Minor fail: mechanized coconut grating

One of the comments on my post about coconut grating pointed to a Thai company that specializes in coconut grating equipment.  One of their products is a hand-held tool that looks a lot like a drill, with the bit replaced by a nasty-looking grater (like the one in the above photo of my hand-cranked grater ).

Inspired by this product, I removed the grater from my hand-cranked grater (pictured above) and installed it into my electric drill. It was a mixed bag:

• The good:  No personal injury.*  I wore gloves and was very careful when the sharp tool was spinning.   
• The bad:  The grating tool is so long that it flexes and is hard to control. Also, it was not easy to hold onto the drill and coconut at the same time. 
• The ugly:  On the rare occasions that I got the grater going, I was unable to control it and it usually ended up digging into the coconut shell, bringing flecks of brown shell into the bright white grated coconut flesh.
  

I gave up after a few minutes and went back to old-fashioned hand cranking.

The difficulty in holding the coconut and drill at the same time is why a connection to the KitchenAid would be useful — the tool would be still and I could move the coconut around to extract all of the coconut from its shell.



* - No injury while using the drill, anyway.  Later in the cooking session I cut my finger on the grating tool when removing it from the grater after the coconut was fully grated.  I should probably wear gloves whenever I handle the grating tool.

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Random link from the archive: Torta verde: a savory pie from Italy

Technorati tags: vegetarian : Food