What is Coconut Milk?

If there are somebody get curious about what exactly coconut milk is (maybe), that's the reason I write this then. Coconut milk or santan (in Bahasa Indonesia) is made from grated coconut fruits. That fruits must be old enough to produce juice. Of course, it is juice not milk like cow’s milk or sheep’s milk. People in Indonesia use the coconut milk almost in everyday cooking (and baking). There are many recipes using this coconut milk.

How to produce this kind of juice? You know what, it is not fresh juice inside the young coconut. First the fresh coconut fruits are peeled. Then we find the hard shell of coconut, crack it. We will get an inner of coconut fruit which is white. Grate this part. Add water to the grated coconut, squeeze it, use strainer to get the juice.

Thick coconut milk made from 1 grated coconut fruit (400-500 grams) and 120 ml water. It produces 250 ml thick coconut milk.

After this add water little by little. Next squeeze will produce the thin coconut milk. Until we get about 800-1000 ml thin coconut milk.

For me, I never measure the water level. I just see what it looks like. If it is thick so it is THICK. When I need the thin one I just pour some water into the thick one.

I prefer to use fresh coconut milk that I bought from market. However, I always have several packs of coconut milk, powder and liquid, just in case I need coconut milk when I couldn’t find the fresh one. Of course the powder will last longer than the liquid one.