There’s a lot more to palm trees than the shade. You may have had hearts of palm–or palmitos–in a salad. (Palmito is also a term of endearment in Spanish.) Hearts of palm actually are the hearts of palm trees. They taste somewhat like artichoke hearts and are often pickled and marinated in the same way. Unfortunately, harvesting wild hearts of palm kills the trees, which is why they’re so expensive.
Palm trees also yield edible fruits like coconuts and açaí (a deep-purple berry). Fresh coconut is hard to come by in the States and even harder to get open. When/if you do get it open, you’ll find that there’s liquid inside. This is coconut water, which is sometimes sold as a drink in juice boxes and which tastes quite different from the flesh/milk. (If you’re in a Latin American country, this is called pipa.) Coconut milk, on the other hand, is pressed from the flesh–if you’re going to cook with it or use it in smoothies, try to find whole coconut milk since it’s from the first press and contains far more nutrients than the second-press “light” coconut milk. (You can always thin it with water yourself.) Puerto Ricans favor a type of eggnog that’s made with coconut cream, so if you’re a coconut fan and you’re vacationing there, be sure to try the coquito!
Shredded coconut is readily available all year-round. It comes in sweetened and unsweetened varieties, the former generally being drenched with oil and sugar/corn syrup. (Tip: if you want the texture of coconut in a recipe but don’t like the taste of it, try grating a peeled apple and then squeezing out the juice. The taste/texture in the final product will trick almost anyone–even you–into believing it’s coconut.)
If you do have the fortune to have your coconut and open it too, remember that you can eat the inner brown skin! Most of the nutrients are in the inner husk, and plus, it has a pleasantly nutty taste. Or you can carve out the white flesh and grate it, chop it, or eat it out of hand. You might also stumble upon tiny, baby-sized coconuts in your grocery store. These are eaten as-is, husk and all.
But the most important thing to know about palm trees is to look up before standing underneath them! If there’s a brown, dry frond that looks like it’s about to fall, seek shade elsewhere–you don’t want to be standing there when it does!
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Tags: coconut milk, coconuts, hearts of palm, shredded coconut, tropics
Hi Lisa,
I think it is great to have someone like you educating folks on the wonderful products available for cooks as well as those of us who simply enjoy good food. I would like to if I may expand on your information in regards to Hearts of Palm as I import Fresh Hearts of Palm from my family farm in Costa Rica where we grow the pejibaye palm tree specifically use for canned and fresh palm because they are self regenerating species allowing us to continuously harvest from the same plant each year. While your are absolutely correct in regards to coconut and acai palms the same does not apply to pejibaye palms which is why they play such an important role in reforestation and sustainable agriculture in the country of Costa Rica generating many jobs and income for its residence. Please feel free to contact me I would love to send you some to try yourself.