Copra (Coconut)

Pakistan grows very little coconut, mostly along a short strip of coast, so nearly every coconut in this market is imported, from Sri Lanka, India or Indonesia, and the price carries that journey. What you are paying for at retail is selection: whole, clean pieces of kernel, properly dried, without the mould and rancidity that plague badly stored stock. The fat is the other fact to hold plainly. Dried coconut is rich, roughly 660 calories per 100 grams with most of it fat, which is why it enriches a dish the way ghee does, and why recipes use it by the spoonful and the handful rather than by the bowl. Used that way, a 500g pack carries a home cook through a season of sweets.

Grate it fine for panjiri and coconut laddoo, where it is half the point of the dish. Slice it thin into halwas and barfi. Toast shavings lightly in a dry pan and scatter them over kheer and falooda. In savoury cooking it belongs in chutneys and in the coconut based curries of the coast. And in winter, in our part of the country, small pieces of copra are simply eaten with tea, slowly, the way people here have always eaten it. If grating by hand sounds like work, it is; copra is hard. A heavy grater or a quick pass through a sturdy chopper is the standard kitchen answer.

Good copra is cream to white on the cut face, hard and dry, and smells sweet and nutty. Walk away from pieces that smell oily, sharp or stale; coconut fat turns, and no recipe rescues rancid khopra. Brown patches on the skin side are normal. Store it airtight in a cool place, and in summer put the open pack in the fridge, because its own oil is the thing that spoils it. The rest of the shelf is in our dried items collection, and all the season's rates are in the dry fruits price list.

What is the copra price in Pakistan? For edible kitchen grade copra at WD Foods, Rs 1,500 for 1kg, Rs 750 for 500g and Rs 375 for 250g.

Is this the same copra that is used for oil? Same fruit, different grade and purpose. Ours is selected and packed for eating and cooking; oil mill copra is a bulk industrial raw material.

How long does copra keep? Months, kept dry and sealed. In summer, refrigerate the open pack; a rancid, oily smell is the sign it has turned.

WD Foods is the online store of Wahid Nimco, working from Quetta since 1990. We deliver across Pakistan in 3 to 5 business days. The shop on Masjid Road, Quetta, is open every day from 9 AM to 10 PM.