In one of the video lessons on sourcing Real Food on this blog, I visit an Asian Supermarket to show you the primary items that I buy there.  If you recall, I purchased raw, frozen coconut meat and young coconuts.  I mention in that video that these items are ideal for homemade coconut milk.

High quality coconut milk is a must have in the kitchen of any Traditional Cook who seeks to serve nutrient dense meals. It is a much healthier option than hormone disrupting soy milk!

One of the most highly desirable nutrients in whole coconut milk is lauric acid, a medium chain triglyceride. The body quickly uses this type of fat for energy. It is not stored like long chain fats. It is also highly anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and anti-fungal.

In fact, this fat is so important to human health that the mammary gland makes lauric acid so breastfeeding infants get plenty! It is also present in a quality baby formula recipe, but not in commercial brands even if organic.

Unfortunately, coconut milk is typically found in cartons, cans or aseptic packages. This results in potentially undesirable toxins such as BPA or nanites leeching into the milk. There are some brands of coconut milk now available in BPA free cans. However, it’s easy to learn how to make coconut milk that maintains all its rawness and nutrition for basically the same amount of money. So why use canned? 

Homemade Coconut Milk

Most homemade coconut milk recipes utilize boiling hot water to reconstitute desiccated coconut meat. This method is fine particularly if you are going to cook with the coconut milk.

I personally prefer to make coconut milk in a manner that maintains all the rawness. Then, if you are going to make a coconut milk beverage, my cold process method preserves all the nutrition and enzymes.

The recipe below details this process step by step. In addition, a video tutorial below the recipe demonstrates how to make coconut milk that is both raw and fresh and uses only coconut meat and coconut water using either fresh coconut water or raw coconut water from the store. Making coconut milk this way costs little more than cans or cartons and is far healthier. Why not make a lot at one time and freeze it for convenient use later?

Additional information can be found in this article plus video on how to make coconut flour.  This article plus video provides a coconut milk kefir recipe.

How to Make Coconut Milk (Video How-To)

The video below demonstrates the coconut milk recipe above. It is easy to make large batches of this raw homemade coconut milk and freeze so that you never have to use cans or cartons again.

Learning how to make coconut milk is important particularly if your children have a dairy allergy and you are using lots of coconut milk tonic as a milk replacement.

Once you’ve made your first batch of homemade coconut milk, try making coconut milk pudding with it!

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

 

Sources and More Information

Fermented Homemade Almond Milk