soaking up the water and turning into a round spongy mass that eventually fills the entire inside of the coconut as it sprouts.

It's very hard to describe the texture of koko zerm. Some say it's like marshmallow; others say it's like candy floss. To me, it's like a crispy sponge, if you can imagine that.

A sprouted coconut can be picked when the shoot is no more than a foot and a half tall. Open it the way you would any other coconut (machete in hand or bash it up against a rock) and pick out the inside. The yellow outer part can be eaten, but if it's a slightly older sprout, this layer can taste a tad rancid. The white fluffy part is always sweet and coconutty.

I'm guessing it is highly nutritious as well; sprouts and seeds of all kinds tend to be concentrated powerhouses of nutritional goodness.

I wonder if we could survive on coconut sprouts... maybe they really are manna...