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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Mastering the art of home-made coconut oil

for cooking, skincare, disease protection

by

Radhica De Silva
2269 days ago
20190410

ln a quaint kitchen in Ce­dros, out­fit­ted with a home-made mo­torised grater, three types of co­conut oil are pre­pared thrice per week dur­ing low tide. The de­mand for this home-made co­conut oil is so great that of­ten times, it is sold out be­fore it is ac­tu­al­ly pre­pared.

The oil is pro­duced by Roopah Ma­haraj, cu­ra­tor of the Bal­ka De­vi Mandir and her daugh­ter Nir­mala.

In an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view, the Ma­haraj women shared their se­cret to mak­ing re­al co­conut oil, us­ing the nuts from the dy­ing co­conut es­tates of Ce­dros and Ica­cos. What is re­mark­able is the women have in­vent­ed their own home-made co­conut grater to make the te­dious process eas­i­er. They de­pend on a stur­dy con­crete tank stand to crack open the co­conuts and their man­u­fac­tur­ing process is whol­ly de­pen­dent on the move­ment of the sea. It takes three days to make one batch of oil, they said.

Ma­haraj pro­duces cold pressed oil or ex­tra vir­gin oil and vir­gin co­conut oil for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es, and co­conut oil for cook­ing.

De­rived from the meat of ma­ture co­conuts, Ma­haraj said they pur­chase co­conuts in bulk from sev­er­al farm­ers in the penin­su­la. It takes 1,000 co­conuts per week to make oil for their cus­tomers. They buy the co­conuts for $1.50 from a range of pro­duc­ers.

"Most times peo­ple drop the co­conut for us. They are all count­ed and then tak­en by wheel­bar­row to the back where we smash it on a sol­id con­crete tank once used as a tank stand," she said. The co­conuts ex­plode like gun­shots as they are thrown against the con­crete stand.

Next Nir­mala and her helper Man­ick Joseph have the ar­du­ous task of dig­ging out the co­conuts from their bro­ken shells. If they are for­tu­nate, the en­tire nut would have fall­en off whole from the shell, es­pe­cial­ly if it had al­ready start­ed to turn in­to oil.

It is usu­al­ly a race to see who can shell the most num­ber of nuts in the quick­est space of time and most times Nir­mala wins.

She said about 500 co­conuts are shelled in the space of an hour by hand.

Once the co­conuts are washed and cleaned, Nir­mala said they are left to soak in some big white pig­tail buck­ets overnight.

"The rea­son for soak­ing is that it soft­ens the co­conut a bit," she ex­plained.

Next, the nuts are placed in the crude­ly made mo­torised grater de­signed and built us­ing wood and a steel sheet. Nail was bored se­lec­tive­ly over the sheet­ing of the home-made cre­ation.

Turn­ing on the ma­chine, Ma­haraj said she was al­ways care­ful to en­sure that the process is san­i­tary.

She us­es a wood­en tool, al­so their own in­ven­tion to push the co­conut pieces un­der the grater. Af­ter this process is com­plet­ed, the grat­ed co­conut is washed out a sec­ond time.

Then it has to be strained and the ex­tract­ed milk placed in clean buck­ets.

Nir­mala said they let the milk sit overnight and by morn­ing the ac­tu­al oil floats on top.

It is painstak­ing­ly scooped up by Ma­haraj and placed in glass bot­tles.

"This is called cold press oil. It is filled with an­tiox­i­dants and vi­t­a­mins and has an­tibac­te­r­i­al, an­ti-fun­gal, and an­tivi­ral prop­er­ties," Ma­haraj said. "This oil has to be kept re­frig­er­at­ed else it will spoil."

She said cold press oil was use­ful for every­thing from skin­care to dis­ease pre­ven­tion.

"The cold press oil is most ex­pen­sive and sells for $170 per bot­tle. It is the most nu­tri­tious and is good for arthri­tis, can­cer, heart dis­ease, stroke, and even di­a­betes," Ma­haraj said.

Next, the vir­gin oil is man­u­fac­tured. The re­main­ing cream is again left to sit and the re­main­ing oil which floats up is scooped up a sec­ond time. How­ev­er, be­fore be­ing bot­tled, it is cooked for two min­utes on a stove to burn out the re­main­ing wa­ter.

"This one is called vir­gin oil. It is ex­cel­lent to add to your dish­es. It is great as a fat burn­er," she said.

The fi­nal type to be man­u­fac­tured is the oil used for cook­ing.

"We scoop the rest of the cream and we boil it for one hour dur­ing low tide," she said.

Nir­mala could not ex­plain the sig­nif­i­cance of low tide, how­ev­er.

"I don't know why but what I can say be­cause I have test­ed it out much time is that if the tide is high the oil jumps out of the pot, it gets brown and takes longer to cook. I don’t know why but maybe it has to do with grav­i­ty," she said.

Both women said mak­ing co­conut oil was a process hand­ed down through the gen­er­a­tions. Ma­haraj said many peo­ple have at­trib­uted great health ben­e­fits from the oil.

"The fat­ty acids in co­conut oil can kill harm­ful pathogens, in­clud­ing bac­te­ria, virus­es, and fun­gi. This could po­ten­tial­ly help to pre­vent in­fec­tions," she added. With the health ben­e­fits of co­conut oil, Ma­haraj said re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the co­conut in­dus­try would be wel­comed.


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