Making Fresh Coconut Milk
When lockdown begun, we were drinking Almond Breeze milk and sparingly putting a splash in our coffee each day. As supplies ran short on our tiny island, our friends encouraged us to give homemade coconut milk a whirl - to get a fresh coconut ground up only costs 25 pesos here (around £0.40) whereas a carton of the almond is 150 pesos, or £2.40. It’s a no-brainer! If you don’t have access to fresh coconut flesh, you can always use the larger flakes or desiccated coconut, soaked in water for at least an hour to soften up.
Ingredients
2 cups fresh coconut flesh (or dessicated coconut)
3 cups coconut water or filtered water
Pinch of salt
Optional additions: cinnamon, honey, dates
How-To
Place 1 cup of coconut flesh or desiccated coconut in your blender
Add 2-3 cups of water, plus the salt & any other ingredients (I’m excited to try honey & cinnamon to add to coffee!)
Blend your mixture up for 2-3 minutes, until it seems bubbly, super creamy and luxurious.
I refrigerated my blend for an hour, just to make sure the water was super coconut-ty. If you’re using dessicated coconut, I would advise soaking for even longer just to make the most of your flesh.
Line a sieve with cheesecloth, then rest the sieve over a saucepan. Slowly empty your coconut blend into the sieve, bit by bit, letting it drop through by itself or using a spoon to encourage the water to leave the pulp.
Eventually, when all the coconut pulp is in the cheesecloth, you can squeeze and wring it out until the pulp is dry and there is no more water coming through.
I emptied this dry coconut flesh into a tub, to use later in porridge or to make energy balls.
Sieve the milk for a second time, just to make sure you’ve captured all the pulp.
Gently simmer your coconut milk over a low heat, until steam appears/small bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan.
Note: you don’t want the milk to boil! Just get hot enough to kill any bacteria.
Leave your milk to cool.
I split the coconut milk in half, leaving half as it is and adding cinnamon and to the other half - perfect for coffee and adding to porridge or overnight oats.
You can expect this fresh milk to last around 3-4 days, refrigerated.
